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Soilless Systems and Subscriptions with Local Appetite Growers
252 Plays3 years ago
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we discuss hydroponics and the convenience of subscriptions with Will Mastin, co-owner of Local Appetite Growers. Local Appetite Growers is a hydroponics greenhouse farm located in Baldwin County, Alabama that specializes in the production of gourmet lettuces and leafy greens.
https://www.localappetitegrowers.com/
https://barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Introduction to Direct Farm Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the weekly listen for farm selling direct. We'll talk about the four levers for farm success, which are quality, brand, price, and convenience. We'll hear from outside industry experts and producers like you to delight your customers, save time, and to increase your direct farm sales and business. We're glad you're here.
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to the direct farm podcast. I'm Rory, your host for today's episode.
Meet Will Mastin from Local Appetite Growers
00:00:30
Speaker
We've got a great conversation for you today with one of our newest farm advisors, Will Mastin of local appetite growers located in Baldwin County, Alabama. Welcome, Will. It's great to have you here. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for joining us today.
What are the primary products of Local Appetite Growers?
00:00:44
Speaker
Maybe to start out, could you tell us a little bit about local appetite growers and what you produce there today?
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, local appetite growers, we primarily grow hydroponic lettuce and leafy greens. That's the majority of what we specialize in. But we also do field crops. Like right now, we've got cucumbers, we've got peppers and eggplants and squash. And then we grow all of that stuff in a no-till system of kind of permanent beds where we prepare the beds. And so we just
00:01:18
Speaker
Between twin crops, we will usually leave the roots or the stubble of the old crop and then just tarp it and sort of get ready for the next season. But that's what we, yeah, that's our main thing is lettuce. And like I said, some leafy greens, Swiss chard and pot joy, but we harvest lettuce every week of the year.
00:01:38
Speaker
year round. That's awesome. So did the lettuce, but you started the lettuce first before expanding to some of those other produce items? Yeah, we did. I mean, I've always had, I've always kind of gardened, but when we started doing how to panic lettuce, that was what we seemed like we could produce a lot of on a commercial scale. And so that was kind of the first thing that we took to a commercial scale. We've done
00:02:01
Speaker
a lot of greenhouse hydrophonic tomatoes in the past, but they weren't really, they weren't really a big moneymaker for us. Now, we still grow tomatoes in the field, but we most of our greenhouse tunnel space is dedicated to the lettuce. Okay. Because it's just the most consistent. Yeah. And how many different kinds of lettuce do you have in there that you're currently running? We grow about six to eight varieties, maybe a little bit more than that in the wintertime and the wintertime will grow some romains and
00:02:31
Speaker
some little gyms and things that can't really do well in the summer. We grew up to 10 varieties, but at least six or seven varieties year round. That's awesome. So is it just you that runs and works at the farm? No, I've got a partner. His name is Carl Brantley and he's got a farming horticulture background like me. And so we own the farm together and then we've got a couple of employees that work semi full-time.
00:03:01
Speaker
And then we have, we'll get some seasonal help when things, you know, there's a lot of harvesting going on. So it's four, four of us most of the time out there.
00:03:10
Speaker
Awesome. Well, you kind of mentioned the hydroponic growing and I know that's a different way of growing produce than maybe I guess is the norm. Could you maybe talk a little bit about how you grow your products and maybe explain like that hydroponic method? Yeah.
How does the nutrient film technique work?
00:03:25
Speaker
So hydroponics is just literally the translation means growing with water or water working.
00:03:32
Speaker
Hotter pondics refers to any kind of soil-less culture of plants. And there's a couple of different varieties. What we use is a water culture. It's called NFT, which stands for nutrient film technique. And so in that, the plants just grow in a shallow film of water that is constantly flowing across their roots. And the top of the plants are up in the sun and the air. But instead of the soil, the soil has been replaced and the roots just grow in this little shallow
00:04:01
Speaker
channel of water and we monitor the nutrients and the pH and we just use mineral salt fertilizers and pH adjusters and try to keep the sweet spot that the plants like. And there's no dirt, there's no soil, all that ion exchange of minerals is happening in the water and in the solution.
00:04:21
Speaker
And so it makes a really clean product. Rain's not splashing, washing dirt and grit up on the leaves. And we do everything on tables. We have these channels that are set up on tables at waist height. So it makes, makes for labor a lot better because everything's standing up as opposed to squatting down and trying to harvest every head of lettuce. We do everything on tables and salt horses. Yeah. This just gives, gives you a lot of advantages and not everything does well in that system, but lettuce really thrives in it. So that's.
00:04:51
Speaker
I was taking it and running with it. Yeah, I was kind of curious. Where did you find out about hydroponics and why did you choose to kind of make this the focus of your farm?
Will's Hydroponics Journey
00:05:01
Speaker
Obviously you have other produce that you're growing, but it sounds like this is kind of your year-round focuses on the hydroponics side of things. Why did you choose to grow produce this way? Well,
00:05:11
Speaker
I first saw hydroponics, I think like a lot of people when I went to Epcot as a kid and they had the little displays of the hydroponic gardens there and I was always interested in that, but then I worked in the greenhouses when I was at Auburn University and they had experiments and things and I just, I don't know, I started getting interested in setting up a little system in my home garden and I saw how well the plants did in it just in my little homemade
00:05:37
Speaker
setup and so then I just made a little bit bigger setup while I rented a little bit of land and expanded my little setup to see if I could grow enough to sell at the farmer's market and I just kept growing and growing from there and it it was really producing well and got better at it and honed in the planting schedule and so it just just grown as we've grown as a farm. Yeah and how many acres are you guys growing on at this point now today? We have
00:06:05
Speaker
three and a half acres that we own. And we, I guess we've got four greenhouses that are in cultivation. They're like 30 by a hundred footers, 96 footers. And so we've probably got maybe two acres in cultivation overall. And then we lease a little bit of land around us and we use that for, we've got some cows.
00:06:29
Speaker
We've got a few chickens. We've got a couple chicken cubes. And so we sell the eggs, but yeah, so it's really not a big operation at all. And like I said, most, most of our produce is coming out of those four greenhouses. Yeah. And it sounds like that it's a pretty efficient way to maximize that space as well. Is that correct? Yeah. And that's the other thing with, with hydroponics is you can just maximize it. There's not paths between the rows. Everything's shoulder to shoulder. And so for.
00:06:55
Speaker
that greenhouse space, even though ours are just low tech, high tunnels, that greenhouse space is valuable because you've got fans and that's just your prime growing space because that's where your money is. And we have shade cloth over it so we can protect whatever's inside of there. So yeah, it allows us to maximize every square foot because that's what you want is the highest density in those greenhouses because that's your prime growing space.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Well, so I'm kind of curious about how this all came to be. Do you have any history in farming? Or does your family have a history in farming? No, not really. My business partner, Carl, his family did some farming. And of course, mine did way down the line, but not in the last few generations. But now it's just always been a gardener and a plant nerd kind of guy. So like I said, it's just started at our house and they just sort of grew, you know,
00:07:49
Speaker
I rented a piece of land and built up a small high tunnel and everything that I could grow in there I could sell so then that's when I took on a partner and we bought some land and tried to expand it. You know of course like everything it always looks better on paper than you know even when you try to plan for losses and that sort of thing and it always looks so good on paper and then things whether and bugs and
00:08:17
Speaker
Everything else happens. We still both have other jobs and this business is the part time, even though it takes full time hours and we're there a lot, but still have other, you know, means of income. We both have a landscaping background. So, you know, that helps and we've got a good space. We're converting a greenhouse from tomatoes to lettuce. So that's kind of one of the things we, we grew lettuce and we started growing a bunch of other things and we tried, seems like we.
00:08:45
Speaker
We tried to grow a little bit of everything because we were selling to chefs. You know, that was our first market and they wanted to score all these weird things, different colored potatoes and just all these things. And it took us a few years to realize that a lot of that stuff is just not profitable. It may be fun and may be interesting and looks good on your pictures on your website, but we're trying to really focus in on the crops that we've gone from growing, like expanding our palette now we're
00:09:12
Speaker
shrinking it back down to try to do the things that are that we're good at and we're profitable and if something doesn't do well in a season then we just don't grow it. That's really interesting too because I feel like a lot of times what exactly what you just described is hard sometimes because I feel like farmers are such
00:09:29
Speaker
cultivators of the land and they want to grow whatever they can and maybe even surprise people with what's on their plate. But sometimes that can get you a little overextended. And so being able to kind of look at what you're growing and say, okay, maybe we narrow it down to these things and really focus in on what we're good at and provide really high quality versions of those products to our customers can kind of, I mean, it can be a time saver and maybe even increase your profitability. Like you were saying, which is really cool to hear that you guys have gone through that process.
00:09:57
Speaker
I think farmers are kind of entrepreneurial by nature, you know, just wanting to, willing to risk things and try things. And so you want to try, I mean, this might be the next great crop and it might be something that you could, a niche that you could specialize in. And sometimes things work out really well and most of the time it's, you learn, you learn like, well, there's a reason that nobody's growing that crop around in South Alabama. So that's, we've had that learning experience with a lot of things.
00:10:25
Speaker
You mentioned your time at Auburn going to school there. Did you go to school for agriculture or any kind of background in that? No, actually, I studied landscape architecture while I was there. That's what I do. I've still got a business where I work with some landscape contractors and homeowners, drawing landscape designs. I never really got into agriculture until my adult life. And like I said, it was just always was into gardening and the gardening just kind of got
00:10:54
Speaker
It's like a habit that just kept growing. No, I don't really have any background at all, but there's a lot of continuing education type things that were available. The University of Florida has a really great program and Mississippi State has a greenhouse course and Auburn University has offered a bunch of horticulture. They have a couple of conferences each year and you can go and listen. And that's sort of what we did was went to all these conferences and classes and
00:11:23
Speaker
tried to learn from other farmers and read books. So just kind of.
00:11:27
Speaker
self-taught, I guess you'd say. Yeah, that's really cool too that you've been able to lean on those resources because I think a lot of times those, especially universities are putting those things out and I think they probably oftentimes find that they're underutilized. So that's really cool that you guys have been able to tap into those things to learn as you go almost. Well, I was curious because I think local appetite growers is one of the more unique farm names I think that I've heard. How did you guys come up with that name and what was the decision process there?
00:11:56
Speaker
We grow things organically. We're not certified organic, but all of our field stuff, we use organic practices. And so our first thought was it maybe we would call it organic appetite. You know, we thought it would just be, you know, we're trying to fill this appetite that, that people have organic food. What if we just, you know, cause we're going
Why the Name Local Appetite Growers?
00:12:16
Speaker
to just grow locally as to what's called a local appetite. Cause that's what we're trying to specialize in. I think it's, it's got a good ring to it.
00:12:24
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's great. I think it's, it speaks to what you guys are doing. Yeah. We're proud of our brand and everything we sell is pretty local. It ends up 30 or 40 miles of where we grow it. Well, so I was kind of curious, you know, you, you built this thing from scratch. Like you said, it started just as your own greenhouse and garden. How did you kind of go about building a customer base? And you've mentioned a lot of the wholesale accounts that you work with, but I guess just to start, how did, how did you grow your customer base?
Building a Customer Base
00:12:53
Speaker
It was really just beating down the doors of these restaurants and, you know, stalking these chefs and getting in front of them. And I just, I gave away, you know, bags and bags and bags of our produce and, you know, started making little brochures. I've got a really nice price list with pictures that I send out every week. And so I, when I saw a new restaurant like that popping up or there's a chef that I would meet that, that, that had that kind of thought process.
00:13:21
Speaker
So yeah, we just went around then, then we started going to the farmer's market and we did that for a while and it kind of got to be, we didn't like doing it as much because it just, it's some weeks it was, there was a lot of people there, but if it was raining or too hot, people wouldn't show up and we had all this produce that we've been packing. So that's when we decided to start doing our home delivery system just because
00:13:45
Speaker
We're already delivering to restaurants. That was out of necessity because I knew these guys were busy, but the only way to get it to these guys was to actually physically bring it to them. Going through a distributor was not really a good route for us at the scale that we've been at. So that's the home delivery service. I had so many customers that were sad. I was leaving the farmer's market.
00:14:08
Speaker
Now I got a lot of contacts there and then that sort of started the home delivery service because I knew these are all people that lived in the community where we already were delivering to restaurants. So that's sort of how that started. We just started doing the farmer's market again this year. We haven't done it since 2016. Wow. And we just started again to our little small
00:14:27
Speaker
farmers market here in town. And I really liked what you said about these partnerships now that you have with restaurants and things and looking for people that match your brand or that match your values. I think you definitely probably saved yourself a lot of time by thinking that through beforehand and realizing what restaurants are going to
00:14:48
Speaker
appreciate the quality of your products and which ones where that wouldn't really be a good fit. So I'm kind of curious, I think that would be a great piece of advice. But is there any other advice you would maybe give to farmers who are struggling to grow their customer base? And what advice would you have for them based on how you've gone about that? I mean, that really, if you have a good product that you're trying to sell, and you know that, like I said, for instance, it's a restaurant with a chef, you know, a trained chef,
00:15:16
Speaker
not just line cooks. If that's where you're trying to get to, then bring your stuff and show it to them. Just show them the quality of what, you know, your fresh produce that was just picked that day or the day before. Because a lot of times, you know, chefs are busy and they're visual people and most people are. And they can just see something and say, wow, that looks way better than
00:15:38
Speaker
I can get in the store and this guy's I know this guy I'm sitting here talking to him and I know he's growing this nearby. It just makes it all the more real and that's what the farmer's market is like that for us now. It's not a huge part of our our income and we don't move a majority of our product there but it's good for the community to see us out there and that reinforces that we're here we're local and it just it makes it more authentic to people
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah. And that's definitely the advantage that you have as a farmer is that you can't go into the grocery store and see the person that grew that produce, but you can do that at the farmer's market. And I think more and more at Barnadore, we're seeing even with the shift to online sales for farms, there's still a lot of branding and great marketing work that can take place at the farmer's market for people to
00:16:26
Speaker
interact with you and learn about your products personally from the farmer, which is really cool. I was curious how you talked about, you started building up these wholesale accounts to restaurants. At what point did you decide that you wanted to start selling online and what about Barnadore made you do that in the first place?
Transition to Online Sales
00:16:43
Speaker
We've been wanting to build a website for years and it's just been cost prohibitive to do it. And we just never really pulled the trigger on it. And we started doing this home delivery service where we had individual
00:16:56
Speaker
customers and, and I was managing all that myself with through emails and texts and people seeing me in the grocery store. I just had this big Excel spreadsheet that I was constantly updating and it was a pain. When you guys approached us, you had the option of being able to sign up for all this stuff online and integrate the web store with the website.
00:17:17
Speaker
and social media and all that, it just, it was a good fit and the price was right. And I think y'all even offered payment plans and that was helpful for us at the time, just instead of having to come up with $2,500 or whatever it was off the bat to get a website and all together, the payment plan definitely was, was enticing to us. And the terms are better too, as far as credit card processing. We had a credit card processor before and it just was,
00:17:43
Speaker
monthly fees were really expensive. And I like the way these y'all's is, is set up. And it's nice because it keeps all our home deliveries, you know, together and, and I can print, you know, a delivery list each week. And so it's been, it's been good. So it's easy for them. It's easy for us. And so that happened right before the quarantine hit. And so that's when everybody was at home and all of our restaurant sales just went away with all these restaurants closing.
00:18:11
Speaker
And we had all this produce grown, but when everybody was stuck at home, they started seeing all their neighbors getting their deliveries. Everybody was out in the street and talking and having cocktail hour and our guys were delivering and our business just went crazy. Having it all so that people could just get online and order it. It was the easy and the timing was just right. So you mentioned the website was kind of a draw for you. And you went through that whole website build out process with barn to door. What was that process like? What did you think of it? And how was the outcome?
00:18:43
Speaker
It was good. It was relatively simple and painless and we were happy with it. I sent them pictures and they did a couple of graphs and we made some changes and I'm happy with the product. It probably needs some updating. It's been several years. We probably need to put some new pictures on there, but yeah, it was no problem at all. I was thrilled that I didn't have to do all the work and I was just able to send pictures and then edit the products.
00:19:08
Speaker
That's great, but yeah, they've definitely got that process pretty down to a T now at this point. They can really cruise through it.
00:19:15
Speaker
Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about how you've set up your online store. You've kept your product offering very simple, which I think is pretty key actually for a lot
Streamlining Sales with Subscription Bundles
00:19:23
Speaker
of farms. Sometimes putting too many things in your store can get overwhelming. Like we were talking about trying to grow too many things, but you've utilized choice bundles or farmer's choice bundles and subscriptions to sell a lot of your produce. So how is that kind of simplified things for you, but also for your customers? It's yeah, we keep it as simple on purpose.
00:19:45
Speaker
The local bags, that's what we call our weekly delivery is our local bag and the subscriptions. We tailored that around what we grow well. And we made it a package bundle because everybody wanted to know how to get our lettuce and eggs. And so our bags have lettuce and eggs. That's like a package deal. And then you get whatever else is in season, you know, there's like one other item that they get is going to be whatever is in season. And it's nice because there's no promise what it is. You're going to get something else. It may be turnips this week.
00:20:15
Speaker
radishes next week and then cucumbers the week after that. And so it changes every week, but it's nice. That's a nice format for us because we're, we're selling mostly lettuce and eggs, which is what we need to sell and what we have less of. We only, we're only providing one item of that. And then we, we do minimum sales. I don't sell heads of lettuce. You have to buy a case.
00:20:37
Speaker
You have to buy at least four dozen eggs. $20 is the minimum. And then we still charge a delivery charge, but I didn't really want people getting a whole lot of a la carte. One of this and one of that. And that just complicates the packing. We do enough of that for our restaurants. So for our home deliveries, we don't really allow customization. You can order cases of things or you can order the subscription bag. And we don't really allow a lot of substitutions in that unless somebody
00:21:07
Speaker
wants to substitute out eggs. A lot of people have chickens or they're vegan. That's like the one substitute that we do. Yeah. Awesome. No, that's definitely good. I think you can start investing way too much time in trying to give every single customer the exact amount of things that they want. And while that's great to be able to provide them that it's taken too much of a farmer's time, which they don't have enough of already. Yeah. And you just got to learn when to say no and
00:21:37
Speaker
hold your boundaries because people will make, you know, cause they're not thinking about that. They're like, Oh, this is great. And this guy's so nice and he doesn't mind doing something special for me. And if you start doing that, then you have to have some way of keeping track of it, whether it's a spreadsheet or in your planner or whatever, it's added stress and trying to please everybody is recipe for disaster.
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. We talked, we touched on subscriptions a little bit. What has kind of been the response to those and have a lot of people chosen that as their preferred way to get your produce and what has been the customer response to subscriptions? It's good. I have some customers that, I mean, they really like it because we sell it in either a 12 week subscription or an annual subscription. So they can set it up where it just charges their, their card each week.
00:22:25
Speaker
And they forget about it. It's nice for them because they want our stuff, but like everybody, they're busy, but they like having it just show up at their door and it's automatically paid for. They don't even have to think about it. You know, so it's not for everybody, but the people that are our customers, they really like it. And I tell people.
00:22:45
Speaker
The subscription, it's a commitment because that local appetite's rolling every week and we're going to bring you more lettuce and eggs. And if you didn't eat last week's stuff and it's piling up, it's coming again. So if people have to cook, you know, we do skip if people.
00:23:00
Speaker
tell us the skill of delivery, but you have to, it's a commitment. Definitely. But it seems like one that your customer base is willing to make. I was kind of curious what the difference in that revenue to what's that experience been like for you and your business partner with the farm, knowing that you're going to be having those sales. Is that kind of a change for you in terms of how you were doing things before subscriptions? Well, what it is, is it it's all so much simpler now, because instead of
00:23:27
Speaker
credit cards and checks and a hundred dollar bills from people. It all goes in as a deposit from one place. It's easier to keep track of. Like I said, we've always since we've started this business, we've grown for our local bags. But the way I like that we can set the barn to door up that where you can cut off when the order date is and previous to a delivery so that we're not getting a bunch of last minute surprises. You know, I think I have most of them set to 48 hours.
00:23:54
Speaker
If we have 20 bags this week, next week we're not going to all of a sudden have 50 bags because all these people signed up or whatever, but it's kind of nice because it seems to keep things consistent. Yeah, definitely. Do you have any advice or lessons that you've learned in setting up your subscriptions or going about it that you think would be good to share with other produce farmers maybe specifically or just anyone setting up a food-based subscription?
00:24:19
Speaker
So we offer a weekly subscription, a weekly delivery, and we offer the every other week delivery for people. That has been really popular because having that option of the frequency, like from, cause some people do like deliveries every week, but this every other week, that's probably become almost 50% of what we sell. Wow. So since we've offered it has become a popular
00:24:47
Speaker
you know, seller fees, just giving people a little bit of options, but don't give them so many options that it makes it be a, you know, a pain for you to manage. That's a really good point, I think, because doing a biweekly and a weekly isn't much added work for you on your end. Yeah. So that's, that's a good way to still maybe meet those customer expectations and kind of meet them where what they're asking you to do, but not overextending yourself in any sort of way. Yeah. And that's what barn to door.
00:25:15
Speaker
the online ordering, that's what they do for me is to make it simpler to sell these things. And you have to keep that in mind with what you're offering and what you're trying to sell because the less work and the less things you have to do every week, that's less stress on you. And that that's going to prevent burnout and all kinds of other things from trying to manage too much. Managing the farm and plants is enough. Yeah.
00:25:43
Speaker
And if you can automate anything, any process and the barn to door automates sales and I'm getting emails, you know, it's selling, whether I'm at the beach with my family on the weekend or whether it's midnight, people are signing up. So try to use it for all the automation that it's worth.
00:26:00
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. That's great advice. You kind of touched on your delivery and how you started that. What was the getting started period of your delivery program like and how has it grown since then?
Overcoming Delivery Challenges
00:26:11
Speaker
Yeah, it was rough start. We tried to offer home deliveries to where we were already delivering to restaurants. And so we started doing that and then just figuring out the route because the routing makes all the difference and then things like
00:26:29
Speaker
certain roads, so you don't want to be there around three o'clock because maybe three schools and a block and you can get on that road. It's in an ad an hour, but if you can deliver to a certain part of town and then work your way back. So just sort of figuring that out was a little bit of a learning curve, but it's gotten a lot smoother and we've cut some areas out. We're close to the beach here and we used to deliver down there because there was some pretty good restaurants and we had a lot of home deliveries during the quarantine.
00:26:57
Speaker
And it just got to the point where we looked at what we were making for, for doing that route. And it was taking us like four hours and all that time. And sometimes we were making like 150 or $200. And by the time you add up the gas and the wear and tear on the van and paying an employee and our driver, I had to let go of some customers down there, but that has made our life so much better because we're now focusing all of our energy.
00:27:25
Speaker
on the areas that are profitable. It hurt a little bit at first because we lost a couple of sales, but in the end, but just it's, it's made our deliveries so much simpler. It's less gas. It's less time.
00:27:38
Speaker
has been a good change. So yeah, no, that's awesome. You touched on also the earlier that you do charge a delivery fee. And I think that's something that we're always encouraging farmers to do. So could you maybe talk about your decision to implement that and maybe how much it is and why you've chosen that amount? We basically charge across the board $5 delivery fee. So in our subscriptions, that fee is built in.
00:28:04
Speaker
That fee is, it's, it's baked into the subscriptions. Now, if they're ordering like say a case of lettuce and we have to bring one person a case of lettuce one time, then we have a barn to door set up automatically charging them a $5 delivery fee. It's because that's a one-time stop. Sometimes it's out of the way. We used to charge $3 and we looked at the time that it takes to go to each.
00:28:27
Speaker
person and sometimes some of our customers would be 15 minutes, one out of the way. So that's 15 minutes there, 15 minutes back. That's half an hour. We're paying our delivery guy 15 an hour. And we had to move it up to $5 and keep that across the board. Our restaurants, we charge them a delivery fee as well as it is $5. Most of them are okay with that. It took a little convincing at first, but it's not a lot at the end of the day. When you add up everybody's $5 delivery charge, it covers the gas and wear and tear on the van.
00:28:57
Speaker
Whereas if you don't have that, you're just, you're spending money because it's expensive to keep a vehicle. I mean, we've had to rebuild our transmission and we put a lot of money into maintaining our vehicle. And if you're not recouping that and delivery costs, you're just losing money.
00:29:12
Speaker
As you're one of the newest members of the Farm Advisor Network, what are you most excited for about joining the team?
Joining the Farm Advisor Network
00:29:18
Speaker
And I know we're excited to get to share your story with other farmers. What are you excited about? I'm hoping to get some good publicity and any kind of marketing and improve our business and our online stature. And I know I'm not taking full advantage of all the features that are there in Barnadore, so I'm hoping I can
00:29:37
Speaker
like what we just talked about the right ethic and if I can integrate it with my QuickBooks and if I can start to sell through restaurants there and if I can figure out a simple transition. I just like to learn more about what I can do with y'all's technology and what you're doing, especially if it makes more sales and makes my life easier. That's all about both of those things. Yeah, definitely. Well, I'm kind of curious what's next for local appetite growers? What do you kind of got on the radar for the year ahead?
00:30:05
Speaker
We're working on a venue. We've got a little pole barn built and we're building some restrooms and we've done some landscaping. So we're trying to make it a place where we can host some events. I'd like to be able to book online. I'd like for people to be able to book, you know, events. And I've got to figure that, that whole side of the business out. And that'll probably be a separate business from our farm. You know, we're going to, well, like I said, we're converting a tomato greenhouse to grow more lettuce because the lettuce is just
00:30:33
Speaker
look at the square footage and you know that over the year that's our most profitable crop. So we're trying to grow more lettuce. I'm trying to get in working with some schools around here. So I'm trying to get in the Alabama farm to school program and I'm hoping we can start selling our lettuce in some of the schools. So that's kind of kind of the three big things on our radar I guess.
00:30:55
Speaker
That's really cool. I'll be excited to hear how all of those progress, but especially getting your produce in the schools. I think that's definitely a needed thing. And even if the students can then kind of learn about where it's coming from and how you're growing it and everything, that's a really cool opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. We want to bring the kids out there too. I'd like to get in these schools and sell them stuff and then have the kids come out there and do a tour and some more agritourism stuff.
00:31:18
Speaker
That's great. Well, I want to extend my thanks to Will for joining us on this week's podcast episode. Here at Barnador, we're humbled to support thousands of farms across the country, including farmers like Will and his team who influence sustainable agricultural practices and support their local community.
00:31:33
Speaker
For more information on local appetite growers, you can visit localappetitegrowers.com. And to learn more about Barn to Door, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm, you can go to barntodoor.com slash resources. Thank you for tuning in, and we'll see you next week.
00:31:53
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast. You can subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts to automatically download new episodes. For more free resources that you can read, watch, and listen to, visit farntador.com slash resources. Thank you again for tuning in and we'll see you again next week.