Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Less is More: Tips to Streamline Your Farm Business
829 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we sit down with Will Mastin of Local Appetite Growers (AL). Will shares his tips for streamlining operations – including planting less, narrowing his delivery zones, and packaging products into Bundle Boxes. Listen as these decisions help him save time and money while driving profits – and selling out.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Direct Farm Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the go-to resource for farms across the US looking to grow and manage their business. Tune in weekly to hear tips and tactics from our most successful farmers on how to increase sales, access more customers, and save time and money. We'll also speak with industry experts, business leaders, and partners to share the latest farm business trends selling direct to market.
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to the direct farm
Interview with Will Mastin
00:00:28
Speaker
podcast. I'm Rory, your host for today's episode. We've got a great conversation for you today with one of our farm advisors, Will Mastin from local appetite growers located in Alabama. Welcome, Will. It's good to have you back on the podcast. Hey, Rory. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, it's, uh, it's been a little while. I think the last time you were on was the first podcast you did with us since you joined the fan team. Um, could you maybe just share a little bit about your farm, about your background and where your farm is at today?
00:00:57
Speaker
Sure. Well, my farm is called Local Appetite Growers and we are located in Silver Hill, Alabama, which is kind of on the south end of the state near Mobile. And we are primarily grow hydroponic lettuce and leafy greens, but we do a few other things. We grow some field crops, some carrots and some radishes and a couple of other things, but our
00:01:26
Speaker
Our main crop is our lettuce and we sell that to restaurants and to markets and grocery stores. And then we also have a home delivery, like a subscription service just for our kind of immediate area. Yeah. And I was curious too about the wholesale side of things. Is that something you've always done or is that something that has kind of grown since you've done this more and more?
Pivoting Business Models during COVID-19
00:01:51
Speaker
Yes, that we started, we started out kind of doing to restaurants, selling directly to restaurants because that was, seemed to be where we could sell a lot of product consistently. And, um, so when we started selling to, that's why I started taking my stuff around to different restaurants around town and we sort of established a market there. And then later we decided we would try to sell to individuals through a home delivery service just for our local area.
00:02:21
Speaker
And that was kind of a small part of our business. And then COVID happened and everything, we went from having a majority of restaurant and wholesale customers to having a majority of home delivery customers. Cause everyone was at home and everything was kind of strange and restaurants were closed down. So that sort of saved us and got us through that period. So now we do, we do both. We, we still have the home delivery service and we sell, we try to sell more to wholesale accounts. Cause that just helps us move.
00:02:50
Speaker
more and more product as we grow and produce more. Yeah, definitely.
Barnadore Connect Sessions
00:02:55
Speaker
Well, uh, for today's podcast, I wanted to dive into a topic that I know, um, you've discussed in Barnadore Connect multiple times. So for folks that don't know what that is, Barnadore Connect, we host these twice a week sessions with all of our different farm advisors. So we'll host sessions as well as all the other farm advisors that you hear on the podcast. If you're interested in that, you can just go to the Barnadore website to learn more.
00:03:18
Speaker
But you've talked with folks a lot about streamlining your business and I thought that would be a really great topic to kind of dive in with you today because I think you've done such a good job of it. But when your farm first started and when you speak to some of these beginning farmers that might come in to connect, do you find that it's really easy to stretch yourself too thin in the early stages of starting a farm business?
Crop Experimentation and Focus on Profitability
00:03:40
Speaker
Well, sure. In the beginning stages, that's
00:03:43
Speaker
especially if you don't have a clear, concise crop or method or whatever it is, you want to grow, you want to try new things and you want to try everything. Maybe we can grow this and people are having a hard time finding this crop. And so we're always asking chefs and customers for recommendations and suggestions. And so, yeah, we did a lot of experimenting and
00:04:10
Speaker
I think that's part of it. Even we've all, we've started with lettuce and that's kind of been our main thing because it's productive and we do it hydroponically and have a good system for it. But we tried growing everything from Jerusalem artichokes to microgreens. We did some mushrooms and I'm not saying we're never going to grow those things again, but they just got to be where we, it was sort of a distraction from
00:04:36
Speaker
our main crops that were really doing well for us so we've tried lots of things and that you know we look at what we our sales at the end of the year and what's bringing us money and try to figure out how much time we're spending on each crop there's lettuce for us is our clear winter and so we try to produce more of that and there's some other crops that are good winters too but
00:05:00
Speaker
Things like tomatoes, we're growing tomatoes. We tried tomatoes every which way in the field and the greenhouse, hydroponically, organically. And we just didn't really make a lot of money on them as popular as they were. And as much as people got excited about tomatoes, we looked at our sales at the end of the year. And I don't know if it's just our climate or we just are not producing them well or not charging enough, but we just never really made money on them. So we had to make the decision
00:05:29
Speaker
our greenhouse space was too valuable to be spending on something that was not making money for us. So that's just decisions you have to make. It's great if you can have a niche market and really, and I know a lot of growers that, you know, their niche is microgreens or they do just mushrooms or edible flowers. But for us, those things were not making us money and they were taking up time and space and we just weren't as good at it as some other things. So we,
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's like any business. You just have to decide what services and goods are worth carrying. Yeah. Would you say that kind of initial phase of figuring that out? Do you think that's just a necessary process that everybody needs to go through and that you kind of don't get clarity or that perspective until you're a little bit more into it? No, I think so. I think so. Unless you have a market, clear cut market. Somebody says, you know, grocery store says, I need you to grow me a hundred pounds a week of this crop.
00:06:27
Speaker
I think you have to kind of experiment and see what you can grow well and what you like to grow. And I mean, there's things to consider, like, how long is something in the ground and how long does that crop take? And that was the thing with tomatoes was tomatoes were, you know, you typically grow indeterminate tomatoes.
00:06:45
Speaker
that's a long season crop and so it just takes a long time and they take up space for six months whereas we could have produced six months worth of lettuce being harvested every week out of that greenhouse and it's a lot less work and but like I said we learned just by trial and error and I think that most people
00:07:06
Speaker
have to kind of learn by trial and error. And because you don't really know what's going to work until you put it out there and see if you can, you know, you might grow something and realize that you're not charging enough and you can get a big margin on certain crops. And then that's what you want to grow if you can do it well. Um, but yeah, I think people kind of have to learn what works for them and what doesn't because different climates are different. It's hot and humid and tropical down here. And so,
00:07:33
Speaker
things that like, you know, peppers do well down here. So we've, that's one thing that we do because it's just, it's easy and they're productive and it works for our environment. We just learned that through trial and error.
00:07:46
Speaker
I think something that you touched on too, I would love to hear more from you on is you talked about tomatoes now and you said like those were really, they were popular. People liked them and wanted them from you guys. But when you get to the end of the year, you look at your books and they just don't add up. I know that can be a really hard perspective to have for a lot of folks. If they have a product that, um, that people ask for or that people are wanting or that are people are, they know people are buying, but to kind of.
00:08:15
Speaker
actually take a step back and look at it and say, is this profitable? What was that process like? How did you, what went into that thinking? How did you decide to do that? And then how did your customers kind of handle that once you guys stopped doing tomatoes? Oh, I mean, it was, it wasn't really that big of an issue. You know, tomatoes are really seasonal for us. And so we, you know, when we grow them, we grow them in the spring and the fall. And so they come in for
00:08:42
Speaker
two or three months and then they go out for two or three months. So we just, a lot of people have asked for them. And, you know, I just tell them, I said, Hey, it's just, it's just not something we do. And, and now that's not saying we don't do any tomatoes at all. We just don't devote valuable time and effort. We'll plan a couple of rows of them. And, but yeah, people, they just have to go elsewhere to find them. And like I said, it's just, it's not been a problem. Our lettuce is our main draw and it's what people count on us for. So.
00:09:11
Speaker
We've tried to get better on being more consistent with that and producing that every week as opposed to producing a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
Streamlining Farm Operations
00:09:21
Speaker
Yeah. I know you guys have done some other kind of streamlining activities, I guess, or some, some ways that you guys have kind of helped narrow some things down, but I guess we can dive into them after this question, but what would be some of those other ways that you would say you've helped streamline your business, save yourself some time or effort and really focus on making sure it's a sustainable, profitable business? Um, well.
00:09:47
Speaker
I guess I would say trying to free up as much of my time and my partner's time, that's really valuable. I mean, it doesn't always show on a balance sheet, but obviously when we started with Bar and Tador, there was a big learning curve and I was spending a lot of time with it doing our sales online.
00:10:08
Speaker
But now that saves me, you know, it saves me a big, big deal of time just having everything, the orders come in automatically. I just send everybody to our webpage and the barn to door site. And so that saves me a lot of time just having to manage people and manage customers and do emails. And we used to have people's credit cards and I had a thing that I would punch it in and charge it every way. And that took hours every week.
00:10:32
Speaker
And so I've kind of cut out a lot of that time. That's from just kind of a bookkeeping side of streamlining things. But as far as our other operations actually growing, what we've done is just we just look every year, we look at the crops that make us money and we determine how much effort that we've put into those crops.
00:10:54
Speaker
and how long they're in the ground. And we try to figure out is like, is this worth growing again? Is this worth taking up six months of bedtime when Mike could get two crops of, you know, a short season crop out of there? And then there's the issue of things staying in the ground too long. It's like we still have eggplants in the ground and they're still producing, but we need to get the kale planted. So it's like when you cut your losses. So for us, streamlining was like, okay, well, you know, the production on these,
00:11:24
Speaker
these eggplants or cucumbers, whatever it is, they, we know they're going to go down as the vines get older. And so it's more important to have the next season's crop in the ground and ready to go. And so what we have done is just cut, we've just cut out like 50% of what we used to grow and really focused on four or five crops that make us money. And, you know, when we look at them at the end of the year, we're like, okay, we made, we did good on this crop. And it was a big percentage of our sales and
00:11:54
Speaker
So that's a lot of root crops. Radishes are surprisingly a very profitable thing for us. You don't think about radishes and we grow specialty radishes like daikons and not just the standard red ones you find at every Mexican restaurant, but, um, and the same thing with peppers. We grow specialty peppers and it's a lot of it's the radishes. They're low effort and they're ready really fast and you can have those radishes done and get another crop in behind them.
00:12:22
Speaker
while you've still got season. So instead of trying to grow and manage rotating 12 crops, we've cut it down to like six and we just give those bigger areas and we can manage them better. So we're not having wasted bed space and that sort of thing. So that's one way that we streamlined our crops.
00:12:44
Speaker
I really like the way you look at that too and just in terms of the space that you have and I think that's great advice especially for farmers that are working with a smaller amount of space to make sure that you're maximizing it and not trying to pursue every especially when you're doing vegetables but to pursue everything that any customer asks for at the farmer's market or when you're doing deliveries to make sure that what you are using for that space is the most profitable and the stuff that is kind of the wide appealing stuff.
00:13:14
Speaker
I was curious too, I know you started mentioning the online store and how that's kind of helped you streamline bookkeeping and orders and things like that. How has that kind of helped you save time and what steps has that cut out of your process that you can now just kind of automate? Well, for our home delivery customers, you know, people always are
00:13:35
Speaker
were asking. I basically had an application form, a paper form or a PDF that I could email people. It would fill it out. They'd put their credit card information on there and
00:13:45
Speaker
mail it or email it back to me. And that's the way that we used to do it. We would have these people, they'd sign up and say, you know, local appetite can charge whatever 12 weeks worth of deliveries. I authorize this. And then I would take that and I would have to kind of manually input all that stuff or somebody wants to say, Hey, here's cash, sign me up, you know, a friend. And so now I just don't even, I don't even do that anymore. That used to take hours every week because I'd have to keep track of
00:14:15
Speaker
when people's subscriptions expired and I had a whole spreadsheet that I was keeping track of who got stuff when, who skipped a week, this sort of thing. And so with Barn to Door going through our automated sales for that service, I just sent everybody to our web store. And so everybody signs up. I don't have to, don't have to volley back and forth with people. And people still ask questions and submit questions about things, but you know, it's people either they buy or they don't.
00:14:44
Speaker
they're either ready, they go there and they're ready to buy or, or else they don't. And, and I never have to even, you know, people will ask me and send me the link or what's your website, but really it's pretty much everything is sent there from our website and our social media. So it's pretty self-explanatory. And it just saves, I mean, it saves me probably, I don't know, six or seven hours a week of just sorting through all those customers and
00:15:12
Speaker
who was due for payment. I can go and do a report out of my weekly orders out of barn to door. And if somebody has canceled, people can go in there and cancel without ever having to talk to me. And I can see if that's been done. And so it just, it gives me all of those orders in one place and it manages all the payments. And that's what saves me a lot of time. Cause I used to do all that and it was a drag. And it just was one of those things. It's like, Oh God, it's Monday. I've got to do this.
00:15:40
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I often want to go on vacation or whatever. It was a lot tougher, but now, like I said, it's nice being able to just go and I just make a PDF out of my little packing report each week and I know who's paid, who hasn't.
00:15:56
Speaker
who doesn't want a big delivery this week. So. Yeah, definitely. The dreaded spreadsheets are always never fun. I was curious too, cause I know we've had folks come into those connect sessions that maybe are even signed up with Barnador, but are still taking orders by phone call or text. And then I know a lot of people, that's just, I mean, kind of how you were operating beforehand too, but a lot of people operate that way and make all their sales that way. But what would you say to somebody that is still.
00:16:24
Speaker
fulfill or taking every order over a phone call or by text or by Facebook Messenger? Well, I mean, I'd say if you can that you're going to save yourself a lot of time by by sending everybody to the web store. I mean, that's what it's designed to do is to take you out of the equation. And that's what that's the first step of automation is taking you having to touch everything and touch every order out of the equation that that's the first step to automating your business.
00:16:53
Speaker
And we aren't totally, we have all of our home delivery sales going through the web store, but I have, I still have, I have chef customers and restaurants that, that I still do things. I just go straight into QuickBooks because they have the same order they've had for 10 years. So I don't have them going and I'm trying to reconcile, you know, so we still have a ways to go.
00:17:18
Speaker
But if you can, um, you know, we sell, we have stuff up there on our web store and you know, people can go there anytime a day or night. I get orders come in at all times and people don't have to hesitate about calling or texting. So it's just something where people can, they're like, Oh, they get up at five in the morning. They're like, Oh, I've been meaning to sign up for that. You know, get my produce this week. They can jump on there real quick and put their credit card in and you get the order and you don't ever have to deal with them.
00:17:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Which I think sometimes people think sounds less personal or they miss that interaction, but really the time savings alone is so huge for so many farmers I know. Yeah. And I used to be like that too, you know, for the first five or six years where I wanted to talk to everybody and everybody to know me and talk to the farmer and the more I got into it and I started spending
00:18:10
Speaker
hours and days doing bookkeeping and stuff away from farming. It's nice to have a tool to automate anything that you can and take your labor out of it. That's a big return.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I know another thing and we haven't even really got into this yet, but another thing that you've done a really great job of is cutting down your, the number of zip codes that you offer delivery to.
Reducing Delivery Areas for Efficiency
00:18:36
Speaker
And I know this is something you've talked with folks and connect a decent amount as well. What kind of went into that decision and maybe talk us through to start, what was that process like of starting a delivery program? And then how did you decide to start narrowing it down? And where did you decide to do that?
00:18:52
Speaker
Well, we had, we started out with small, a small delivery area and we expanded, we expanded to Mobile across the Bay, which is, you know, maybe an hour, 45 minutes from our farm. And then there's a lot of, we have a, that's one direction from us. And then another direction we have the beach areas of Orange Beach and Gulf Shores, Alabama, which there's a lot of,
00:19:18
Speaker
seasonal stuff down there. Summertime is really busy, tourists, and it's pretty busy year round because it's the good climate. But the, we were delivering, we wanted to try to get some of both of those markets and we were doing pretty well. And our justification is that we do restaurant deliveries at the same time that we're doing home deliveries. So we cover the restaurants in these areas and then do home deliveries while we're out in the neighborhood delivering.
00:19:46
Speaker
And the Gulf shore is the beach route for us. Just, we lost a big restaurant customer. They changed hands and we were just, we just looked at it and looked at how much time and miles that we were putting on our delivery van and what we were paying our driver.
00:20:02
Speaker
And it just didn't make sense economically to keep, we were just had a handful of customers down there and they were definitely not happy when I told them that we were cutting them off. But you know, most of them were like, we understand that's business. If it doesn't, if it doesn't make sense for you to drive down here. And we charged a delivery fee, which if you have.
00:20:23
Speaker
25 or 30 deliveries and everybody's got a five or $10 delivery fee, then it's worthwhile. But if you're delivering and it takes half a day and you only got five or six addresses, it's not worth it for $30 to have for a delivery fee to have somebody drive around all day. You just have to look at where it's just business principles, I guess, which is not my strong suit to be talking on. But as I'm learning, we're trying to sharpen the pencil on our farm.
00:20:54
Speaker
do you find that you're able to focus in on the areas that you are still offering delivery in and kind of make up those sales in places that you are already going to? Yeah. And that's the other thing is that we were getting stretched sort of thin with how much we could produce. And so cutting out some of those markets allows us to sell more because we have a lot of, we've caught some traction with some of our products and
00:21:19
Speaker
in these local markets, and there's some items that they just want as much as we can bring them. And so now we can bring those markets more. And so we're selling more. And then we have another person that sort of brokers our produce to restaurants a little bit farther out from us towards New Orleans. And so we were able to sell them more now because we have more available. So that's part of what it is too, is trying to figure out if there's really good customers that will buy more and it's easier to just sell them more.
00:21:49
Speaker
That's kind of another strategy too. If it's less work and you're selling the same amount of product and, you know, it's good for you. Our customer and the big customer in New Orleans wants more and more. And so we're able to give him more because we're kind of cut out some customers that weren't so profitable.
00:22:06
Speaker
Well, something else that I've heard a lot from farms that are either in Connect or in our academies as well, but is people that have special customers that they might make an exception for, and they take that customer's order still by phone, or they let that customer text them, or they might drive an extra long distance to bring that special customer their orders.
00:22:30
Speaker
What would be your advice in that situation? Cause I know you just mentioned you had folks that were kind of down on the beach that you, they, and they respected the decision, but you kind of just had to say like, we're not going to be making this drive anymore. Yeah. I mean, I guess I would say if you can make exceptions without causing yourself more work or loss of energy or money.
00:22:52
Speaker
Then do it. I mean, cause that's the person where you can still give the personal touch without trying to touch and talk to every one of your customers. So, I mean, yet we had, we definitely have some customers like that. There's, we have some schools that buy our lettuce and they're kind of out of our delivery route. So I'm making a point to go down there cause they're a good customer and we want to be in the school.
00:23:13
Speaker
And it's just good business for us. And, and then we have, you know, there's a couple of little old ladies that live on the route and they just want to leave a checkout and they don't get on the internet. And, you know, so there, there's a couple people like that, which probably I shouldn't do, but these people have, you know, I've just known them in the community and I feel like it's our good service. But yes, those little things can be a.
00:23:39
Speaker
a tow tripper, you know, having special customers because you have to go out of your way and you got to remember them and you don't get automatic reminders from your web store, you know, to bring this person a delivery. So that's the problem is you have to keep up with them. You have to manage them on your own. It's less that you're automatic, but as much as you can automate
00:24:00
Speaker
the better and any part of your business, especially sales. I think that's, it's a great thing because it takes a lot of human interaction time out of your job. That's great advice. Uh, just that, you know, if it, if it kind of fits with what you're already doing, cause, and I think the other thing to be wary of in those situations is you're then splitting your, your channels, basically, instead of using the one, you know, you've kind of.
00:24:24
Speaker
You got to remember that those extra special customers aren't going to be on your pick and pack list. And so remembering to make sure you grab their order and stuff can be a little bit of an extra hassle. Yeah. It's diluting the efficiency of your system, of your automated system. Yeah, definitely. Well, I'm curious too. I know you mentioned this earlier, but how would you.
00:24:46
Speaker
advisor, how have you gone about talking to those customers that you have had to maybe not deliver to anymore, or you've had to transition them on to ordering from you through an online store? How have you handled those conversations?
Transition to Local Market Pickups
00:24:59
Speaker
Well, we sell to several markets now, grocery stores and farmers markets.
00:25:06
Speaker
And so I can, I'm able to just send people there. That's been a good, I mean, they can't get everything at the markets that we do on our home delivery, but that's our next best thing. Nobody's given me too much heartburn about it. I mean, it's just business. If you're, some customers are profitable and some aren't, and you have to continually try to get the profitable ones and weed out the less profitable.
00:25:31
Speaker
Well, going back to your product offering, I know we talked a lot about how you've gone through that process of focusing in on the products that make the most sense for your farm and make the most profit.
Collaboration with Other Farms
00:25:41
Speaker
I'm curious, have you worked with other farms to still be able to provide some of those things that you yourself might have stopped growing, but you still want to keep offering your customers? We do. We do. We used to do
00:25:54
Speaker
a lot more of that. I used to work with a lot of farmers and then in fact, that's one of the ways that we've streamlined our home delivery service. We used to try to just put a little bit so much in there and we would try to get stuff from every farmer and we would just try to make these bounteous bags. And it was just running us to death trying to find stuff every week of the year. And we were like, look, then we were spending money and time and gas and delivery just going to get this produce from farmers. It's all from stuff from our county.
00:26:24
Speaker
but sometimes you had to drive an hour each way to go pick up a load of squash or whatever it was. So we decided, it's like, look, we don't need to try to just sell other farmer's produce if it's not making us money. And so we've even streamlined that. But so we streamlined our offering of our, what we call our local bags, our CSA subscription service to where it's more of just what we produce, which helps us sell more and it's easier
00:26:52
Speaker
management supply chain. And so now we sell more lettuce and eggs, which we produce and then we'll like sweet potatoes are a great thing for us because we have a lot of sweet potato farmers around and we can buy them in bulk for cheap and really get a good markup on them. Okra in the summertime is another thing that really works good for us. We can buy okra grown, harvested and delivered for less than we can grow it for.
00:27:20
Speaker
We buy it from other guys cheaper than we can like grow it and pay somebody to pick it for. So that's one thing. It just, we don't grow okra anymore because it's just, it's, there's so many other farmers that do it and do it cheaply. And so that really works out well for us. And it's also great for getting just bulk. If you want to make pickled okra, which is something we do sometimes just to change up what we have in our, our local bag offerings.
00:27:45
Speaker
So yeah, I think that's a really good way to, if you can get it for a good price point and everybody's making money. There's some things we do offer. We sell like honey and eggs. Sometimes if we don't have enough of our own eggs, we'll sell other people's eggs and we'll sell honey. But those costs, that's a premium product for us. And it's hard for us to really charge enough to, it's not as profitable as the other things that I mentioned earlier.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So so I guess yeah, if you have a good other if you have other good suppliers that you can get stuff in bulk very inexpensively and make a markup on it. That's a very good business to be in. And people like that. They like that you're buying from other they're not just helping your farm, they're helping a network of local farms. That's a good message to give people to
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And that day, I think a lot of times it helps the consumer to just, it simplifies the process for them. Like they, they want to be purchasing from a lot of different farms, but they might not actually want to go through the work of finding all those farms and placing all bunches separate orders. So being able to do that through one place is really nice. And our restaurant customers like that too. You know, they can, and they don't have to go to some of these other farmers to get some of these things that we carry, like the sweet potatoes or gold potatoes or corn minutes in season.
00:29:04
Speaker
they can get us to just bring them a couple of bushels and they just pay a little bit more just for the convenience of it. I'm curious, how do you handle like, do you tell your customers where these products are coming from? Like what farm is producing them? How do you handle that side of things communicating all that? We actually what we do is and so when we do our deliveries,
00:29:27
Speaker
We, we basically make a package in a little paper bag, like a grocery store paper bag. And I actually have little printouts that I put in there. So I'll print it out. I'll make it so I can fit two of them on a page and cut it in half, just so it's not so much paper. And so, yeah, if we have, I have a list of what's in there every week. I usually put a recipe on there, if there's something unusual, like mizuna or bok choy, things people don't buy every day. I'll put a recipe in there, just a simple,
00:29:57
Speaker
something to do with it so that people don't call me and say, Oh, what is this stuff? I don't know how to use it. It actually saves a lot of, that saves a lot of trouble too. Just like, okay, I know you're going to ask, what is this thing? These, these peppers hot, or is this a hot mustard or, so I try to preempt that by, I put the little slips in there and I say, you know, if we get something from another farm, I say it's from this farm. So we give credit where credit's due. And, and like I said, that's kind of a preemptive thing too.
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that's kind of maybe the common thread through a lot of this is getting ahead of things, putting in some work beforehand to save yourself a lot of work over the next couple months or weeks or things like that.
Customer Communication Strategies
00:30:41
Speaker
Would you say that's how you try and approach a lot of your business? Yeah. Well, yeah, especially it, once you have been doing it for a while, you can see patterns of, of how people are going to act or react or,
00:30:54
Speaker
If there's, if there's crops like, you know, like sweet corn, there's gonna be caterpillars in it. If it's organic corn, it's gonna, that's just anybody that grows corn knows that. I mean, you can spray it with BT and some of these organic things, but that's just like, you know, so I have to explain to people like, okay, this corn has not been sprayed with poison. You may find a worm in it, don't freak out. It's just a bug. Throw it out, wash off the corn, and it's fine. So yes, that just when you have people's reaction,
00:31:24
Speaker
to things you can sort of start to keep note of how people react. And like I said, I think putting the recipes for unusual things in there is a big one for us because we grow some things that people aren't used to. We grow stuff for our chefs.
00:31:39
Speaker
You know, and not everybody's familiar with arugula or Chinese mustard or, you know, some of the daikon radishes. And so I just know that people are gonna be like, what are these things? Are they hot? Do I eat them raw? You know, they had these questions. And so I think that's one thing that's definitely something that saves me a lot of question answering.
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah, anything you can do like this gonna, or if you have something that's weird colored or unusual, we were selling orange tomatoes, little sun gold orange tomatoes. And people were asking me when these tomatoes were going to be ripe, you know, because they were so used to seeing red tomatoes. And so it's like, okay, these are little gold, gold tomatoes, they're not unripe red tomatoes. Yeah, you can do to kind of predict things people won't understand.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, and just get ahead of it. What would be any other advice you might have to farmers who are interested in simplifying their inventory? How would you advise them to start taking steps to go through that process? Just simplify it as far as what's the easiest way for you to package stuff.
00:32:50
Speaker
who are you selling to? Are you selling to a restaurant who can take stuff in big bulk bags because they're just going to take it and do whatever they want with it? Or does it need to be packaged individually for a retail setting, like a market or something? They may want things in individual servings, but you have to figure out how
00:33:12
Speaker
What is your simplest way of packaging? We used to have lettuce and six ounce bags and eight ounce bags and one pound bags and four pound bags. And so we just, it was so many things. It was too much to keep track of. And so we just decided, it was like, okay, we're going to sell lettuce by the head. We're going to sell it in a six pound bag. And then you have the individual size. So basically.
00:33:33
Speaker
you know, do you want to sell stuff by the pound or do you want to sell it in bulk? And just offer that. Don't offer different size increments of things. The less you offer, the less you have to manage. And yeah, I guess that's, and the way that we, I guess, along with packaging, you know, if you're having things that you're having trouble selling, that's one nice thing about the way we do our subscription bags is because we can sell some things that maybe we have a lot of.
00:34:03
Speaker
that aren't selling to the restaurant markets, if we have a bunch of peppers left over, then we have that built in subscription service. We're like, okay, you're getting lettuce and you're getting a random item every week. This week, it might be peppers. Next week, we might have a bunch of okra or it might be a bunch of satsumas or whatever thing is in season. So that's been good for us is having an outlet for things that you may not
00:34:29
Speaker
That's just one outlet that we're able to sell things that may not always sell on the wholesale or restaurant market. So it's kind of nice to have an outlet.
00:34:39
Speaker
And I like to what you said about kind of limiting that offering for folks, because I know a lot of times that can be really overwhelming, especially with any product. I mean, with vegetables, you have so many things you can grow. If you throw it every single thing that you grow into your online store, that can be pages of inventory that can be overwhelming for folks, especially if you're doing it in different sizes, as well as with, with, for protein folks, you know, if you break down every single cut that's in a cow or a hog,
00:35:06
Speaker
then that can be a lot of different products too. So trying to keep that simple and easy for customers to navigate can even increase your sales as well. Well, are there any other kind of ways or tips you would have that local appetite growers is using automation or software or even just practices that you guys are doing to help save time and make your business more efficient?
Optimizing Weekly Scheduling
00:35:27
Speaker
Well, I guess your weekly schedule is a big thing. That's something that we have changed and morphed and
00:35:36
Speaker
You know, I used to, I used to work a part-time job and so I could only do be at the farm certain times and certain days. And as I've sort of transitioned to a different schedule, we like to sort of compile all of our harvesting to the beginning part of the week so that we get everything harvested on the first three days. And then if there's stuff that doesn't get harvested, you've got like Thursday and Friday.
00:36:01
Speaker
for, you know, say, Oh, all the peppers didn't get picked, or Oh, that lettuce is going to be hot this week, we need to get it harvested again this week, or we have projects. So, you know, just sort of making that pattern in your work schedule. So we have all our deliveries done by Wednesday. Everything's been harvested and delivered for the week. And then we sort of have Thursday and Friday.
00:36:22
Speaker
Either we start harvesting for next week, if it's time, or if we've gotten all the harvesting done prior, you can work on new projects. We're building a new lettuce greenhouse right now. That's Thursdays and Fridays are big days for that. That's just concentrating. I believe they call it batching. We try to batch all of our lettuce.
00:36:45
Speaker
harvest. So Monday and Tuesday, that's all we're doing is harvesting. And then Wednesday, we're kind of cleaning it up and doing the last, we're replanting and we're doing the last of the deliveries. So that's something that we found to be efficient is just kind of batching your workflow instead of just, if you can, I mean, not everybody can do that. Some people, you got to be there, whatever it is, planting and harvesting every day. But if you can sort of batch your time and when your orders are coming in,
00:37:13
Speaker
And that sort of keeps all the office work is heavy in the beginning of the week because that's when the invoices are coming in and that's when I'm making invoices and printing out delivery sheets. And then by Wednesday, most of that paperwork is done. And then we can sort of focus on, like I said, new capital projects. Awesome. I know you mentioned you guys are working on a new greenhouse right now and then obviously the venue, but what's ahead for local appetite growers in the next year or so?
00:37:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. We're trying to get our venue space established and get that business sort of off the ground. And we're trying to grow more lettuce. The sales have been good and we are sold out most all of the time. So we made that decision to convert a greenhouse that we were growing tomatoes in. We're converting it to a lettuce house.
00:38:03
Speaker
So that's not a fast process. We're doing that ourselves and paying for it out of pocket as we go. So it's just a slow process. But once we get that one going, then we'll have more lettuce to sell. We're getting into meat chickens a little bit, just sort of experimenting right now, just because there seems to be a big interest in that. And we don't really know what we're doing, but we've got birds.
Exploring New Ventures for Profitability
00:38:30
Speaker
Most of them are still alive.
00:38:32
Speaker
So we're going to try to expand that business and got a few cattle, but mostly just because we are leasing some land around us and the cattle are just helping us maintain it, keeping the grass mowed. And they are some wagyu bloodlines. So we're trying to the fancy beef. Yeah, that's, that's just kind of side ventures, but you know, growing, growing more lettuce and.
00:38:54
Speaker
trying to automate, uh, work less and make more money. That's the goal. There you go. Streamline that business. Yeah, man. Those are some big side things that the chickens and the beef, I'll be interested to hear how that keeps going for you guys. I've seen some of that stuff on your Instagram, so I'm excited to see where it goes.
00:39:15
Speaker
Awesome. Well, I want to extend my thanks to Will for joining us on this week's podcast episode here at Barnadore. We're humbled to support thousands of farms across the country, including local appetite growers. If you would like to connect with Will or other farm advisors, you can attend those Barnadore Connect sessions that we were talking about. You can register for weekly sessions at barnadore.com slash connect. And for more information on local appetite growers, you can follow them. Their Instagram is at local appetite growers.
00:39:43
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next week. Thanks for tuning in for more free farm resources, tips and tactics that are most successful farms use to grow and manage their business. Visit barnadore.com slash resources. Also don't forget to subscribe to the direct farm podcast to automatically download our weekly episodes. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.