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Episode 221 - Building a Community Around Your Business
598 Plays8 months ago
Today's guest is Daniel Shear, co-founder of Season's Yield, a bakery here in the Shenandoah Valley. We're chatting about how he and his wife built their business selling loaves of bread out of their house and it's evolution into Bread Days, a bi-weekly experience that hundreds, sometimes up to 1,000, people attend at their farm. As we chatted, I couldn't help but reflect that so much of what they're doing now, and the experience they provide, may not have ever happened, had they not done things the way they did them. They were able to steward what they had, start small, and by doing that they eventually created an experience that people seek after here in Virginia.
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check ’em out at https://daveyandkrista.com/building-community-around-business-btb-221/. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
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Transcript
The Bread Day Breakthrough
00:00:00
Speaker
It's our first bread day when customers came by. We sold four loaves of bread and a bunch of lettuce and carrots. And we went to Florida on a family vacation and the newspaper article had been written about us. And the next bread day, we grossed $1,600 or $1,700 on a bread day. That might as well have been a million dollars because it felt like, okay, the gate is open. We can run with this. That was the confidence building.
Introduction to Brands That Book Show
00:00:30
Speaker
You're listening to the Brands That Book Show, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs who want practical tips and strategies to build engaging brands and craft high converting websites. We're your hosts, Davey and Krista, co-founders of a brand and website design agency specializing in visual brand design and show it websites.
00:00:49
Speaker
You're listening to The Brands of Book Show.
Daniel Scheer and Seasons Yield Journey
00:00:51
Speaker
Today's guest is Daniel Scheer, co-founder of Seasons Yield, a bakery here in the Shenandoah Valley, and today we're chatting about how he and his wife built their business selling loaves of bread out of their house and its evolution into bread days, a bi-weekly experience that hundreds, sometimes up to 1,000 people attend at their farm. A few things that stick out about his story that I wanna highlight at the outset here.
00:01:17
Speaker
They started small, they started working within their limits, and I think it led to something that they could have never expected. I think there's a tendency to want to start big, maybe to go out and get funding or a loan or whatever so that you can start your business as big as possible. But as we chatted, I couldn't help but reflect that so much of what they're doing now and the experience that they provide may not have ever happened had they not done things the way they did it.
00:01:43
Speaker
which was to steward what they had, to start small.
Unique Background and Business Perspective
00:01:47
Speaker
And by doing that, they eventually created an experience that people seek after here in Virginia. Also, Daniel's background probably isn't what you think it would be when you think Baker. And it was so insightful to hear more about how his background impacts his perspective and decision-making within business and how their values have really driven their business as well.
00:02:11
Speaker
If you're ever in the Shenandoah Valley on a Saturday, be sure to check out and see if there's a bread day happening. And if not, if it's not a Saturday, that's okay, because six days a week, you can find Seasons Yield at their downtown Lexington location.
Nationwide Shipping and Podcasting
00:02:25
Speaker
And if you're never in the area, that's okay too, because they are shipping their product nationwide now. So you can learn more about that over on their website. It's called the Baker's box. All right, so if you go to the Seasons Yield website,
00:02:38
Speaker
Find the baker's box, and you can order their baked goods. As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check them out at DavianCrista.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts. Now, onto the episode.
00:02:56
Speaker
All right, Daniel, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah. I've been really excited about this for a long time. And, you know, I was just telling you, this is like one of the first in-person podcast episodes that I've done. I'm jealous of your podcast because you do nearly all of your recordings in person, right? Yes. Yeah. So tell us real quick about your podcast and what kinds of things people can find on it.
00:03:20
Speaker
We're 25 episodes into the Baker and the Farmer podcast and it started because we were really inspired by the unique community of entrepreneurs here in the valley and particularly Rockbridge County and place-based businesses. What is brick and mortar, in-person, eye-to-eye contact,
00:03:45
Speaker
brick and mortar, the idea of place-based business kept coming up. But we will not tell you how to successfully run the business, but we have such a resource of people that are experts that have been running place-based businesses with great success for a long time. So we have those people on and pester them with questions and get their origin story.
00:04:05
Speaker
And it's been fascinating. And like I was telling you before, I've had a ton of personal growth for our businesses come from that. So we've had today, in fact, we had a very successful potter from the Fredericksburg area on last week. We had the owner of this amazing restaurant. That's our favorite restaurant in Charlottesville. He came on and told his story. Who else have we had? We've had dairy farmers. We've had bakers on. It's just really run the gamut of experiences.
Community Events and Bread Days
00:04:35
Speaker
but focused on the place-based business. Yeah, and I'm excited to dive in a little bit more about what a place-based business is and how you built your place-based business. As far as the podcast goes, what's been your favorite part about running a podcast?
00:04:50
Speaker
I've enjoyed the new challenge, the podcast digital realm as I'll describe further is not my strong point. So figuring out the technical side of things has been a fresh challenge to deal with, but I can think if I'm not careful that what I've built is really good and I can tweak it a little bit, but it's good.
00:05:15
Speaker
having all these fresh perspectives on and hearing the wisdom on the podcast. I've been constantly challenged. We record every week and I walk away every week with two or three things that like meaty takeaways that I can apply to the business. For instance, today, you know, we asked the question to the potter who's just this level, steady, has it all together guy, so calm. I just said, you know, what is enough for you?
00:05:42
Speaker
We can get caught in the top line, the bottom line, you know, this work-life balance. And, you know, he gave a, you have to listen to the podcast for his beautiful answer, but I thought, man, what's my answer to that question? So really challenging me to think through a lot of areas I haven't had to address from all these fresh perspectives.
00:06:00
Speaker
I go on and on, but it's been a really personally rich experience hosting the podcast.
Personal Growth Through Podcasting
00:06:06
Speaker
And I don't want to give any impression that this is this entrepreneurial business podcast we've started is let us teach you how to do business better.
00:06:15
Speaker
We will do that by interviewing the experts, not that my partner buddy and I have it all figured out. It's been really humbling. It's been really humbling. Yeah. Well, we were talking a little bit before the podcast. I think that's one of the biggest benefits of doing the podcast, in my opinion, is just the relationships that you get to build and these conversations that you get to have.
00:06:35
Speaker
And so Chris and I, as we're looking at numbers each year, we've always tried to get a little bit of a sense of like, okay, what is the return on investment with the podcast? And those numbers are hard to nail down. But even that aside, I'm like, look at all these relationships we've got to build through doing this. And I think that's been, for us, one of the biggest benefits of doing the podcast. So a little background.
00:07:01
Speaker
We've known each other for a few years now, you know, probably a little bit before 2020, which is when we moved here. And, you know, I love this story. So you were just talking about Buddy. Buddy's one of our neighbors. Buddy and I farmed together for a while and Buddy introduced us. And before we moved here, he brought us to your house. We had dinner with you and your family. We had a great time. I don't know about you all.
00:07:27
Speaker
We had a great time and you know went back home to Maryland and at that point we had started building I think or we were kind of in the process of planning you know but we had bought land here.
Farm-Based Events and Bakery Expansion
00:07:36
Speaker
Yeah you were definitely coming here at some point. Yeah yeah exactly but I get home and my dad every time we come to Lexington he's like hey you gotta look up your uncle Greg you know and I'm like okay and this is my dad's cousin Greg right and I hadn't seen him since I was little right like really little
00:07:54
Speaker
And so, you know, we come for the weekend and I'd be like, I don't know, dad, you know, like we're going to live here at some point. I'll run into him. But my dad was pestering me so much about this. I texted Buddy and I was like, hey, you know, a Greg Shear. And he's like, oh, yeah, Daniel's dad. I'm like, Daniel, like the guy we just had dinner with. And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, holy crap. Daniel's my second cousin.
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah, so what a blessing it was for us to move here to Lexington and then have family right around the corner. And so, you know, like I said, such a blessing just to have family, but then also fellow entrepreneurs. And it's been fun to see in that time you all start Seasons Yield.
00:08:31
Speaker
And the first memory I have of bread day was that dinner we came over for your house. You were baking that night. So you had the oven going, bread going, and people were just picking it up at your house. They were just picking up these sourdough loaves at your house. And then a little bit after that, my next memory, maybe a little bit of upgraded version, it was basically a shed
00:08:56
Speaker
like adjacent to your house that you all set up. You'd have the loaves in there and then you have some coffee and on Saturday morning people would roll up and they get some coffee and get some bread and they go on. And so those are my earliest memories of bread day. Maybe you can fill in the gaps. Where are you now? Like what is bread day look like today?
00:09:15
Speaker
Yes, those were the necessary and the humble beginnings, I feel like, for where we are now. But Bread Day now is our twice monthly gathering at the farm. We have a small eight-acre homestead, and most of what we grow is bread loaves now. We used to dabble in other things.
00:09:35
Speaker
but customers come to the farm to pick up their pre-ordered bread and we have built a bakery on our property. And we turn that into a cafe every other Saturday. So it serves as a bakery nearly 24 seven otherwise, but on those particular Saturdays, these bread days between 10 and two turns into a coffee shop with pastries and breads lining the walls and folks come and hang out. And we've realized that to keep people
00:10:04
Speaker
on the farm longer the more food options the better so depending on what weekend you come we'll do wood fired pizzas we have a wood oven that my dad and I built that we'll do pizzas in or we'll do whole hog barbecue we have a giant brick carolina style pit and we'll do whole hog barbecue
00:10:24
Speaker
So we've added these different ideas, but originally bread day came about because after getting out of the military, I was a firefighter. I could only bake on particular days and we didn't want to go do the farmer's market things. It was too taxing on the family. So we thought, oh, we'll just have people come by here. So we did.
00:10:42
Speaker
pick up for just a few hours every other Saturday, which I think is what you saw the early origins of. And now it really continues to kind of be the heart of the business. The business is more outside of bread day. But it's a very important and meaningful part of bringing the community together around bread pastry and as nourishing food as we can create. Yeah, I mean, so as far as how many people do you think come to a bread day on average these days?
00:11:11
Speaker
The winter months, it might be three to 400. In January, February, March really picks up. In the spring and fall, it could be seven or 800 folks out on the farm. And the outliers, if we put the inflatable slide out for the little kids, it could be, it has been up to a thousand before, but it's a few more people than the caring capacity of the farm.
00:11:36
Speaker
It's a huge turnout and you look at, we're in Podunk, Rayfiend, Virginia that just has a bank and we fill up our whole two acre pasture with cars and people just come. It hasn't ceased to amaze us.
00:11:50
Speaker
It is. And it really is this amazing thing. And I mean, again, trying to paint the picture for people early on, you know, what it was and then what it is now. I mean, hundreds, if not 1000 people there for us, you know, it's a fun thing to go and do, you know, pretty much all Saturday morning, you know, I mean, Jack, for sure, especially when you have the inflatable out there. I mean, anyone you don't, they're jumping in the creek in the summer and warmer months. But it's a whole event, you know, and and people around here know it. I mean, it's an attraction in the Shenandoah Valley, you know, like,
00:12:20
Speaker
People drive, we've met people from North Carolina, the northern part of North Carolina coming up just for a bread day. So it's incredible what you've been able to build. And then you also just mentioned you're outside of Lexington a little bit. It's not as if your farm is in the heart of Lexington and kind of on the way for people. It's a little bit off the beaten path, right? And so I think that's what makes it even more incredible what you've built, this community you've built around bread days.
00:12:46
Speaker
on these Saturdays because it's not, you know, my guess is if you could pick a location, you know, going back in time and we said, Hey, where would you want to host these, you know, it might not be that spot. Yeah, right. You know, so how did you build that community? Like, what do you owe that to some of the most important features of the business have not been are doing
00:13:09
Speaker
which I'd love to take credit for, but it feels like the good Lord that just paved the way for us, but several contributing factors to I think what we're experiencing now is the, it's very experiential. So it's a destination. You have to go to the farm. It's not a long, you know, natural lines of drift, as we call it in the military, like you have to make a purposeful effort to go there. And once you're there, it's this co-mingling of
00:13:38
Speaker
everybody and anybody out there in a unique experience you know there's a creek running through the property with this bakery in the middle of this farmland and there's this ancient looking oven and this ancient looking brick pit like some very unique features that i think add to the add to the experience but to answer your question i think that
00:13:59
Speaker
the gathering was born out of something very unique and something that customers could engage with and have it be a meaningful experience that was outside of the norm. And I think that has continued to feed what we're experiencing now on Bread Day in a meaningful way for us.
00:14:17
Speaker
And, you know, as you first got started, you'd mentioned you would come out of the military. I want to talk about that a little bit as well. And you're a firefighter. And so basically, the days that you held, you know, these pickup days were based on your schedule, you know, just kind of the convenience of your schedule. And then again, like you mentioned, it sounded like farmer's market, you didn't want to get the whole family in the car going off and and using up a Saturday.
00:14:39
Speaker
Doing that right how important now has it been to keep bread days you know like to twice a month. You know is there something to that feeds into that experience you know as opposed to doing it every weekend. Yeah the other thing that I should mention to your last question but this place in here.
00:14:56
Speaker
We've realized the value of scarcity in business, that this unique offering of wood fired bread and pastry, this naturally leavened pastry and this slow smoked pork, it's only available twice a month. And that drives a lot of interest. So customers are more willing to go out of their way 20, 30 minutes outside of town to come to this unique experience. Whereas if it was offered every day,
00:15:27
Speaker
there would not be that same level interest. And so when I say this was unintentional, that was born out of necessity of our schedule with the fire department, but now has contributed greatly in retrospect this idea of this isn't available every day. So you're purposeful, you come out to it and there's a finite amount of product too. We can only churn out so much and that has contributed business wise to any level of success that we've had for sure.
00:15:55
Speaker
Yeah. And that's just really interesting from a business perspective because I think we look at restraints and limits as negatives. Like, oh, well, I can only do this so much or whatever. But I think to a certain extent, you all understanding what these restraints and limits are as you grew your business has actually added more kindling to the fire that is now the season's yield. Would you agree with that? I think so. I think it adds to what are some of the things that make us unique.
00:16:25
Speaker
going back to the beginning and I don't want to rush to where we're going too quick but coming out of the military what was really important to us the only thing that was of importance was not business success but let's do something as a family to maximize our time together and this was born out of experiences we had in the military like
00:16:44
Speaker
life is so short more time we have together the better we're going to build something together work alongside each other together and what that has created is well it's created the vision that we've been which we've closely adhered to so
00:17:00
Speaker
in addition to working the fire schedule and just doing bread days twice a month was this idea. We don't need more. We don't need to offer these things every week. We don't need to be open every day. That's gonna pull us in directions that we don't want our family to go.
Inspiration and Transition from Military
00:17:16
Speaker
So I'd say what we did do, what was purposeful was this adherence to our vision to do something family focused and together to maximize time together, which the longer I'm in the business side of things, that's a unique perspective.
00:17:30
Speaker
And that has captured people and captured customer interest, stack that with the scarcity, stack that with the odd farm bakery experience. And these things inadvertently have contributed to experiencing a level of success in the food service industry and to create something that's unique.
00:17:52
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think from the outside looking in, especially given the sort of culture and environment you've created around Seasons Yield, I mean, it is one of the big appeals for a family like ours to go out because we know the boys are just going to be running around, right? And so it's very much tied up in your family and the way you all operate as a family. And I think to a certain extent, like you were saying, that contributes, I think, to the success of the endeavor.
00:18:17
Speaker
But I want to get back to your background a little bit. I want to hear about all this training that you had as a baker in the Army. That's what you're doing, right? Yeah. Just a line cook in the Army. Tell us a little bit about what you did in the Army and how that led to baking. Yes, I have no formal baking experience, for better or for worse. But
00:18:38
Speaker
I've always enjoyed being in the kitchen, always enjoyed baking, but I was in special operations in the Army and I was on my first deployment and in the midst of a trying time, to be honest, professionally very fulfilling, prospective shaping, it was a real catalyst for our life. But in the midst of this deployment, Fawn sends me
00:18:59
Speaker
a book on baking. It was a book called Tartine written by this amazing baker Chad Robertson in San Francisco. I'd say pioneered this new wave of naturally leavened bread baking in the United States.
00:19:18
Speaker
And what really captured me about this book, which I would read coming off combat patrols three times a day. I'd break this open and read it just almost to escape the current reality as a reprieve was how this guy had built a profession out of his hobby.
00:19:35
Speaker
I was really enamored by that, so it wasn't the baking as much. The food part captured me because I was interested in food and such, but just this way this guy had crafted his life and he really purposely carved his life out of his passion to make his profession. That really got me thinking.
00:19:58
Speaker
And so that book that Fawn sent really was the spark that I think still, you know, is now the flame that is the business, but that was the start. So we thought on that deployment coming back from that deployment was like, we're going to get out of the army. We're going to start a farm. Farming is where we see these two things of family and work coming together will be successful.
00:20:23
Speaker
pig farmers, chicken farmers, like that was really the ideal and it wasn't to make money, it was to put food on the table so we could be together coming off that experience. We did another few deployments and then we were ready to break away. We moved here to the Shenandoah Valley, lived with my parents, farmed their property, did pigs, bees, chickens, cattle, let me just try to really embrace. We did way too much and we were selling what little product we had
00:20:54
Speaker
and realizing, trying to piece the numbers together, where this ideal of, we just need to put food on the table, like, it doesn't matter how much money we make, like we were hit by the reality, okay, that sounds really good when you're in Afghanistan dreaming about it, and it's way harder to achieve living with daddy, you know, on his property, trying to piece things together. So, kind of reality met.
00:21:18
Speaker
dreams and what came of that was a realization that people were way more interested in the bread that we were baking to accompany the carrots and onions and ribeyes that we were selling because that was unique. We live in an agrarian
00:21:34
Speaker
kind of thoroughfare here in the valley. Everybody has a backyard garden. Everybody raises chickens. Everybody's aunt has a pig. But not many people, this idea of sourdough bread was unique. And the fact that it came from a wood oven piqued people's interest even more. It was an unfamiliar and really tasty product. So we found people really coming to that.
00:21:56
Speaker
So we're struggling to make ends meet. I took on a job as a firefighter to try and cash flow, which is comical because it was the least paying dollar. That's what a lot of people do. They cash flow their business, their first responder job. I was making good money in the army. I was still in the, but got out, was in the national guard and was making, I might've cracked $30,000 as a pre-tax as a firefighter.
00:22:26
Speaker
But the schedule was conducive to doing other things. I'd do 24 on, 48 off. But this was the beginning of shifting gears. This idea of the Excel spreadsheets meeting, our dreams was, okay, I think bread holds promise here in a way that these other products don't. So we really had a hard pivot about two years into this farming endeavor.
00:22:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's so interesting and part of the story that I don't think I've ever heard before. But again, one of the things that sticks out to me is just, again, kind of understanding the limits around what it is that you're doing and pivoting from there. I imagine that one of the other key differences between livestock and bread is the inputs. I mean, having a little bit of farming experience now myself, it's like
00:23:11
Speaker
I mean, selling a physical product different than selling a digital product, but then also a physical product that you have to keep alive and has its own inputs, you know, whether you're feeding it or something, you know, it gets sick, you know, and dealing with it, you know, whatever the result of that is predation, you know, worrying about coyotes, you know, wiping out your entire flock in a single in a single evening, you know, so bread, you know, I mean, sounds pretty nice, right? Yeah, you go about it.
00:23:38
Speaker
Pick up some flour and I remember it was Easter morning. I don't remember what year it was, but we had 80 laying hands trying to eke out some egg sales, which is a losing battle, depending on who you talk to. Easter morning woke up and every one of these 80 was strewn across the hillside behind our house and this fox had just come and ravaged every one of those.
00:24:02
Speaker
He had ravaged through all our meat birds too. And I went in to mix the bread dough and it was a realization at that moment of, I love the fact that nothing can kill this bread as it goes through his processes.
00:24:18
Speaker
And I don't have to wait to see a return on it. I'm a more impatient person. I really have great respect for the cattle farmer that waits 18 months to harvest the beef. I can turn a profit on this bread dough in less than 24 hours.
00:24:33
Speaker
So these pieces came together, the customer's heightened interest in the bread, the fact there is a lot less risk involved with the bread operations. So we took that and ran with it hard from the start. Yeah. What did Fawn think about all this? I mean, she sent you the book, you know, while you were on deployment in Afghanistan.
00:24:54
Speaker
So, you know, she obviously knew you're interested in baking. You know, how did that conversation go? Like, was it you that was like, hey, let's see this baking thing together, you know, or was it mostly her encouraging you?
00:25:06
Speaker
There's been a little bit of everything, but one of the coolest pieces about doing this business that I can honestly tell you has been such a gift is doing it with Fawn.
Bakery Opening and COVID Challenges
00:25:17
Speaker
I wouldn't want to do it with anybody else, obviously, but wouldn't have an interest in doing this outside of doing it with Fawn. The fact that we've built this together and it has both of our handprints in it, whether it's a great business or not, that's beside the point, but the fact that we've done it together has been such a gift.
00:25:34
Speaker
And I can't point to whose idea the bread was, kind of a mutual understanding at the time of, okay, carrots aren't selling, you're crying in the garden, because I had to leave for three weeks with the National Guard and came back to you crying amidst the weeds and the overgrown tomatoes, like, we gotta shift here, we gotta shift here, baby. So I was baking in the house, in the master bedroom, we had the cottage,
00:26:02
Speaker
laws dialed in to address our particular concerns. We were baking out of the house. And I'd carry the loaves out to the wood oven. We'd bake them. And at one point at Bread Day, we were hosting Bread Day in the house. So we had a flow of customers peeking in the master bedroom, peeking in the kids' room. And Fawn said, I love you. This is a great thing. We had some traction, but you've got to get out of the house. We've got to do something.
00:26:29
Speaker
Again, talking about the constraints. So I didn't want to go far. I didn't want to drive to work. I didn't want to work for someone else's bakery. Like we had these left and right limits that were pretty tight. And so Fawn said, let's build a bakery right there. You know, pointed out the windows spot right by the Creek.
00:26:45
Speaker
And I was the one that was uncertain about this really taking off. The uncertainty of, oh, this has to work. There's no backup plan. I do not want to keep doing the fire department thing. And the fact that it was not cash flowing anything didn't contribute to my desire to continue.
00:27:05
Speaker
And so we thought, what if we add an Airbnb up top? So in the case that the bakery just is a complete flop, we'll have a little bit of cash flow that potentially can help or at least piece things together. So the goal there was, let's book weekends for the Airbnb. That was a goal and it might help.
00:27:26
Speaker
bridge the gap. So we put every dollar that we had saved up to that point into the bakery and the Airbnb, and it took about a year. And meanwhile, bread days are growing, and the uniqueness is really capturing people's attention. So grand opening for the bread barn, which was right in the midst of COVID in 2020, was amazing. And we had over 1,000 people on that day, and Airbnb has continued to book really well. And it was amidst that time
00:27:55
Speaker
that the realization came and the confidence with it that I think people want this. I think we can give people more of this. And from that, a lot of momentum was built after we had kind of crossed this Rubicon of
00:28:14
Speaker
There's no turning back. We just put all our money into this bakery that we better, you know, this better pan out. Yeah. There was no turning back or altering course at that time. Yeah. One of the things though, that I want to chat about real quick is, you know, so that people don't think it's like, if you build it, they will come.
00:28:30
Speaker
situation because by that point you had built a customer base there's definitely I'm sure risk in building the bakery and it's a cool spot you know like if you're ever in the Lexington area on a Saturday check if there's a bread day you should go check it out you know and I assume that the experience around bread days help the Airbnb book as well
00:28:50
Speaker
But like validating that idea that like oh, yeah I think we could do this and I think we could grow this thing Like at what point along the way because you had been doing bread days and pickups right and had you seen those steadily grown as well as you Yes, that's a good point. The way I made it sound was we went all in, you know We hadn't seen any returns on a loaf of bread yet, but this was three years in and we had just incrementally built bread day So our first bread day
00:29:18
Speaker
When customers came by, we sold four loaves of bread and a bunch of lettuce and carrots. And we went to Florida on a family vacation and the newspaper article had been written about us. And the next bread day, we grossed $1,600 or $1,700 on a bread day. That might as well have been a million dollars because it felt like
00:29:40
Speaker
Okay, the gate is open. We can run with this. That was the confidence building. And Bread Days continued to grow to that. So we were busting at the seams capacity-wise when we were hosting it out of the house.
00:29:53
Speaker
And it wasn't a crap shoot at that point. We had a level of confidence that the bakery would work, but still the bakery felt like something we were going to need to grow into, despite the success we had had at that point. Does that make sense? No, absolutely. I think that what I admire so much about you and Fawn and your family
Patience, Planning, and Downtown Expansion
00:30:14
Speaker
But one of the things is you guys are just so you seem to listen so carefully, you know, you're just so patient in, you know, or, again, outside looking in, in how you discern the next move. And I know we've had conversations, and maybe you've expressed that you don't necessarily feel, you know, super patient. But, you know, outside looking in, it seems like you all just so carefully discern what the next move is.
00:30:37
Speaker
And it does like looking back, of course, it makes a lot of sense, even though there is risk in taking that next jump into, you know, whatever the next thing is. And now, you know, if you're in Lexington, you don't have to wait if you happen to not be here for a bread day, you can go to Haywoods on any given day, right and go to the bakery. So how did that all come? You know, how did that downtown location come from bread day?
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah, if I could say one thing on this, I think both Fawn and my mentality were very risk tolerant, deliberate, but risk tolerant, which has driven some of my family members crazy. But it feels like walking out of the military in some of those situations like
00:31:18
Speaker
There is no practical and reasonable explanation for why I should be sitting here. And by that I mean there was just so many occasions for me not to come home. And that was more trying on Fawn than it was for me certainly, but we both have this realization that
00:31:39
Speaker
One, our identity isn't tied up in the bread, in the business. And that's a real encouragement for us to be risk tolerant. And then what's the worst that's going to happen? It feels like we've already walked through the worst case. And so any of this, this just feels really exciting and adventurous. And as long as we're together, we do take a lot of a deliberate, calculated, but risk, you know?
00:32:03
Speaker
And one of those that you just described was after we had done this bread day thing that continues to be the heartbeat of the operation.
00:32:12
Speaker
We took on, I think we have 15 wholesale accounts throughout the Valley as well. So the business grew that way. We added staff and then we had a unique opportunity to have a storefront in Lexington. Something we had always dreamed about what we had put on the back burner. What would it look like to bring this idea of bread day on the daily into Lexington in the form of a cafe, coffee shop, little bakery ask.
00:32:39
Speaker
And we were approached by a friend and had a unique opportunity to spin up a pop-up shop over about a six week timeframe in arguably the best spot in Lexington. There's a cool luxury hotel with a great restaurant and they were looking to fill the space. And so we rented out between seven and two every day.
00:33:02
Speaker
drive in the pastry, drive in the breads. We have the coffee machine there, sweetie bread, pastry, and lunch items. And that's been a real leveling up of the business and a lot of learning there too. But we jumped at that opportunity because it felt in line with our vision to nourish the community with hospitality and
00:33:24
Speaker
So it's like, all right, this checks the boxes, let's do it. And I think, again, what's outside looking in, but one of the interesting things about having that location downtown, which you can go to any day of the week except Sunday, I guess, right? Six days a week is that it doesn't cannibalize what you're doing on bread days. I think if anything, it's probably help grow bread days to a certain extent.
00:33:46
Speaker
And so one of the things that, again, it appears to me that how important community is to your business. Even though people can go get your product and your product is really good, which is why I think you have so much foot traffic downtown.
00:34:03
Speaker
people still make it a point to drive the 25 minutes plus out of town to bread days. So one of the things I'm interested in is if someone were to come to you and be like, hey, I want to build a community kind of like how you all built it, what would you recommend
Building Community and Customer Experience
00:34:19
Speaker
to people? What advice would you give to people?
00:34:21
Speaker
Think about that from the business perspective. And I think I would start by explaining this idea that it's not the product. Well, we've realized that people are not coming for the product. They're coming for the experience around the product. And that's been a paradigm shift because in my mind, the product is the thing. That's what customers are coming to buy.
00:34:49
Speaker
And you come to Bread Day and the farm and see the mingling of community. And this was born in COVID, which I think was just a cool piece of our story is we were a space outside where people could come. You want to wear your mask? Great. You don't want to wear a mask? Great.
00:35:09
Speaker
You want to drive up in your car and holler at us from the window will bring your bread to you very, you know, it's just a welcoming hospitable space amidst a trying time. But it's a wonderful place where people meet and greet meet new friends, you know, run into half the town and half Rockbridge County, you know, you're running into in some semblance.
00:35:29
Speaker
And so the product became secondary. And for a lot of businesses, I don't know how that nests with a lot of businesses. For us, that felt really good and purposeful and realizing that is part of the business now. And you're talking about building community, but this idea from a business perspective of, I think we have fabulous product.
00:35:53
Speaker
But sometimes you as a customer might be dissatisfied with the product, but where we aim not to fail you is the customer service and the care and the welcome and the experience on those fronts, which are, in my opinion, far outweigh the quality of the product. I think we can achieve both, that is our aim for certain. But one thing that I would tell people, your question is,
00:36:21
Speaker
realizing that the product doesn't have to be the aim, you know, the community and what that means to foster that and that can only enhance the product experience. So what you're building around the product and the experience that customers have when they come for the product I think is arguably more important than the product.
00:36:42
Speaker
And there's a lot of parallels that you could point to, but I think that would be one thing to remember. The other thing, this idea of building community is just the importance you put into the value of a person. And I was reminded of this the other day. I received a call from an elderly gentleman who had said he had eaten one of our pastries at the local wholesale coffee shop.
00:37:04
Speaker
And I don't mean to do him any disrespect. There's none meant. But it was the most unlikely voice message. And he said he was interested in wholesaling our pastry. And just the way he talked, I was immediately dismissive and uninterested.
00:37:20
Speaker
But i thought i'll call him back so calling back the next day just to check the block and it mentioned his excitement about a pastry that he had this wild idea to start a coffee shop and i said trying to get to the point you how can we help you and he said well don't rush don't rush to this conversation young man he said i this blackboard i started a
00:37:40
Speaker
A few years ago, it went into all 50 states. I'm telling you, I just got these wild ideas. Long story short, he was the founder of Bold Rock, hard cider. And he has moved on. He said, the alcohol thing's over-aided, getting into coffee. So he's starting a coffee shop. But I was so dismissive of him as a customer. Any sort of selfish profitability that could have come from that, I just wrote him off.
00:38:09
Speaker
And since then, I've sat with him in his home, it's going to be something really special, this partnership. But the idea of community, it was such a good reminder that community isn't built by being dismissive to the customer. My whole life depends on people coming and buying product from us.
00:38:30
Speaker
So I think the community we are wanting to foster starts at the counter with the experience that they have with our staff, with me, of feeling welcomed, feeling valued, feeling like your story matters, how you're doing matters. When we ask you, how are you doing?
00:38:50
Speaker
That's a meaningful purposeful question and I think that sets the stage for their bigger experience on the farm but feeling valued I think would be the second thing I'd recommend to people trying to build community in light of a business is truly value your customers and again I
00:39:10
Speaker
share that story because I was so dismissive. I wasn't upholding like a key core principle of who we are. And it almost backfired, but it has turned into something really cool. But those are a few things. I'm not articulating great, but I think those are part and parcel of building community.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's so important. And I think it's one of those things that you really just can't build on an artificial level. You know what I'm saying? And I think that's why that question is so hard to answer is because you can't just be like, oh yeah, if you follow this five step plan, you're going to build a community. I think for your all's business, it really is serving each and every customer really well that came over to your house for bread. I mean, starting with those four customers. And who knows, maybe it was one customer that bought four loaves. I don't know.
00:39:54
Speaker
You know, there's two families in the very beginning and growing it and growing it from there. And, you know, going back to the sense of place as well, I think one of the things that you all have done really well is fostered a sense of place. And so like Krista and I, you know, Krista has allergies and one of our boys have allergies.
00:40:13
Speaker
So me and Jack are really the only ones that can eat when we go there. You know, half the time I'm on this carnivore diet and some, you know, but like we still go because we know it's going to be a place where we're going to see, you know, other people. And so we'll go and at least get some coffee and whatnot. And so you all have done this really great job of, you know, building this place, you know, very Starbucks-esque, you know, not that it's anything like Starbucks, but Starbucks had this whole thing about building the third place, you know, for people.
00:40:39
Speaker
But anyway, a place that people can go and hang out and see their neighbors and interact with each other in person. And I think like in our digital world, you know, people crave that, you know, the more and more things go digital. One of the things that I want to talk about, you know, I think
The Baker's Box and Scaling Challenges
00:40:54
Speaker
One of the fascinating things about your business is that it's just the way it's grown, you know, not an overnight success. Just again, very prayerfully moving through, you know, kind of what the Lord has brought your way, right? And now you have launched a more scalable product, right? So recently you've launched the baker's box.
00:41:13
Speaker
And is that something you're shipping basically anywhere in the United States? Okay, so you're shipping to anywhere in the United States. So now people can experience your product beyond just the confines of Rockbridge County here and maybe some of your adjacent wholesale accounts. What has that experience been like? How has that been different than building these place-based businesses? And has the place-based business helped launch this new thing?
00:41:39
Speaker
It has helped. It's been more difficult. I feel like I'm outside my wheelhouse. But we're learning a lot. But we call it the baker's box, kind of an offshoot from the butcher box. But we sell frozen pastry, cinnamon roll, cookie dough. The mainstay is the frozen pastry. So customer orders frozen pastry, you get it on dry ice on your doorstep, and you proof it, you cover it, let it rise, and you bake it off. It's the
00:42:09
Speaker
The customer owns a significant amount of the experience. Let us do the hard work of laminating the 54 layers of butter and dough, which is a very niche craft and you have, after you take these things out of the oven, fresh croissants.
00:42:26
Speaker
fresher than what you're gonna get at bread day fresher than what you're gonna get at the cafe downtown so it's very unique and it's a product I'm super excited about because it best represents our product and the customer has a hand in bringing it to the table.
00:42:42
Speaker
So this idea of gathering people together, nourishing with hospitality and good product, and you have ownership in the baking. It's a lot of cool converging items here. But what I'm realizing, a strength of ours is the interpersonal, the valuing each customer. And I can't do that in the meaningful way that I want to with this box of dry ice and product. And so it's forcing creativity on that end.
00:43:11
Speaker
put out several instructional videos of how to handle the product and that in many respects is the limit of my interaction with the customer. So even as I'm describing this, I realize there's things we need to do to curate that experience. I mean, it's the experience of it that's really powerful and what we have to offer.
00:43:33
Speaker
but it's harder to do when you're not interacting with them personally. So that's been a challenge. The idea itself and the potential I think is through the roof. I think it has the highest potential top line sales such of anything we're doing business wise. So those things
00:43:53
Speaker
really excite me and we can grow it with the current staff we have. We have a tremendous pastry team and they have the ability within their schedule to churn out thousands of pastry in addition to what they're already doing. So it doesn't feel infinite but it certainly feels scalable in quantity and number of boxes able to be shipped. So that really
00:44:18
Speaker
That really excites me, but I'm realizing day by day that the growth opportunities are going to happen when we get better at things we're not good at. Like the digital marketing, the Instagram, the website management piece, which you all have been so helpful with. I'm not good at those things. And in order to be good at the baker's box, I'm going to need to get better at that. So it feels like a fresh challenge and also super exciting as well.
00:44:48
Speaker
Has the in-person stuff that you've been doing for years and years, do you feel like that's provided a little bit of a springboard for the Bakersbox sales or initial sales?
Digital Marketing and Email Strategy
00:44:58
Speaker
Because you have so many people who pass through like my family when they come to visit, right? And that's everybody's family as they come through Lexington and visit and they're brought to a bread day. So has that led to sales?
00:45:11
Speaker
Yes, we're off to a vigorous start and in large part because the, you know, we pushed it out on our Instagram and also our email list that's been built over years of doing the, yeah, the bread day and the in-person sales.
00:45:28
Speaker
Those things have really stimulated the early growth. We're six weeks in, so it's pretty, it's early, but we're shipping once a week on Tuesdays. But yes, anything that we've shipped and anybody who's bought anything at this point has come out of the past six years of growth.
00:45:47
Speaker
email list and Instagram following. Yeah, yeah. In growing the in-person stuff, how important was your email list? And then have you found it's more important for the baker's box? The second part is yet to be determined. I think it feels like Instagram is going to be the medium for growth. The email list for bread days have been hugely important because it predates any social media engagement that we've had.
00:46:14
Speaker
And we were dutiful that every customer starting with those two families getting their bread, getting their email. We'd love to contact you and tell you about when the next bread day is. Our schedule is so volatile, it was out of necessity that we built that.
00:46:30
Speaker
And so now it's many thousands of emails long and it just has opened up a lot of doors. Anything new we're trying has immediate traction because of these emails and trying to keep them fresh enough, exciting enough, newsy enough that people are willing to open them as a learning point too.
00:46:54
Speaker
Well, I mean like for people listening, I feel like a lot of times we have, it's hard to convince people to keep an email list when they're not doing any business that feels scalable. You know, like if you're not selling an online course or you're not doing something like that, I think a lot of people are hesitant of building an email list. So it's funny hearing you say this, right? You know, like we try to convince people, even if you're in a service-based business or you're selling like product like you all, email list can be hugely valuable, you know, because it's the easiest way to follow up with people.
00:47:23
Speaker
My bet is that down the line, your email list becomes just as important or remains just as important or is more important for the baker's box because it will in many ways replace that in person, you know, connection that you have with people, right? I mean, of course, you'll be able to do that with Instagram. And I think Instagram and the social accounts that you've built online will continue to be really important, especially in just like building a relationship with people and people be able to see your family from afar. And some of these things about your brand that
00:47:52
Speaker
All of us know in Lexington and Rockbridge County intimately because we can actually go to the farm and experience those things. But actually getting those people to pull the trigger and purchase something and stay regular, I bet the email list would be super important. Yeah, that's a good point.
00:48:09
Speaker
Time will tell. But it certainly will be a contributing factor to the growth and the interpersonal that you're describing because of the long form nature of an email. Like a kid, an email can be lengthy in a way an Instagram post can't be. You know, there'd be a depth to that relationship that can be built over time that the email list would provide. I'm gonna chew on that.
Future Collaborations and Listener Engagement
00:48:31
Speaker
That's good. Yeah, yeah.
00:48:33
Speaker
Well, I really appreciate your time and I could talk to you for hours and more. We get together relatively frequently to chat life and business. And those are always, there's been, you know, some of my favorite moments in living here in Rockbridge County. And, you know, I'd love to have Fawn on the podcast as well. I'd love to have you and Buddy on the podcast as well. Buddy's been on the podcast. For anybody listening, you can check out Buddy's episode. He talked about starting a wedding venue and this is like one of the first 50 episodes probably. So way back now.
00:49:02
Speaker
So it'd be fun to have both you all on, talk a little bit more about place-based businesses and maybe some of the things that you all have learned about building a place-based business that I think would be a really fun episode as well. But if you are interested in learning more about Daniel, I highly recommend checking out his website, SeasonsYield.com.
00:49:18
Speaker
and Instagram account by the same handle. And right now, if you are interested in pastries, ship straight to your house. That information can be found at SeasonsYield website for the time being. Yes, seasonsyieldfarm.com. Yeah, awesome. So head there and you can order pastries anywhere you are in the US, ship straight to your door. And of course, I'll include links to all of these things in the show notes. But thanks for coming on. Davey, thanks for having me. It was awesome.
00:49:48
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brands of Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, leaving a review on Apple Podcast, and sharing this episode with others. For show notes and other resources, head on over to DaveyandChrista.com.