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Farmer Spotlight: Hopewell Farms
488 Plays1 month ago
In this week's episode, Janelle meets with Phil of Hopewell Farms to discuss becoming a Farmer, marketing to local Buyers and making healthy food convenient. Phil shares his best practices for reaching Buyers in his community and making a plan for his sales.
For more Farm resources, visit: Barn2Door.com/Resources
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Overview
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer podcast, the go-to podcast for do-it-yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman, and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers.
00:00:20
Speaker
This podcast is hosted by Barn to Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand, and sell online and in person. Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer podcast.
00:00:42
Speaker
Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Janelle, CEO of Barn to Door and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners may be aware, to Door offers an all-in-one business solution for independent farmers who are cutting out the middleman, taking control of their business, selling under their brand, and making sure their customers can purchase from their farm both online and in person.
Guest Introduction: Phil from Hopewell Farms
00:01:04
Speaker
In today's conversation, we'll meet one of our newest fans, Phil, from Hopewell Farms. When I say fans, what I mean is a farm advisory network. We work very closely with a number of farms specifically to get their feedback and to engage them more regularly.
00:01:17
Speaker
Today, I'm happy to welcome Phil. Hopewell Farms has worked with us since 2021, has built a successful direct-to-consumer protein operation in Georgia. I'm excited to talk to you today about your farm story and your success and advice you have for other farms.
00:01:32
Speaker
Welcome. Thanks. Janelle, well, I'm glad you clarified that because I have been a fan of Barn Door for quite a long time. and It's crazy. It's been since 2021. And I can't even imagine having started selling to consumers without it. Truly.
00:01:48
Speaker
Well, you know, that's music to our ears. And it's funny when we named it the Farm Advisory Network. Again, we work with about a dozen farmers really closely. We didn't realize until we looked at the acronym that it actually was FAN, which was quite a fun moment of aha. But we appreciate that. i mean, we're equally fans of farmers we're working with. So I guess it works both ways.
00:02:07
Speaker
Thank you. Well, 2021, that is a minute or two, isn't it? I'm so glad to hear that we've been obviously a partner, but a help to your farm. And that's just, I mean, that's why we exist, frankly, is to help farmers like you be successful.
00:02:20
Speaker
But before we dive in on that, let's learn just for the folks listening, I want to make sure they understand your operation. I mean, everybody sort of has a farm story, right? Like, how did you get started? Why did you start?
00:02:31
Speaker
And what does your farm look like today? So maybe we can hop in and just get to know you a bit. Sure.
Phil's Farming Journey
00:02:37
Speaker
Well, I became a farmer by accident, and now it's just an all-consuming passion, but I was a commercial banker. I was a finance major at UGA, Go Dogs, and I was a banker for businesses.
00:02:50
Speaker
And in 2019, my wife and I, we have four kids, and depending on when this airs, we might have five, because May 2025... twenty twenty five Congratulations. Thank you.
00:03:03
Speaker
That's amazing. It's all that grass-fed beef, Janelle. it's just ah That's so great. I didn't realize. That's great. Congratulations. That's wonderful. Thank you. And we we wanted to just live on a couple acres. And we found a house on 10 acres that we liked, but it was part of a 43-acre farm.
00:03:23
Speaker
And they were going to sell the other 33 separate. And we didn't want to have a subdivision around us. And so i was like, well, if I rent out the basement of this house, I can buy the whole thing. And the guy, he had a cow-calf operation.
00:03:38
Speaker
And I was just told him, hey, you can just keep your cows here because i just want to play on this land. So we did that in 2019. But then over the winter, i' my parents had given me a Folks, This Just Ain't Normal by Joel Salatin, which is a great. Yes. yes Yes.
00:03:52
Speaker
Yep. This just ain't normal. Yeah. And I was like, well, there's cows out here. I want to start doing grass-fed beef. So in the spring of 2020, I purchased half of his herd. So I got 15 mama cows and a bull and a donkey named Medea and started with daily rotations right away. I knew I wanted to do all grass-fed and mob grazing. And, you know, it was a beautiful lesson and that I knew enough just to keep the cows alive.
00:04:19
Speaker
But you you You can't really learn till you do. So then I just kept reading and watching YouTube videos and learning. And we had kept kind of the whole thing from from birth to harvesting. So.
00:04:30
Speaker
You know, it takes a couple years, you know, 24 to 30 months for us to finish out a grass fed
Diversification and Soil Regeneration
00:04:36
Speaker
steer. So in and twenty late 2021, we started selling and then we expanded to broilers and egg layers and pork and turkey.
00:04:47
Speaker
Not at first as much of a like a sales and business diversification thing, but just because We were focused on regenerating the soil and the environment and nature is very diverse. So we want to be more diverse in our animals to have them more of a full ecosystem to regenerate the land faster. But now it's a crucial part of our business that we provide basically all popular Western animal proteins outside of lamb.
00:05:15
Speaker
That's incredible. And I would suspect to you, if you look back, you're shocked and surprised at how much you've learned. Oh my gosh. And it it it's, you learn so much. And then last year we built an on-farm USD exempt poultry processing plant. So think you learn so much about raising pastured broilers and everything. But then, i mean, that's really not even farming. That's manufacturing and learning all the regulations of that and lean concepts and all that stuff.
00:05:43
Speaker
So the learning never stops, which I like. Yes. Well, I hope you like it because it sounds like it's been a fire hose literally for a number of years now across, to your point, so many proteins and including expanding your business in many ways, dimensionally expanding your business, which is really
Local Sales Strategy and Route Density
00:06:00
Speaker
exciting.
00:06:00
Speaker
Awesome. Okay. And then just so folks know, you're in Georgia. Who are you selling to? How does that function work for your farm? Great question. So we're in Northeast Georgia, Gainesville, Georgia, which is actually the birthplace of like industrial, fully integrated poultry production.
00:06:17
Speaker
So it's the poultry capital of the world. And so there's a lot of industrial operations around us. So it's fun to be doing some completely different. You're literally redefining the poultry capital of the world in a way that it should be.
00:06:31
Speaker
Working on it. Yep. And just a quick side note. I mean, our marketing and who we truly are and what we talk about is like so different than putting 20,000 birds in a warehouse, but it is ah quite the blessing that we are surrounded by that because like, for example, we're building out a much bigger brooder because we're scaling up the birds. Well,
00:06:53
Speaker
There's all sorts of expertise around here on brooders and I can get used grain bins with silos and I can get used brooder lamps. So having the industry that I'm so against here is handy from an infrastructure standpoint.
00:07:08
Speaker
Well, and I think repurposing in a purposeful manner, just to be cheeky with words. I like that. Repurposing in a purpose purposeful manner. We do a lot of that. Oh, that's so good to hear. I'm excited. Good. Well, you've come so far in a few years. Do I dare ask what you want the next five years? to Usually i wait till the end, but I'm too curious because of this trajectory that you're on.
00:07:32
Speaker
Well, boy, we have so much we're looking to accomplish this this year. It's tough to even think about five years, but I definitely, I would say in five years, I would love it if we were five days a week, if I had two delivery drivers going full-time, eight hours a day, delivering to people's doors. And you asked about who our customers are.
00:07:54
Speaker
That's the bulk of it. It's just direct to individuals. We sell to a couple restaurants because they're my buddies, but We have weekly subscriptions that we are looking to continually expand. And right now it takes us the better part of Wednesday to go do all those deliveries.
00:08:11
Speaker
We just sell to people. And I'm very thankful that I live in an area where I can do that. We don't go anywhere more than 45 minutes away. Most of it's within 25 minutes. we're and We target, we're very specific in our marketing to target specific neighborhoods because we want route density when we go, but that we just sell to people and love feeding families.
00:08:34
Speaker
I love that. ah I want to circle back later in this conversation actually about route density because it's so incredible. So many farmers that we work with that have picked up the door-to-door delivery and in many cases uncovered, A, it's efficient. B, you actually, in many cases, our farmers are actually making money off delivery because there's a delivery fee per drop plus, to your point, if there's a density you create this efficiency and then you're literally, people are like afraid of it, but you can have somebody else do it and you can literally make money off door-to-door delivery.
00:09:05
Speaker
And then consumers, sorry, I get excited here. Consumers have no excuse because they're all like, you know, convenience, convenience, convenience driven. And yet nine in 10 consumers prefer local food. And so if you take convenience off the table, if you will, you're as there's no more friction, they will choose a farmer's food nine out of 10 times, like for your future five days, at you know every day of the week, that's exactly what they'll choose. 100% Janelle, that is what we want to every day be more of is we want to be all natural, the most nutrients dense, delicious, nutritious local foods with the convenience of Amazon.
00:09:45
Speaker
And that's what people need Now, there's ways to do that. So I exclusively do local. Right now, I was doing two counties, but now it's just like my county. That's my whole focus for this year is the county that I live in, which is pretty densely populated.
00:10:00
Speaker
Thank God. So if it wasn't, I might have to adjust. But blow out the larger subdivisions, first of all, and have that be my foothold. Yep. And then...
00:10:10
Speaker
With that, as we're driving to these big subdivisions, well, now it's easy to stop off some places directly on the route, but we want to be the convenience of Amazon with local all natural food. And so we have to just sell local so we control the delivery.
00:10:26
Speaker
I'm not shipping and I'm sure some, I'm sure there's barn to door customers out there who are having great success shipping me, but I just don't want to play that game. I want to deliver to people's doors. Yeah, I would say the majority of farmers who have tried it have veered away from it because then you end up being in the shipping business and that's an expensive business. Oh, yeah. And um because of all the packaging and especially if you're trying to ship proteins, I mean, we could digress on this for a long time, but a lot of farmers have just learned that because you add in variables called you know UPS and delivery services, you sort of lose control of that supply chain. And then what happens is many times, you know there's a hurricane or there's a snowstorm somewhere and it doesn't get delivered or it's on a doorstep and it's too hot somewhere. And
00:11:10
Speaker
the meat goes bad and then the the waste and they're just out money. Like it's just so costly and yet, and it's so much work. It's
Shipping Challenges vs Local Delivery
00:11:19
Speaker
costly. It's so much work and there's too many variables. And so I would say, you know frankly, 95% of the farmers we work with are delivering and serving their local communities all across the country. And I can't tell you how excited that makes us because to your point, within 25 or 45 minutes, typically, and some farms go further because they're even more rural, but in that case, they consolidate.
00:11:39
Speaker
They don't go like you're going, hey, I'm going to go five days a week. For them, it makes more sense to be like, I'm going to go you know, four times a month, or I'm going to go maybe up to eight times a month and just cram all of my deliveries into those services.
00:11:52
Speaker
And the towns and the people and the buyers are there. And so concentrated route density and concentrated marketing, you know, from a geo or a location, you know, localized marketing essentially has just become a game changer.
00:12:05
Speaker
And you have so much more control. Like you have so much more control over the product, the delivery, the quality, the experience of your buyers And so so we get where I think I share clearly the passion that you are sharing in terms of serving your local communities. And frankly, honey is a great example, right?
00:12:24
Speaker
If you have honey that's in your community, you're getting all the right nutrients, you know, based on where you live and and and and. and and Yeah, I agree. And i but I think of my avatar, like my ideal customer, health and quality of food is number one driver. And then convenience That might be second. Local is probably third. But if they can get local, they would prefer local. So then I'm not really competing against the grocery store, but I might be competing against like a national shipping stuff all over the place, like a butcher box or something. But they would prefer local if they can get it right to their door. So.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah. And they don't, and the shipping cost alone for somebody to get something delivered when they can actually source it local and not pay a huge shipping fee is, and also know their farmer, right? I mean, to be fair, you know, yeah those companies that are shipping typically are folks that are aggregating across a couple of large farms, not necessarily a local farm that's growing and serving their local community. And I think just the ah transparency and the transportation. And there's people out there who care about that carbon footprint too, right? Where it's like, I don't need to involve lots of big trucks and, you know, to get food delivered when Phil's going to give it to me on Tuesday.
00:13:45
Speaker
you bring up a great point. That's another benefit of focusing on local is that I can do in-person marketing. i mean, I like people. So like I go speak at the Rotary Club. I open my farm. I used to do a farm tour every single Saturday. Now I do it the last Saturday of the month and make it a bigger deal.
00:14:03
Speaker
But we do a lot to bring people to the farm. I bring the farm out. So that is the most powerful marketing I could do as far as like a conversion rate. And I can't do that if I'm selling across the country. So that's helpful. I will say also on the marketing.
00:14:20
Speaker
So, you know, I do social media, which kind of draws people in. and I'm getting their email addresses and sending weekly emails. I do face to face. But one thing that I don't know if it's as popular, but it's been very helpful to me that.
00:14:35
Speaker
There was a lady that was shopping at the farm store and she's all into organic meat and everything. And I started chatting with her and her name is Joy. And it just so happened she owes this company Postcard Mania and they do mailers.
00:14:48
Speaker
And that sounds kind of old school and they do a lot of other stuff too. But if you want a geographically specific mailers are the best, I can say this exact neighborhood of a thousand homes, I'm sending my mailers there.
00:15:02
Speaker
And it's been very productive. Yeah, and I know we already went straight to talking about density in terms of your door-to-door delivery, which I love. That is just a juicy piece of information for any farmers listening.
00:15:14
Speaker
If you are trying to drive local awareness, focusing on specific neighborhoods or households or a delivery zip code, What Phil just said here is gold, right? Which is to market to them. One way to do that is through mailers to a specific zip code. I'm hoping that wasn't too expensive to contract with somebody locally to do that.
00:15:36
Speaker
and Not at all. And I'm wearing a bracelet on my wrist, run it by the numbers, which I tried to live by on the farm. And yeah, I just looked at what the return was. And at the time I was just doing one subscription, which was $50 a week.
00:15:51
Speaker
So that's $200 a month, $2,400 a year. And then you can look at what my gross margin is on that. But it didn't take a whole lot of new customers to make that pay for itself.
00:16:04
Speaker
That's awesome. I actually would love a couple of bullet points around now that we're talking a little bit about driving density for your door-to-door delivery and doing that from a marketing lens. But before I say that, I have to say one thing about your farm tours.
00:16:16
Speaker
We work with a number of farms, obviously, the majority of who are delivering either door-to-door or with local pickups, you know, going into communities to provide that convenience for people to pick up or have that delivery service. And that's just been a game changer.
00:16:30
Speaker
And then they will do, in many cases, you know farm tours or show up at things. But frankly, we have farmers that don't prefer the social side, right? And they too are having great success. like I just want to make sure people know that it is great if you love it, but you can also have great success if that's not your thing.
00:16:47
Speaker
Having a booming local business, even by just using and highly leveraging, especially email marketing, or having local partners that sort of champion your farm for you, right? And so there's a lot of that that can go on to, and frankly, even to your point, those mailers, great example. Like you're not talking to each of those folks individually, but you're putting some of those activities in place to ensure that you have a booming local business,
00:17:12
Speaker
On the scale of I'm introverted all the way to extroverted, you know, this can be done 100%. hundred percent And leaning into whoever you are as a farmer and a business owner and what that means is also great because you will be energized by those activities if you're choosing the right ones for yourself and your farm.
Email Marketing and Brand Authenticity
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah. So I want to dig into so many things, but one of them is you talked a lot about making sure that you have concentrated marketing in areas for the purpose of that route density from door to door delivery.
00:17:42
Speaker
You know, you said the flyers focused, you know, sending out mailer flyers, literally, which I love because it's sort of counterintuitive to the digital world and people actually pay attention to what comes in the mail now, because guess what?
00:17:55
Speaker
They don't get a lot of mail. So they get your mail and they they're loving that. What would two other suggestions be, Phil, before we move on to and other beefy topics that you would say, hey, if you're trying to increase local marketing, door-to-door delivery density,
00:18:11
Speaker
What are two or three other top tips you would give? I mean, I'm wondering, do you give promos? Do you have local businesses that support you? What is it that you feel is really working? You did mention email too.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely, the email is 100% working and I get so many compliments on my emails and I do not write them. I have a great friend. That is what he does.
00:18:34
Speaker
His name is Alan Drago. I'm go give Alan a shout out. He's awesome at it. That's what he does. And he was a customer of the farm and I give him through Barnador, have him set up with an account and I basically give him a credit every week.
00:18:48
Speaker
basic for He does an email every week. He gets a credit. So he just shops through my store and he's on my delivery route and we just barter it. and Love it. You know, we get together. I just tell him stories because the emails are not salesy.
00:19:04
Speaker
They are stories, education. And it's like, hey, if you want to support us, boom, click this link. I actually I'm really, really glad you said that because We do a lot for farmers at Barn to Door with regard to marketing help. Many farmers, like you can schedule automated order reminders. You can capture emails automatically, both through people who are shopping or who visit your website, send the order reminders.
00:19:30
Speaker
We also, a lot of farmers subscribe to our monthly marketing toolkit, which is like 50 graphic media designs that they can post on social media. We give them sample content.
00:19:41
Speaker
We develop four to six seasonal marketing templates that they can use in Mealchimp and give them sample content for that. So like we do a lot of that, but we always are like, we can do all this. But at the end of the day, the stories and your brand are you. We can't superimpose that on all of the marketing materials.
00:19:58
Speaker
We can get you like 80, 90% of the way there. But at the end of the day, you have to insert yourself, your brand, your farm, like, I don't know that there was a calf just born or that you're getting a new breed of chicken or that you're starting to sell turkey or a funny anecdote about, you know, chickens crack me up all day long.
00:20:16
Speaker
So, you know, there's always stories, right, that you can share from your farm. And I think that is the brand, like your brand has to actually come through on top of that marketing exercise.
00:20:28
Speaker
100% in tying that in with something you said earlier about being the authentic you. I am an excited, peppy individual. I'm definitely, there's probably a lot of happy farmers that work with Barnador because they're doing real good food product.
00:20:41
Speaker
But I'll tell you, I'm the happiest farmer in North Georgia. And- And that's me. And that shows through on all my Instagrams and everything. But if you're not, you don't have to be me. Be you on your thing. Just share who you are. People will love you that you are doing real food.
00:21:01
Speaker
Be you. And don't feel like you have to know it all. I barter food for this guy to write emails. I am in and I tell him the stories and that's it I record reels of myself for, it's funny you talk about the calf being born or it's time for turkeys.
00:21:18
Speaker
and That's all on my Instagram. And I like that, but I don't like sitting there and making Instagram posts. So I just record the reels and then... My friend helps me do that.
00:21:28
Speaker
You don't have to be extroverted like me and you don't have to be out in front of of a million people, but you have to partner with people. And maybe that's your spouse or your child, but you can't grow your farm if you're not going to partner with people and love doing it.
00:21:42
Speaker
I think 10 out of 10 farmers that are successful that I speak with, you know, especially through a podcast or everything else, or our fans that are also hosting Connect, our office hour program for other farmers, farmer to farmer.
00:21:55
Speaker
And also some of our farmers teach academy classes through Barn to Door. And I feel like they all come like email marketing, email marketing. And some of them will say we started once a month, but once a week is gold.
00:22:07
Speaker
Like once a month wasn't enough. So it's just interesting to hear that reverberating theme through every conversation. and they don't have to be long. I think it's untrue that they have to be big, long newsletters every time.
00:22:20
Speaker
Frankly, people don't. They get thumb cramps if they have to scroll too much, right? So like just a little love in a short email of like, hey, I'm here or don't forget to order this week has been a game changer for farms that we've seen literally double their business year over year over year. It's just incredible to watch.
00:22:38
Speaker
100%. Nobody's reading a long email. And so it's got to be short and sweet and you got to do it. and And it's just people love hearing your stories and they love hearing about food and connecting with it. Your customer does.
00:22:52
Speaker
And Just be you in the email. Every week, let's say I add 10 people in my email list and two people drop off my email list.
00:23:02
Speaker
Good, because those two people aren't my customers. So I got to be me in my emails and my customer will... like it. I'm so glad I was literally going to ask that next, which was, look, you've said for buyer density, you sent out flyers and then regular email marketing, but you must collect those emails. And that's something we could sort of beat our chest when we're talking to farmers and our farmers are talking to other farmers, which is collect emails, collect emails, collect emails. And it doesn't have to be like, you're going to go knock on every door.
00:23:30
Speaker
There are some really easy ways to collect emails, but you do need to collect emails because that is your, that's your customer list. Yes, you've got to do it. So we do go to three farmers markets, which we, of course, want to sell and make a profit off of.
00:23:45
Speaker
But if I just broke even at the farmers markets and collected 20 emails each time, that's a win. Love it. Yeah. Love it. Love it. The long term, my...
00:23:58
Speaker
Plans for my farm. I'm going to sell through multiple things, but like it's going to be direct to door subscription or is that's what I want to do. That is what the best for my business.
00:24:10
Speaker
And email is the tool for that. So all my social media marketing is for building up awareness of who we are and connecting us to customers and wanting to get emails.
00:24:21
Speaker
And then we go to farmers markets or whatever. And really, it's so funny. You always beat yourself up about the things you didn't do well or the missed opportunities. And I think of how many folks I've spoken in front of and I didn't have a sheet to say, sign up with your email. you know But the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
00:24:40
Speaker
The second best time is today. Just start collecting email. at make Make it your thing. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yep. Yes. I could not agree with you more. I know that our success team who talk to farms all day, every day, literally to help them win are always telling folks, if you're at a farmer market, always have out a sheet.
00:25:01
Speaker
Farmers that use our POS, we built it so that it will automatically capture that customer's email at checkout, which is just a game changer. And so those sorts of things, it's like helping farmers be successful.
00:25:13
Speaker
But collecting emails and doing it in places where you already are showing up is just great, right? Because it's not meant to create a lot of extra work. So definitely ways that we help folks. and My team will beat me up if I don't ask you, A, why you decided to work with Barn to Door. And then I want to know your favorite feature.
00:25:30
Speaker
Okay, I decide to work with Barnador. Let's see, it was so long ago. And now I have so much context. Since I have worked with Barnador, I knew i wanted to sell to individuals. And I was like, I want to have a website.
00:25:44
Speaker
So I think I I just started digging around and barn to door looked like the best one I loved. And it's hard to tell if I knew this much going in, but I would say the thing I love the most now is like all the resources.
00:25:59
Speaker
So, you know, obviously the platform is great. I love using it. There's a lot of great features, but I love that. i mean, there's so many unknowns. So many of this is scary before,
00:26:12
Speaker
I never sold ah dozen eggs, let alone for three times much as a grocery store. And there's so many. and You got to be a marketer. You got to accounting. And you know what? I just want to plan so I can follow the plan. And when I get on the phone with like Ryan, you know, there's the videos that are very empowering.
00:26:31
Speaker
But Man, I get to talk to people who are working with other farms I want to emulate and I get to listen to those farmers and talk to them. So I just love that resource. man I'm not out on an island trying to figure out because when you don't have a clear plan, you procrastinate and you just go do what you know to do. And guess what? You're not growing your business.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's scary. Change is scary. I love that. I think it's a consistent bit of feedback we get. And I think that because we are a business solution built for independent farmers, right? What that means is when farmers are using our platform, we just learn information just like you learned.
00:27:10
Speaker
We learn information on, we're watching across thousands of farms for years. And we're like, oh, the most successful farms are doing X, Y, z And oh, if they do this and this and this, you know, they sell twice as much.
00:27:22
Speaker
We have the data, we have the information, and we push that back into our resources, whether it's podcasts or e-books, academy classes, office hours, best practices when we're onboarding farmers to get their store set up in a way that, you know, is most convenient and easy for their buyers.
00:27:40
Speaker
So there's a lot, you know, and if you hit chat, you're talking to people who know about farming and they know about how to help farmers be successful. And so we're domain experts, if you will, or from a thought leadership and not just from an information perspective, but also from a platform perspective, right? I think a lot of folks might come and be like, oh, I need a website, but you know, what did they used to say? Any Tom, Dick or Harry could build a website. But the important part is the website's a brand. it's that We say it's a billboard to know where if if people can see it, but not shop.
00:28:10
Speaker
And so it's like marketing is there for the purpose of sales. And so you need to have your sales channel open up where buyers want to buy.
Subscription Models and Sales Consistency
00:28:18
Speaker
So we make sure People get hooked up on social. They have, you know, their store is like it's proprietary. That's what we've built so that farmers can sell, you know, quarter half whole cows or half or whole hogs or subscription to four chickens every month.
00:28:35
Speaker
And so we've built subscriptions from the ground up for farmers, whether that's ongoing, whether it's seasonal subscriptions, you whether they want people to pay up front or pay as they go. So when we're building things like subscriptions, we're like, but what do farmers need when we build subscriptions, right?
00:28:51
Speaker
versus any generic solution out there that's not purpose-built for farmers. And so we get excited about not just the platform, but the fact that we help farmers. like We're business owners too at Barn to Door, right? So farmers, just like our us as a business, oh, well, you have to have your finances squared away.
00:29:07
Speaker
You have to think about marketing. You have to think about your brand. you have to think about sales. How do you make sure that sales occur? you You have to manage inventory, right? And we have the leading solution in inventory management for farmers, just by virtue of how it works, you know, whether you're selling cows and you have to map to your butcher dates or whether you're selling online or in person, you know, you can sell chicken in person at the same time somebody buys it online and that inventory is seamless.
00:29:30
Speaker
There's so much that goes into not just the business management, but the business expertise. And it's, you know, it's fun that people come in for, hey, maybe I need a website, but what they're getting is a team, you know, expertise, the platform and everything to be successful. And clearly you can tell I'm over the moon passionate about this.
00:29:48
Speaker
It's funny you said that because when I went to Barndor, that's what I was like, hey, I need a website. And I knew I was at the right place when the team was like, okay, well, we build your store. The first step is building the store.
00:30:02
Speaker
And then the site, I'm like, wow. This is what I'm talking about. Because, yeah, that's why you have it to sell. You got to get after it on the sales because I am in it. I'm never going to become a millionaire. I don't think, but in nor do I really care just from farming, but I can make a good, healthy living and do something I am passionate about. I'm so full of purpose.
00:30:21
Speaker
And if I don't sell product, then I can't do that. And I sell product for an appropriate margin. Yeah, we got to get after it. I think we mentioned before, like your goal, and we love this because we have a lot of firms that have never sold subscriptions before. And then they come to Barn to Door and we're like, hey, look, this can really be nice.
00:30:41
Speaker
You know, you get consistent sales. You can count on those sales week over week, month over month. when somebody just bought it once at the beginning. And so subscriptions can be just a beautiful thing so that you know, going into every single week or month, you already have X percent of items sold.
00:30:58
Speaker
And for many farms, that consistent revenue has been gold in terms of saving them time, even from a marketing side, having a really streamlined fulfillment and logistics around that.
00:31:10
Speaker
And it's just been a game changer. And we find that many farms who start offering subscriptions end up with the ability to sort of think bigger about their business and think about scale and think about that consistency that helps, frankly, build any business, right?
00:31:24
Speaker
But you have some goals. I mean, you I think you caught onto that pretty early on and you're pushing for a pretty high percent of your product to be subscriptions. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
00:31:35
Speaker
Yeah, well, it is key for sure. And I definitely want to scale because the more that I grow my farm, the more that I can protect land from being developed and feed people real food and have a good time.
00:31:47
Speaker
The things that are good about subscription for me, definitely consistent sales because people come in and they would just get random stuff. And, you know, I sell predominantly frozen meat.
00:31:59
Speaker
So what I did was I want to sell more frozen meat at a good cadence and people want eggs and eggs. You have to tie in if you can. And your're so it's good to tie in your subscriptions more perishable weekly staples.
00:32:13
Speaker
So eggs are that for us. Our eggs are like and and but we started doing this before egg prices got crazy with the bird flu stuff. But Every weekly subscription box comes with a dozen eggs and then some frozen meat items.
00:32:28
Speaker
So we have that to keep them getting it on the weekly cadence, which of course you could do a monthly if you didn't have a weekly. You know, if I were to sell raw milk, that would also be a great thing to have in the weekly.
00:32:39
Speaker
And certainly veggies, but it's key for cash flow. Also, it's key for my inventory management, which you mentioned, because I have a poultry processing plant. I do pastured poultry.
00:32:51
Speaker
Everybody wants boneless, skinless breasts. Thighs are my favorite. Drumsticks are also delicious. But If I just had people la carte order what they wanted, I'd be sitting on a bunch of drumsticks.
00:33:04
Speaker
I do a weekly box and I say, hey, you're going to get some of, let's say, these 12 items. You're going to get a couple of them every week, but it's farmer's choice. So if I'm getting high on drumsticks, boom, drumsticks are going in.
00:33:17
Speaker
If I'm sold out of hot sausage, but I have chorizo, which, by the way, chorizo sells like crazy, so this wouldn't be the case, but chorizo's going in that week. you So I can manage my inventory so I can sell the whole animal.
00:33:33
Speaker
That is just gold. I need to like pull out that whole section and and put it on the billboard. But I agree. We have so many conversations with farmers about farmer's choice boxes and how that is literally actually a win, win, A lot of farmers think, oh, I have to give buyer's choice down to the cut. But to your point, you end up with only drumsticks.
00:33:51
Speaker
And you also end up with, forgive me for saying this, picky customers. Like line yourself up with people that are like easy to please, throw it in the box. They don't want to think about it. They don't want to choose all the individual cuts. They trust you.
00:34:02
Speaker
They know that it's, you know, takes them no time to shop. Right. And buyers love that too. One thing I'm lacking at that's in the growth plan this year is that, you know, I want people to be eating healthy, nutritious food. And I was actually blown away at how many people like they had never cooked a whole chicken or they're like, Oh, what do I do with the, like this ham steak?
00:34:25
Speaker
And so empowering them By sending recipe cards or including some recipes or a quick video of you preparing it, you want to prioritize cuts that are easy to cook, but empower them. This is how we love to do a chuck roast so that they feel comfortable using all that.
00:34:44
Speaker
Yeah, and it's healthy to mix it up. I'll take the chicken feed all day long, by the way, for my broth. So making my own stock. I love it. It's my favorite. We just did our first big batch of, I think we made 45 gallons of broth the other day, and which then we threw in that in the box. I'll say one quick thing, too, on inventory management is...
00:35:04
Speaker
You know, the box went since it's farmer's choice. It allows me to distribute across how I want to. But I would really encourage farmers also to make sure they're getting the cuts that people want. For example, I mentioned hamstaaks and ham and Ham does it for me.
00:35:22
Speaker
It is never sold the way that sausage does. And I actually get more per pound ah for sausage. So I just stopped getting most of my pigs cut up with ham and I turned it into sausage.
00:35:33
Speaker
You don't have to get every cut. You don't have to do everything. If for whatever reason your customers don't like drumsticks, figure out how to get a grinder and make chicken sausage and sell that for a premium.
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I'm getting so tempted to invite you to start teaching academy classes on pricing and packaging. So we'll talk about that later. But I mean, I think you're right. ah It's actually very similar to how you think about if you're gardening, like just grow what you want to eat, you know, versus all the cool things you could grow and then you don't eat them.
00:36:04
Speaker
To your point, I think you have to pay attention as a farmer to what people buy. And people do love, while Farmer's Choice is great for farmers, actually buyers love it too. Again, they don't like decision fatigue. They want shopping to be quick and easy.
00:36:17
Speaker
They know it's good for them. They love learning new things. It's very empowering. It's just a streamlined experience across the board for the farmer, for the buyer, for everybody. So we're really big fans. But yeah, like pay attention to the various cuts and things that are selling. We're putting out a lot of content on that recently. So we'll have to dig into that one at another time for sure.
00:36:35
Speaker
Okay, we've covered so much. And I feel like we could double click and talk about so many things so much deeper. But I want to be respectful of your time and the listeners time. And we can maybe give them a teaser for future conversations. That's for sure.
00:36:48
Speaker
In terms of tips that you might give to people like what do you wish you knew?
Advice for New Farmers
00:36:53
Speaker
Or is there anything that you wish you knew or would tell yourself from when you've just first started farming? Like, what do you wish that you had known going into it?
00:37:01
Speaker
I wish I'd known the importance of making a plan and a budget. Because again, there's so many unknowns with a direct-to-consumer business. You're not just in production.
00:37:12
Speaker
You know, I went to this workshop, Regenerating Land Through lives Lifestyle. was with all these farmers and we're all getting jazzed up about being organic in daily mob graves and moving your chickens every day.
00:37:23
Speaker
But I looked around this room and I was like, we're all pumped about production. But if we can't sell a $25 or $30 chicken or you know whatever, then we're going to be out business. So you got to be marketing, accounting, sales, everything.
00:37:35
Speaker
So have a plan and use resources. You don't have to do everything, but you need to have a plan and know what you want to accomplish so that you can find the resources to help you.
00:37:46
Speaker
Yeah. I'm not meaning to just take advantage of putting a plug in here, but literally that's exactly what Barn to Door does, right? We help farmers. You're so spot on that farmers love production and I do too. Geez, I love, I mean, I, greenhouses and I've always had chickens and everything else and and grew up on farms, but ultimately it's a business. You are an independent farm business and we love helping independent farmers because again, they're cutting out the middleman and maximizing those profits, but We help with finance, inventory management, orders, customer growth, and running your online store and in-person sales, right? We are the framework for that plan, right? And help, to your point, with our resources, try to help people get through. But you do have to be aware that it's more than just business.
00:38:28
Speaker
production for better for worse. I mean, any business owner probably doesn't love doing all parts of the business. Like they're probably not like, wow, I have to deal with finances again, you know, but at the end of the day, you're a business owner, right? And so you do have to give a nod to the various quote unquote departments of your business and have them work in concert for a successful business, even beyond the fun parts, right?
00:38:50
Speaker
Which I totally appreciate.
Pricing Strategy and Customer Focus
00:38:52
Speaker
And I would say that you should be bold in your pricing. It used to be so tough for me to communicate pricing, which, of course, if you have a website, you don't have to communicate it. People look at it. But I am more expensive than the store, although the store is certainly catching up with me on a lot of a lot of things.
00:39:09
Speaker
And I am so comfortable with what I cost. I cost what real food should cost. And the stuff that's cheap is cheap for a reason. So I'm not expensive.
00:39:20
Speaker
They're cheap. And i don't. I love that. you You got to be so comfortable with rejection. Look, of my area, if I sell to 1% of the population, I mean, I'm crushing it. So I don't need everyone to be my customer.
00:39:36
Speaker
And a bunch of people can tell me they think that $8 a dozen for eggs is too expensive or whatever. I don't care. They're not my customer. And I love them. God bless them. But I'm not worried about keeping them happy.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, which I feel like that piece is something we need to double click on even in another podcast, what that means. Because if you're not being afraid of your customers and knowing that there's always going to be a little bit of attrition and that you're looking for your right customers, and it's very empowering. and We love that. Let's empower independent farmers all across the country to be wildly successful like yourself, which is so great.
Conclusion and Resources
00:40:11
Speaker
Phil, because he so graciously said yes to working closer with Barn to Door, And as part of one of our fans or one of our farm advisors, he now actually starts hosting k Connect sessions.
00:40:23
Speaker
And if I can get him to probably some academy classes as well. But Connect is office hours hosted by farmers for farmers. and what that means is if you join Barn to Door or if you're at Barn to Door,
00:40:36
Speaker
And a farmer using Barn to Door, you can go to an office hour where Phil is the host and can just ask him and pile on the questions because clearly such a rich resource. Many of the farmers who join us go to so many of the Connect sessions, but just go, you know, by farmers for farmers office hours has been such a winning program for the farmers that we work with. And I'm so excited for you to host those classes. Go forward. That'll be great.
00:41:00
Speaker
Well, thank you. I'm flattered to be a part of this. I love being a part of Barnador and I so appreciate when in speaking with you, like I could just see the greater mission and purpose that you are driven by empowering farmers that do real whole foods. And I thank you for that.
00:41:16
Speaker
Amen. I appreciate that. Good. Well, I'm going to quick wrap up, but listen for this podcast, more podcasts with Phil and great farmers like him during office hours to talk to him more. And hopefully in the future, we'll have him teaching some of our academy classes as well.
00:41:31
Speaker
I want to extend my thanks to Phil for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more of Phil and Farm on their Instagram at HopewellFarmsGA. So HopewellFarmsGA.
00:41:42
Speaker
Check it out. Here at Brontador, we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country. We're delighted to offer services, tools, data, support, you name it. to farmers to access more customers, increase sales, scale their business, save tons of time, especially save tons of time.
00:41:59
Speaker
If you're an independent farmer who is just getting started or transitioning to selling director, or if you've been at it a while and want to simplify your business management, please visit barntodore.com backslash learn more.
00:42:10
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to joining you the next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
00:42:25
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn to Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities.
00:42:40
Speaker
You are the backbone of our country. For free farm resources or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barntodore.com backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.