Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
To Serve and Connect, By Selling Direct. Josie Rozum with Dan and Debbie's Creamery
150 Plays5 years ago
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we're delighted to host Josie Rozum, Director of Operations at Dan and Debbie's Creamery. Listen as Josie shares the history behind Dan and Debbie's creamery and how offering a direct to consumer channel has help them increase their sales along with owning their brand's relationship to their customers.
Show Notes:
https://dananddebbies.com/
https://www.barn2door.com/resources
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Farm Success
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the weekly listen for farm selling direct. We'll talk about the four levers for farm success, which are quality, brand, price, and convenience. We'll hear from outside industry experts and producers like you to delight your customers, save time, and to increase your direct farm sales and business. We're glad you're here.
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast.
Meet Josie Rossum
00:00:28
Speaker
We've got a great conversation for you today with one of our farm advisors, Josie Rossum from Dan and Debbie's Creamery. Welcome, Josie. Thank you, Alyssa. So great to have you here. Why don't you take a minute just to introduce yourself, how you got into farming and selling direct online. Sure. So my name is Josie Rossum. I'm the director of operations at Dan and Debbie's Creamery and we're located in Ely, Iowa.
00:00:51
Speaker
So in the heart of the Midwest and my family has been dairy farming for about 25 years and five years ago we embarked on a journey of taking our raw milk from our family farm and turning it into a pasteurized finished milk product at a little creamery that we built from the ground up just four miles from our family farm. So we're a fairly new business but together with myself and my brothers we own and operate a farm to table dairy processing facility.
00:01:19
Speaker
That's great to hear that you had the vision as a family to take your business to the next level. So tell us a little bit more about how the business has evolved over the years.
The Dairy Farming Journey
00:01:29
Speaker
So my dad is really the visionary behind Dan and Debbie's Creamery. When they first started milking cows, I was
00:01:36
Speaker
eight years old so I was very very little grew up milking cows and my dad always hated that milk prices through the market were up and down there were some years where we would do great as a family farm but then there were other years where we really really struggled and he hated not having control over our outcome and so he started researching farm to table dairy processing and when I was about 16 we toured
00:02:04
Speaker
tons of creameries around the Midwest. We went up into Wisconsin, down into Missouri, all over just trying to get a feel for what that would look like. And after years and years of doing this, myself and then a handful of my siblings expressed interest in wanting to sort of continue on the legacy that they laid with the farm by opening up a creamery. And so it was just a matter of finding the right
00:02:30
Speaker
building, renovating it, and then turning it into an operational creamery. And we've now been open, it feels weird saying this, but five years. And so it's been really exciting for our family to grow and just kind of see where we started with 25 cows and now we have 120 and we're taking that milk and turning it into cheese and ice cream and butter and everything. It's really, really been exciting for our family.
00:02:55
Speaker
I believe you started raising beef cows, right? When the farm first started as a small family farm, how did you pivot going back a little bit from going into cattle to going into dairy farming?
00:03:08
Speaker
I mean, even before I was born, the story that my parents share with us is that when my parents first met, my dad would go over to my mom's family farm and would just kind of help out doing stuff on the weekends and in the evenings. And he fell in love with farming. I guess you could say you got bit by the farming bug. And he was bound and determined to do whatever he could to start his own farm. And he didn't care what exactly he was doing. He didn't care what kind of animals he was raising. He just wanted to be a farmer.
00:03:38
Speaker
And so when they found some land in rural Ely, they decided, let's make a go at it. They got the land and they kind of just started doing a little bit of everything. We had sheep, we had beef cow. He was doing custom work, so he would do field work for other farmers. He just wanted to make it work. And after a few years of doing that, he and my mom both realized it wasn't sustainable. They had to figure out what their niche was going to be.
00:04:02
Speaker
And so dairy farming was the direction they wanted to go. They had a love for animals. They wanted to still be in crop production. And so that's kind of how they got into the whole dairy operation. They come with no background in dairy. So our farm is a little unique because my parents are first generation farmers. They don't have this long generational path where it was handed down. They're really starting from the ground up.
00:04:30
Speaker
And I think it's been great for my brothers and myself to kind of witness all of the hard work that they've put into it because we've been able to really just what can we do now to take it to the next level. And I think it gives us just a really deep appreciation for all of the hard work and the risks.
00:04:49
Speaker
that they've taken to get us to where we are today. That's inspiring just to see how it is a family operation and how it's carried through from your parents to you guys now and how the whole family is involved. You've mentioned farm to table and how important that is to you and making sure that you offer those dairy
Product Strategy and Marketing
00:05:07
Speaker
products. The opportunities are endless when it comes to value added dairy products. So what was your decision to start offering those dairy products and how did it allow you to scale your business?
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, so I think there were a few things that went into our business plan when we first started. And we knew we wanted to do a creamery, but dairy, you can go so many different directions. And there's a gazillion different cheeses you can make. If you want to focus on cheese, you can focus on bottled milk and how many flavors of bottled milk you can do. But we really wanted to just kind of keep things
00:05:41
Speaker
fairly simple and offer some traditional dairy products that are really nostalgic to people. It's that cream lined milk that is non-homogenized where the cream rises to the top. It's ice cream that's rich and full of fat, but offers great flavor. We wanted to go back to our roots and to the roots of really the dairy industry by offering full flavored, full fat dairy products that are as close to their natural state as possible.
00:06:07
Speaker
And when we talk about farm to table, I think the most important thing to us was to be able to control every aspect of
00:06:15
Speaker
the process. So that way we feel confident and comfortable in knowing what we're feeding our animals, what those animals are producing as far as milk is concerned. And then the little steps along the way, the quality, the care that we put into our end product is all extremely important to feeling really confident and comfortable with delivering a product to customers. And I think it's a product that everybody can trust.
00:06:42
Speaker
And so the farm to table process, every little step is important to us along the way. And it's all, all of our family has deep passion in each step.
00:06:51
Speaker
that we take. And it all starts with the quality really you know making sure that you have that quality product and I love how you touched on that because for us we oftentimes talk about the four lovers for farm success and quality is one of them as well as brand and price and convenience. So maybe tell us a little bit more about how you start with that quality product and how you're able to message that through your brand as well.
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I think one of the struggles, especially with dairy, is a lot of people think milk is milk. You know, you're not adding anything to a gallon of whole milk. And so for us, our messaging has always been about how it starts before the milk is even created. The quality and care that you put into your crops is going to be then fed to the animals.
00:07:38
Speaker
and your product is going to taste differently. And so we use education as a huge piece in our marketing. How can we let our consumers and our customers know exactly what's going into that milk? Because not all milk is created equal. There's a lot of different steps that happen before milk even comes out of the cows that we do on our family farm to make that product truly exceptional. And
00:08:04
Speaker
Storytelling is huge for us. So anytime I can share with our consumers those unique steps that we're doing on the farm before the milk is even produced, we try to jump on those moments. And those are actually the funnest stories to tell our
Building Consumer Trust
00:08:22
Speaker
consumers because most people have no idea what a dairy farm is like. They've never experienced a farm.
00:08:30
Speaker
It's really crucial that we explain to our customers what we are doing, how we're going above and beyond, because we want them to support our product and we want them to feel connected to our product. So every little story that we can tell about how we do things differently, I think is going to just kind of give us leverage against other brands out there on the market.
00:08:50
Speaker
Finding ways to differentiate yourself, but also how to partner and collaborate. I noticed on your website that you have over 30 partners in your community, which I'm sure is very strategic in how you go about that. Walk us through just when you have a conversation with a potential partner, what kinds of questions do you ask? Do you have kind of a certain process that you go about when you're exploring partnerships? Sure. So we have several different unique types of partnerships. Our products, we sell wholesale to grocery stores.
00:09:18
Speaker
And we also sell direct to consumer. One thing that we try to do when we're selling direct to consumer is have more of a relationship with them. So that's the uniqueness of us, right? Like we have this connection with the person that's buying and drinking our product or buying and eating our cheese. And so one thing that we do when trying to select partners, and for us partners are other local products that are produced in our great state of Iowa that we
00:09:44
Speaker
bring into our store. We sell retail at our store. We make available through our home delivery service. And we really want them to be able to communicate with consumers as well. Because if you can't share directly with your consumers why you feel like your product is better than the next, people lose trust in those products. They want to have those relationships. Consumers crave relationships with farmers.
00:10:12
Speaker
And so when we're looking and searching for potential partners as far as products to bring into our store and offer direct to consumers, it's crucial for us to be able to have a very unique relationship with them to where we can communicate with the grower, the producer, the maker, and understand why they're doing it. So they're very much like us. They're just in a little bit different industry. So we carry honeys, jams, granolas, different frozen meats, pork, beef, et cetera.
00:10:41
Speaker
And all of those we have a great relationship with to where we feel like we can tell their story. And that's very important in letting our consumers know and our customers know what's out there on our surfaces.
00:10:56
Speaker
That speaks so well to fit, you know, making sure that the partnership makes sense, but also it's a value add for the consumer. So on both sides, on the farming side and the consumer side, which kind of transitions to convenience. Ultimately, you know, a lot of people are looking to purchase food online. And if you're able to partner with other farms in the area, you can kind of provide that to them. So what are some other ways that you provide convenience for your buyers from selling your products at local retail locations to offering home
Enhancing Customer Convenience
00:11:24
Speaker
delivery?
00:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, when we first started the Creamery, we just had a retail store. So people can come into our Creamery and we have a storefront where you would buy your cheeses, your ice cream, and you can get it by the scoop and a cone, or you can buy it in a half gallon to go, along with all of those other products that I just talked about, like the honeys and jams and granolas. We also have some artisan items like aprons and different, you know, Chachki things that are very, very cute and unique and handmade. But
00:11:54
Speaker
We also have our wholesale. So having our products in grocery stores is a convenience to people. But the challenging thing about grocery stores is you're in a sea of other dairy products. And so to walk down the dairy aisle in a grocery store, you might not find a little Dan and Debbie's, but you're going to find the big name that's nationwide and it's taking up, you know, half of the grocery aisle. And so for us, having that connection with the customer is what really
00:12:20
Speaker
Is important to us it's where i think we can grow the most because we're able to tell our story to them and we're able to have them jump on board and so.
00:12:31
Speaker
convenience is important for us to be able to do that because we're just out in Ely, Iowa. It's a rural part of the community. And so home deliveries has been a way for us to get our products to people weekly on a consistent basis. So that way they don't have to think about, oh, I got to pick up Dan and Debbie's in the grocery store next time I go shopping.
00:12:52
Speaker
but I can't find it because there's all of these other milk. We want to just make it easy, simple, and quick for customers to be able to hop online, order it, and we'll do the rest. We'll get it to their doorstep, and then they can enjoy it with their family. And I think it's critical to also mention convenience for the farmer, too, because I'm sure that you're looking for ways to save time.
00:13:11
Speaker
you're looking for ways to increase your recurring cash flow throughout the entire year. So what are some of those strategies that you implement in terms of the number of product types that you sell to possibly how you approach subscriptions as well? The first concept when we talked about home deliveries was
00:13:28
Speaker
we just want to get our milk out there. Like how do we sell milk? The nostalgic milkman is a concept that even if you've never experienced the milkman, you kind of get these warm fuzzy feelings. Like that's a really cool thing. And so the concept started with that. How do we just sell more milk? Because that's our goal at the end of the day is we want to use all of the milk from our family farm
00:13:50
Speaker
and sell it at our creamery. And so for us, it was all about, let's get our milk out there. But then as we're delivering milk to people, we're like, we're going to these homes anyway. We have a store with all of these products and we love supporting our local community made of artisans and growers and producers.
00:14:10
Speaker
let's just offer that. So it was a combination of just asking those partners, hey, you know, we've already got your products. Do you mind if we just offer it for home deliveries and everybody's like, heck yeah, that would be awesome. Like, you know, you sell more. We sell more. This is a win-win. So it was
00:14:28
Speaker
It was a no-brainer for us to add more products. Logistically, it makes it a little bit more challenging for us because we're not talking about just milk. But it's making each stop worth it. And those that don't drink milk, I mean, not everybody consumes milk. So how do we get other products that we offer to them? So now people are buying cheese curds. They're getting aged cheddar. They're buying butter. Along with the milk that we have, we're able to do a lot more internal sales of our products than we are just the milk and our vendor products.
00:14:57
Speaker
that's been really cool to see just orders come in and it went from like just their milk to now 10 different items and it's like oh my gosh we're like a little grocery store on wheels and people are getting their local goods and they're supporting us they're supporting local businesses and that's been really really fun for us to see that growth.
00:15:15
Speaker
And that support probably from the partners, but also from the community that there's an interest there. People want to buy local, they want that quality. So what platforms do you use or integrations that you use to help you save time kind of going back to that convenience for the farmer? How are you able to ensure that your buyers have a great experience, but also it's a lighter lift for you as you continue to grow at scale?
Digital Sales Expansion
00:15:38
Speaker
Sure. When we started doing home deliveries, which was in August of 2020,
00:15:42
Speaker
It was an idea that we had been talking about for quite some time. But when the pandemic hit, it was a no-brainer for us to just, we got to figure this out. But we also realized, we don't have a ton of time in our schedule to be able to just all of a sudden shift and add, essentially, a whole other business onto the two businesses we're already running, the Farm and the Creamery. We started researching and Barn to Door came up.
00:16:09
Speaker
I met with them. I did a tutorial and I thought, you know what, this is an extremely simple platform to use which is simple was what I needed at the time I didn't need complex. I just needed something to help me get off the ground and get this going. And so
00:16:24
Speaker
After just, I think it was six weeks of building our back end online store, uploading our products, we announced it to the world of social media because, being a small farm, that's kind of our main way of marketing. And we let our customers know we were doing this. We did a couple of pilot communities, so we picked basically two zip codes on two different days.
00:16:48
Speaker
just to see how they would go, iron out the kinks, figure out how we're going to do inventorying, making sure we have enough products, and then also the delivery routes. We wanted to make sure we just had it quick and efficient so anybody could jump in the truck, anybody could go deliver.
00:17:05
Speaker
and it was quick and easy. And after a couple of weeks of doing it that way, we've grown our zip code radius. So we've added different customer groups. And today we're doing almost 15 different zip codes from the two that we started with. We've ironed out all of our kinks. And now it's been fun because Barn to Door being a newer company, we've been able to kind of grow alongside of them because they've been adding different features and their features that
00:17:32
Speaker
we've been wanting as we've continued to grow. So it's kind of been a fun process for us to be able to start simple, start small, and then organically add different zip codes, different products, and then different backend customizations. So that's been exciting for us as far as just having ease of use and being able to grow this without having to like dedicate a hundred percent of our time to doing it.
00:17:57
Speaker
What are some of those integrations and features that you've been most excited about? One example that I can recall just being so excited about getting was the integration with Mailchimp. I have a Mailchimp account that I use for our Creamery where I send out e-newsletters monthly. As we started rolling out home delivery to our customers, so many of them were like, it would be so nice if we could get notified,
00:18:26
Speaker
or get some reminders or send us new product offerings. You obviously, you want to do that for customers because you want to sell more products each day. And so when Barn to Door integrated with MailChimp, it made it extremely painless for me to just hop on and basically automatically schedule reminders that go out to my customers and
00:18:48
Speaker
Now I can even send targeted emails to customers that subscribe to milk subscriptions or that are buying consistently or maybe rolled off for a week that I want to re-engage them and have them come back into the picture. So that integration as far as a communication and a marketing platform has been extremely helpful.
00:19:09
Speaker
and painless for me. That engagement piece is huge and that's great to hear too that your buyers are craving that engagement from your farm. They want to hear more about your story. They want to have those reminders too so that way it's more natural and authentic and organic when you reach out to them because they're craving that on their end too. My farm account manager and I often talk about how
00:19:31
Speaker
our number one goal is like to keep the customers happy. So if they're asking for something, and then all of a sudden we're able to offer that, you know, quick and easy, those reminders, they want those reminders weekly, and then Barn to door and MailChimp integrate, we're able to keep our customer happy. And so that's been really huge for us, because that's our goal here. And so if on the back end, we can make tweaks and build and grow the Barn to door platform to keep customers happy, I think that's super important.
00:20:00
Speaker
What would be your final piece of advice for farmers who are either looking to sell direct to customers online or maybe they just started and they're looking to scale their business? I think my biggest piece of advice is to not be afraid to take the risk.
00:20:16
Speaker
Change is hard. I think everybody knows that, but especially for us with barn to door, it was such an easy transition. It was smooth. I got more than enough training and I continue to get training through barn to door. It's easy. And I thought it was going to be hard. And we drug our feet for so long that
00:20:38
Speaker
I wish I would have done this in months ago because I think we'd be a lot further along and I think most people would agree, you know, if you have a really great product and if you have a market that is craving your product, signing up and doing direct to consumer sales is the way to go. I mean, and it's so rewarding as a farmer and a producer because you're getting that gratification from those customers that
00:21:05
Speaker
I think we've wanted all along, but we usually don't get when we sell wholesale or when we sell, you know, to the market. It's different when you're selling direct to consumer. And just to think from a growth standpoint, I know you said it would have been nice to have started implementing this a few months prior, but just to see how much growth you've already experienced in such a short amount of time is really encouraging to see kind of a trajectory of what could be for the future as well. What's next for Dan and Debbie's Creamery?
Future Growth Aspirations
00:21:33
Speaker
We're over six months into doing home deliveries and direct to consumer sales through our home delivery route that we're so optimistic for the future because it's gone so smoothly. So this phase one, first six months time was just understanding the platform, getting systems in place, getting people trained and keeping customers happy.
00:21:56
Speaker
This next stage is where we really get to grow and that's what I'm excited for. We've got the procedures in place. We understand how to use all of the different platforms. Now it's time to just offer it to more people and have them get to experience the milkman and what he has to offer at Dan and Debbie's Creamery and then of course us to just gain more loyal customers and that's
00:22:21
Speaker
the best part of our job is just getting to, you know, work with the customers and have them be grateful and appreciative and love the product. So I guess the next chapter is just here's to bringing in more partners and products and customers. Well, thank you so much Josie for joining us today. Thank you, Alyssa. It was great to be here.
00:22:41
Speaker
Here at Barn to Door we are humbled to support thousands of farms across the country including farm to table farmers like Josie who support their local communities. For more information on Dan and Debbie's Creamery you can visit their website danandebbies.com and to learn more about Barn to Door including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm you can go to barntodoor.com resources. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next time.