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Scale Your Ranch Business & Own Your Supply Chain
316 Plays3 years ago
In a webinar in partnership AgriWebb, Barn2Door and Friesla teamed up to share how Farmers and Ranchers can own their supply chain, take control of operations, and successfully sell direct. Learn about the opportunities that exist for Ranchers to sell their products direct-to-market and how AgriWebb, Freisla, and Barn2Door can help take your business to the next level.
Learn more about AgriWebb and Friesla:
agriwebb.com
friesla.com
barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Introduction to Direct Farm Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the go to resource for farms across the US looking to grow and manage their business. Tune in weekly to hear tips and tactics from our most successful farmers on how to increase sales, access more customers and save time and money. We'll also speak with industry experts, business leaders and partners to share the latest farm business trends selling direct to market.
Webinar Replay: Rancher Direct Market Opportunities
00:00:27
Speaker
This episode of the Direct Farm podcast is a replay of a webinar Barnadore participated in in partnership with AgriWeb and Friesla. The presentation focused on the opportunities that exist for ranchers to sell their products direct to market and how AgriWeb, Friesla, and Barnadore can help them do that. Hope you enjoy it.
Panel Introductions and Goals
00:00:45
Speaker
Evening everyone. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. We've got a fantastic panel of presenters and hopefully we can get a good discussion going with all of you here that are joining us this evening. We certainly don't want to keep you for your entire evening. We will try and bring you some pretty hard hitting presentations and certainly get to some Q and A. We'll get to a couple of really quick introductions, make sure that you're all familiar with who we are.
00:01:11
Speaker
And I've got the honors of getting things kicked off. So I guess I'll introduce myself and then maybe Bob and James can follow suit. My name's Campbell Walken. I take care of the integrations and partnerships team here at Agri-Web. I've been with Agri-Web for just over six and a half years. This was one of the early team members when the business was founded and worked in Australia and the United Kingdom and happy to be back in North America these days leading our team. And hence being on this webinar and presenting to you and
00:01:38
Speaker
being able to pull together amazing partners like Friesland and Barnes and Door. Bob, do you want to give us a quick introduction to yourself? Sure. Thanks Campbell. It's great to be here and looking forward to this presentation and this discussion together with other great people. Yeah. And really our aim is to help farmers and ranchers restore local meat processing. That's the aim of what we're doing. And I'm sure that's music to the ears of
00:02:06
Speaker
farmers and ranchers and look forward to sharing what we're doing. And hopefully we can add some value to this discussion and give you something to think about for a way to solve some of the problems that you're facing every day. Absolutely. We're excited to have you. Thanks again, James.
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, super. Thanks Campbell so much for the opportunity to be here and welcome everyone today.
Barnadore's Mission and Market Control
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, I'm James and I am the chief operating officer over at Barnadore. I've been with a company about four years now, the company we serve thousands of farms across all 50 states in the US. Very focused on go to market, specifically on building branding, building a direct market, both to consumer retail and wholesale markets, but where you own the customers, you own the margin, you own the upside of your business.
00:02:53
Speaker
Big part of this is we all know there's a lot of constraints in the market and the big part too is that people want to buy from you. They want to buy local, but they need to know how and needs to be easy and convenient. So look forward to diving in further as we go along in this webinar. Again, Campbell, thanks so much for the opportunity to be here. Not at all guys. Perfect. So without any further ado, so I guess to kick things off, I wanted to kind of look at
00:03:18
Speaker
How we kind of move from data through processing to actually marketing and sell animals. And so I wanted to talk a little bit from that perspective and hopefully bring some reasonable insights from the agri-rib side of things. So this first session we've entitled using data to add value. And what I want to just start off with is.
00:03:39
Speaker
It's not data. Data is not what we're looking for. What we're looking for is information. I've been in far too many rooms in the early days of my time in Agri-Lab speaking to a room full of ranchers and starting to talk about data and seeing eyes roll back in people's heads or boredom set in almost immediately. And so what I want you to think about is hopefully
00:04:01
Speaker
using data to get to information, to get to insights that can help you push your businesses forward. And I guess on that note, earlier this year and how this webinar has kind of come about, earlier this year, we ran a survey through our 12 and a half thousand ranchers that use Agrib every day. And it was called the state of the global farmer. And we really asked ranchers like you all on the call.
00:04:26
Speaker
what their thoughts were, what was keeping them awake at night, what they were really excited about. And we came up with a lot of data, right? I'll keep using that word. But I think what we were really excited about was this opportunity to, again, take that data and really see some trends, some insights, and come up with valuable information.
Trends and Data-Driven Insights for Ranchers
00:04:46
Speaker
And that's what we put into the final report, which you can get it at iGrub.com. I highly recommend a read.
00:04:54
Speaker
But for me at least, one of the things that was surprising was more US ranchers are cutting out the middleman. And really what it came down to was that almost 40% of US survey respondents said that they were selling some or all of the cattle direct to consumer.
00:05:15
Speaker
And that's it to me, at least, and to most of the team here at Agrib was a surprising statistic. And so we started to do two things. We looked at, well, what data points, what pieces of information would be really helpful for our users to empower them on this journey. And really how can we better assist our ranching customers to get that data, to turn it into those insights, again, that helps them bring their product to market.
00:05:44
Speaker
So first up was we ran an initial webinar. The idea was let's get some pretty forward thinking, some pretty incredible Agrib users into a room and get their thoughts as to how they're running that side of their business,
Challenges in Direct Sales for Ranchers
00:05:58
Speaker
right? How they're bringing cattle direct or beef direct to consumers. And so we came out with really five pretty interesting questions or what we thought were interesting questions, but ultimately they bow down to, do I have the time? How am I going to market my product?
00:06:14
Speaker
How do I need to or do I need to change the management of my herd? Have I found the right processor and how am I going to get my product to customers? And we started to really look and my colleagues said, we know what we're good at, but we certainly aren't able to answer all of those questions. And that's where we got to today. That's why I'm so excited to have everybody on the call today.
00:06:37
Speaker
The idea was, well, here at Agarev, we can help with the data side, what information can be really helpful to help with this direct consumer push. We found Bob and his team at Friesla, and I'm really excited to have him speak to you guys today about his micro processing and the ability to actually bring a democratized version of processing and butchering to ranchers, just like yourself. And then as James said, you know,
00:07:03
Speaker
found the barns door team and the amazing work that they were doing for thousands of ranchers and figured we can piece all that together. Surely we can really start to empower users as to how they can own their own supply chain.
00:07:16
Speaker
And that's really where we got to today. So I will drone on. I know it's the data side, but hopefully we can show you how information and how data can really make a difference on your ranch. And then I'll turn it over to these guys. So when we think about data and information and how it can add value, especially in a direct to consumer model, we think about it and it's corny by the three P's, provenance, planning, and product.
00:07:41
Speaker
And hopefully I can really speak to each one of these and provide some examples that we've worked with our ranchers, empowering them with their data and their information to add value to their business. But if you take away one thing, it's the three piece, Providence Planning and Product. And so first,
Branding and Storytelling in Direct-to-Consumer Sales
00:07:58
Speaker
Right off the bat, we've got Providence. And I've had this said to me at numerous times where ranchers are always putting their name behind a product, right? Whether you're selling those as stalkers, taking them directly to slaughter, wherever you're selling your product, your name's behind it. People know exactly who produced that animal. But when you start to take a product directly to consumer, to market,
00:08:23
Speaker
You start to really put your name behind it. As I said, we know those names that I mentioned earlier. And for us, this is totally, you know, where again, one of our customers puts it a lot better. And she said, when they started to bring their product directly to consumer.
00:08:39
Speaker
They knew they were going to, and it definitely played out this way, that they were going to get more and more questions, right? Is this what you say it is? Is this antibiotic free? And they really felt that this was something that they needed to be able to answer. And that's where data and information hopefully makes that a lot easier to do. When you've got that traceable, transparent information that you can lean on when those questions are answered.
00:09:04
Speaker
It's there, it's accessible, and hopefully it's there to really empower you to speak about your business. We like to think about it as the insurance policy. When that question's asked, that data, that information is immediately available for you to lean on.
00:09:19
Speaker
I guess the more exciting side of the first P in provenance is being able to differentiate your product. And again, one of our customers said it far better than I could, but she does a lot of the marketing and she really loves talking to people about her beef. It lights my fire, as she said. And that for us is hopefully the more exciting bit where you can start to gather that robust information and speak to those specifics.
00:09:44
Speaker
And really make sure that you're highlighting why you're producing that premium product, right? It's not a commodity. You're selling that directly to a consumer and why should they pay a premium? Why should they be really excited? Why should they buy into your brand of beef? And data and information starts to be really powerful in that sense. And a good example, something that I was thinking about earlier and what I've talked to customers about is whether you're highlighting, you know, your superior genetics, you know, and say a Wagyu or an
00:10:15
Speaker
whether it's on the production side, whether it's on the sustainability side, whatever you're looking to highlight, wherever you're going to set your product apart, consumers love information that they can relay, right? We all know this. It's social capital. When you come across an interesting piece of information, you can't wait to tell someone.
00:10:34
Speaker
And there's no better social capital than a really interesting statistic or data point. So, for example, data can help you tell that story, right? Information can help you tell that story. It's not just that they're grass-fed beef. They're grass-fed beef that spent this number of days in these different pastures and
00:10:54
Speaker
You can just start to provide a real colorful description of that product and really helps you to differentiate it. So again, hopefully information can serve as that insurance policy. And then hopefully it really helps you to paint that picture as to why you're producing a premium product. You're all spectacular ranchers. You're here learning on this webinar or hopefully learning, but you've invested the time, you know, you are those premium producers. Let information and let help data prove that.
00:11:24
Speaker
Second P is planning and this may be the kind of the most important of all them, especially when you're looking at should I, you know, undertake a direct to consumer model and the three things that we like to think about our input management slaughter planning and time management.
00:11:40
Speaker
And really making sure that you have the robust data, you have the really powerful insights and information to help you make those decisions. And so when we think about input management, if you're taking cattle all the way to slaughter, all the way to consumer, you're likely going to need more grass. You're probably going to need additional feed. There are going to be those upticks in branch inputs and a really powerful tool, some really robust information.
00:12:07
Speaker
is going to help you make those decisions just a little bit better. When it comes to slaughter planting, it's not just, you know, when they hit a thousand pounds, you're trying to use that information to balance customer demand, slaughter availability, and how your cattle are coming up the growth curve, right? Are they putting on weight the way you thought they would and data and information can, when it's pulled together nicely, can really help to make that decision a lot easier.
00:12:36
Speaker
And lastly, time management, right? These things take time. Setting up your own businesses, fine, a lot easier with Farm to Door and finding processing times is a lot easier with Friesla, but these things all still take time and need to be undertaken. And how can you use a really robust product, whether it's Agrib or another product on the market, or whether it's a really robust process for gathering and capturing this information, you're gonna wanna save that time to really focus on investing into your business.
00:13:04
Speaker
And so whether you're looking at pulling together information that looks at the insights on your animals so you can make a better decision, so you can plan better ahead, you're going to want the most robust information, the most robust data that you can get while getting it in a position that doesn't cost you a ton of time. So whether that focuses on the animals
00:13:27
Speaker
trying to predict those slaughter weights, whether that's on the input side of things and trying to understand do I have enough grass to make it to the end of the season, data and information can play a huge role in making this process a lot easier for you and your farm. And last and certainly not least,
00:13:43
Speaker
uh, product and as per usual, our users and our customers have said it best, right? Your product is your new lifeblood. It's what people are judging and your ability now to utilize information that's captured at the ranch about your animals, as well as feedback from customers around, you know, that particular cut of beef was spectacular.
00:14:07
Speaker
This one was a little tough, being able to blend that together really allows you to find a way to bring your best product to market.
Improving Products with Feedback and Data
00:14:17
Speaker
And it's about making those decisions that are going to allow you to bring a premium product to market, pulling that information, pulling that data set together and really being able to provide your customers and your consumers with the best product that you possibly can.
00:14:34
Speaker
So I hate those webinars that sound as if I've got all the answers, but don't, you know, give you anything actionable. So hopefully this is something that you can at least start to think about. And if it makes sense for you, fantastic. And you think about the three P's, but where do you start when speaking to our ranchers and, you know, for smarter people than me within our team.
00:14:53
Speaker
It seems to me like the best place to start would be, you know, what's really important to you, right? Are you going to mark your product as grass fed, antibiotic free, sustainable, carbon neutral, whatever that's going to be. Find that place to start, find that piece of information, that data point.
00:15:11
Speaker
and then look at a really robust process or a tool that can help you to aggregate that information so that your supply chain and your operation put yourself at the center of your digital ecosystem, make sure that you're capturing as much data as possible, and really use that to expand upon everything that you're looking to do in terms of bringing your product to market.
00:15:32
Speaker
But ideally what we're doing is now bringing some pretty incredible speakers like Bob to you. So I'll turn it over to Bob and he can give you a rundown on some pretty exciting work that he and the freezel team are doing. Take it away. Great. Well, thanks, Campbell. All right. We'll just.
00:15:48
Speaker
jump right into our presentation. And I also will share with you a bit of a walk through, through one of our systems. But before we get there, just kind of talk some background. So our company name is Friesla and our mission is restoring local meat processing. And it's like preaching to the choir, but the farm to table is alive and well. And you guys are basically wanting to get your product.
00:16:17
Speaker
that you take a lot of care and love doing, you wanna get that product directly to the consumers. We'll walk through the process a little bit with you, okay? And maybe just to give you a little bit of a timeline as to how we ended up with a modular system, this concept really started in 2002 when the first mobile harvest unit was approved by the USDA for use
00:16:44
Speaker
in all through the country. And that happened here in Washington state. And then shortly after that, a local company called Trivan Truck Body was approached and made a unit and then another one and so on. I got involved with that company in 2010. And from then till I founded Freeseless in 2018, we gained a lot of experience as to what people were looking for in the industry. And so it was in 2020, shortly after
00:17:15
Speaker
COVID hit, we really got our concept and our product into the marketplace. So we're going to focus mostly on the modular system during this presentation.
00:17:27
Speaker
So there's a harvest module, a carcass cooler module, cut and wrap module, and a finished goods freezer. And each one of those serves a particular function. But the way they're fabricated, prefabricated up our manufacturing plant here in Washington, they're shipped on a low boy trailer brought to the location and joined all together in this format. This is a typical format for us. This is an L-shaped format.
00:17:56
Speaker
The concept that we've developed is basically how can we make it so that this is easy to install on your location, but also very expandable. So basically we've designed it in such a way that you can add modules to the system very easily.
Friesla's Modular Meat Processing Systems
00:18:14
Speaker
So if you need additional capacity, we can add that capacity very quickly so very expandable and very dynamic to set up to move if needed, for instance, if your property becomes very valuable and you would like to move that.
00:18:30
Speaker
to another location, very easy to do. You just cannot do that with a brick and mortar facility. So they can be relocated, rearranged, or added onto as your operation grows, more cost effective to operate, less power, water, and other resources. The reason being is that it's purpose built exactly for what you're doing in it. So you're not cooling a large area that does not need cooling. You're not using more water than needed.
00:18:57
Speaker
which is very typical in these large plants. You can also depreciate this as equipment. It's basically a piece of equipment. So you can appreciate it over a seven-year period, which definitely is an advantage to you tax-wise. And we deliver this with a full management software system, as well as provide all the training and the regulatory assistance. So it's very much a turnkey system.
00:19:26
Speaker
So as far as the site work, that is something that our technical team will work with you and your contractors. Basically, you need a concrete pad or
00:19:37
Speaker
something like that to place the units on and then we'll work through all the mechanical things that you have to do. But basically you can know that Frieza is basically a turnkey solution for you and your questions will be answered. If we can't answer a question directly, we will definitely find out. So again, thank you very much.
00:19:59
Speaker
Thanks so much, Bob. It was, like I said, when I first was introduced to you guys, I literally had no idea that something like Friesley existed. And speaking to James and other kind of industry members, I think the really exciting bit is it's been the missing link, right? The ability to find.
00:20:14
Speaker
even smaller scale processing is something that's just not been available to this point. So we have had a couple questions come through, but I think in the interest of time, we'll get to James. We'll hear from James, because again, what an amazing way to complete that cycle going from on-ranch data capture to be able to processing and then actually bringing that product to market.
00:20:35
Speaker
I'm really excited to have James join us from Barn to Door. So we'll let him introduce the Barn to Door team and their story and we'll get to all your questions. So keep them coming through. James. Perfect. Thanks guys. Just a little bit about Barn to Door. We've been around for about six or seven years now and we service thousands of farms across all 50 states across America. And the company's designed explicitly to help farmers grow and manage their business and more importantly, increase sales and save time. So
00:21:02
Speaker
I think all of you guys know like look the expectations of buyers today when purchasing from your farm are very high, you are being measured not against other farms you're being measured against experience people have when they purchase. From Amazon, it has to be simple has to be easy product just needs to be easy to purchase and they need to know.
00:21:20
Speaker
how it's going to arrive, whether through pickup, fulfillment, or shipping. The good news for you is that people want to buy local. 94% of people want to buy your local product. As you guys all know, many products that you're competing against are greenwashed and you're competing against a lot of commodity conventional products. The key here is that you need to make sure that your product is not only easy to purchase, but you built a great brand because brands are super powerful and very important.
00:21:45
Speaker
What we know from serving thousands of farms that the tactics at the most successful farms, quality is obviously job one. You have to have a high quality product. Obviously, you have to be able to process it. You need to be able to cut that product into, again, a great product that is consumable and is, again, transparent, hopefully, around your practices. But then, ultimately, you have to build brand affinity. We know that farms that build brand affinity do better, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second.
00:22:12
Speaker
The other aspect too is you have to price and package your product in a way that's consumable for people to purchase from you. And I know that sounds easy, but believe it or not, most farmers make mistakes when it comes to pricing and packaging. And I'll share some data with you about what we've uncovered because we have millions of transactions that go through Barnadore and so we can see where the highest conversion rates are.
00:22:33
Speaker
And then third, it has to be convenient, right? We all know that buyers are increasingly lazy. And so if your product is not easy and convenient to purchase and to pick up or to ship or to have delivered on their doorstep.
00:22:44
Speaker
you will not win. They will simply default back to whatever's most convenient for them. From the farms we have worked with, what I can tell you is that farms that are with Barnador after 12 months have averaged over 52% growth, so 152% over the prior year in terms of sales. And farms have been with us for more than three years, or actually over 422% of growth. So it's really great to see just the demand that farms have been able to capitalize as the pandemic has underscored a lot of broken pieces in our logistics and supply chain.
00:23:14
Speaker
Let's start with brand. Why is brand so important? Brand is super important because brands evoke trust. The best example I love to give to farmers is a microbrewery, right? Every one of your customers that you have today could probably name five local microbreweries that they probably drink. I'm in Nashville right now, so I can name five beers here in Nashville that I would drink in a minute over versus a Budweiser or a Coors. Why is that? Because I know it's going to be a higher quality product.
00:23:40
Speaker
I know it's locally produced, and it's a local business that I want to support. Best part about it, it's going to taste better. And guess what? I'm also probably paying twice as much money for that product than I am for a Budweiser. Now, a local microbrewery doesn't have the budget that Anheuser-Busch, of course, does. They don't do Super Bowl ads. They don't have billions of dollars. They don't need to. What they do is they really build a consistent brand experience, and they know their customers, and they market locally. They really focus on having a consistent brand experience across all the channels.
00:24:08
Speaker
Not just your website and not just your social media, but your website, social media, and your email, your newsletters, all of that needs to be very easy and consistent and people need to be able to purchase from you with one click out of any one of those channels. Every one of these is a double digit channel in terms of your customer base, okay? The other thing we know is that people have an expectation of when they're making a purchase, it needs to be very simple in terms of they need the information at their fingertips.
00:24:36
Speaker
So obviously in all your cases, and you may be selling just direct to consumer, but for farmers, you guys also need to be able to have different pricing for your wholesale buyers. So if you're selling to grocers or if you're selling to restaurants, even though chefs or what have you, when they click through to purchase, they need to have a different pricing, different packaging, et cetera. Of course we support all that. Farmers that whether they're selling direct to consumer or direct to restaurants or other wholesale avenues, they have pricing and packaging that is specific to them. Fulfillment options often look different too. If you are selling into restaurants or grocers,
00:25:04
Speaker
very good likelihood that you're probably delivering directly to them. Your consumers might be just doing pickup or some local pickups in the vicinity, maybe at a local church or school or what have you. And what's great news for farmers today is that if you go back three years ago, pre-pandemic, only one out of 20 Americans had ordered food online for pickup or delivery. Today, fast forward, the pandemic accelerated this now.
00:25:28
Speaker
three out of five Americans purchase every month, which is amazing, just a sea change in the market. Because once consumers got used to the convenience of that through the pandemic, they weren't gonna give it up because it was just easier. And so if you're gonna do that, you had to be able to give, again, you have to have order cutoffs, you need to be able to have simplicity being able to manage it. And again, flexible payment alternatives for people. They don't wanna just pay cash and check. You're probably gonna wanna offer the capability for them to pay with credit card. Your sales will go up. So for farmers, the big thing here is again,
00:25:58
Speaker
making that experience streamlined. At Barn to Door we provide the tools to again help farmers save time and save money by again automating a much of this process. So whether they're ordering for direct to consumer or for your wholesale accounts you're going to have a pick and pack list that will break down but you have to assemble where it goes to all your labels are automated and it can be printed out. If you do deliveries we also integrate directly with Rotific which
00:26:24
Speaker
again, can automate your routing and route management. You'll save about 35% plus just on fuel cost alone. And believe it or not, it's a lower carbon footprint. When farms run delivery, it's actually better for the environment. So if you have a hundred customers, it's better for the environment for you to run delivers to a hundred customers than for a hundred customers to drive to your pickup location. So that saves about a 40% reduction in carbon footprint just by doing delivery. It's kind of interesting.
00:26:48
Speaker
Streamlining operations, we oftentimes get asked this by livestock farmers specifically.
Simplifying Sales and Subscription Models for Ranchers
00:26:52
Speaker
So first off is, can you support variable weights? Answer is absolutely. We have a lot of farms and ranches who sell purely quarter half and whole, particularly in rural areas. And certainly you can take a deposit, 200, 400, 800 dollars for that animal. We tokenize the payment. And then when the animal is harvested at a later date, obviously through a freeze up processing location onsite or at your food hub, you can actually have at that point, whatever the final price is or whatever the final weight is,
00:27:18
Speaker
You can put that final amount it is an automatically deducted deposit and charge the card on file or you can invoice them for the final amount so they pay cash or check for that final amount so you're not having to pay any credit card fees. The most successful ranches we work with that are getting not just multimillion we have some eight figure farms as well that do north of $10 million a year.
00:27:38
Speaker
the most successful farms we work with align their harvest dates with their fulfillment dates. I don't know if any farmer or rancher who wants to be in the freezer business, none. You wanna be in the business of making money and moving your product, 100% of your product. So the big thing there is again, is to price and package your product where if you are doing quarter half and a whole, that those animals are processed and then they're moved either the same day or the next day in terms of fulfillment. The same thing would be true with respect to setting up subscriptions.
00:28:07
Speaker
This has been a highly successful aspect of Barn to Door. There's no additional charge for subscriptions. We don't charge a percentage of any fees of your subscriptions. We want every farmer having subscriptions. Why? Because all of your customers eat every day, every week, three times a day, they're going to eat and they have no choice. Otherwise they're six feet underground, right? People are going to continue to place orders for your product. 90% of what people eat week over week, month over month is the same.
00:28:34
Speaker
So why make them have to come place in order every week or every month? Why make a restaurant place in order right now? Many of you probably familiar with the concept of a standing order for restaurants. So yes, we support that, but we also want you getting your consumers into subscriptions and I'll show you some data in a second why that's so successful, but you want to build recurring cashflow for your business with subscriptions and it's easier for buyers, right? So you align your harvest dates with your subscription orders, stay out of the freezer business and build as much cashflow as you can.
00:29:04
Speaker
And of course you want things to just flow through into QuickBooks from a money management standpoint. And yes, we support like Avalara for taxes and all that other good stuff. In addition to saving time, you also are going to be looking to increase sales. The way you increase sales is you have to drive awareness around your brand, but you also have to then tell people about it, right? It's one thing to have a beautiful brand. It's one thing to have a great presence on social media and on your website. But the reality is email marketing today,
00:29:30
Speaker
works incredibly well. And if any of you are questioning my thoughts on that, actually just go look at your own inbox. I guarantee you're getting multiple emails from Tractor Supply, Cabela's, Bass Fishing Outlet. You're probably getting those not just once a month, you get those every single week. And so the thing is, you want to drive consistent email marketing campaigns. We are the largest partner for MailChimp. We are their number one partner in the United States. We have thousands of accounts with them. We set up hundreds of accounts every single month. And what's great about it,
00:29:59
Speaker
is you can actually automate campaigns. Again, you're not having to manually send emails, but you can actually create what are called automated customer journeys where you can then send emails to people based on their relationship with your farm. So if it's their first time buyer, they scan a QR code, what have you, they'll get an automated, Hey, welcome to, you know, I don't know, double D ranch. We're really excited about working with you. Let us tell you about their dreams for our family ranch. We're really excited to feed you and your family. Here's what we do. Here's our practices place you order today.
00:30:29
Speaker
fully automated, right? Looks like it's personalized and that can set it into a set of drip campaigns. At the same time, you can do very different campaigns for your loyal buyers versus perhaps lapsed buyers. So we automate setting those up, we build out the templates so your farm can make more money. The best part about it is we have all the data to prove it. In fact, we know when farmers put these pieces in place, their average order value increases over 30%. The fun part about it too is that given our size with MailChimp, we have a really deep data integration
00:30:58
Speaker
So we can precisely tell you how much money comes from every email that is sent. So very powerful, it's not guesswork. You're actually seeing the results of your marketing activities. And again, much of this can be automated. Social media too is obviously a very big area where we drive a lot of engagement. We can help provide prompts and sample examples of how to market effectively. And then of course, the big part of the value of Barn to Door isn't just the software, but the service that comes around it. It's that one-on-one coaching that comes from account managers,
00:31:26
Speaker
who work with farms like you and can tell you the tactics that our teams have implemented with others. Now there's no two farms that are exactly the same. So again, it's gonna be working with you precisely on what your goals are. But every farmer gets access to workshops, a bunch of DIY resources, and I'll talk about the Connect program in a second. But then we also provide additional support with one-on-one coaching, marketing toolkits, academies for ongoing learning, et cetera. So one thing that makes Barnadore incredibly unique is that unlike any other e-commerce platform on the planet,
00:31:56
Speaker
is because we serve as exclusively farmers and we have thousands of those, what we do is we invite four farmers every quarter to be a part of our farm advisory network. So we have 16 farmers at any given time. So we're rotating for each quarter as we retire them year over year.
00:32:13
Speaker
And what's nice about it is we always have a collection of farms that are protein farmers, produce farmers, dairy farmers, what have you. But the most important part is that all of these farms are doing six figures or seven figures online with Barn to Door today. And they're very successful. They're very good at what they do. But they're available to all of our Barn to Door members every single week. They can get on the phone. They can have a mono, mono conversation. So you're not just getting the software and service support from the Barn to Door team, but you're also getting to talk to other farms and ranches like yourself
00:32:43
Speaker
all across the country who can tell you what they did, what worked, the tips and tactics. Because again, no two farms are going to be the same, right? You're going to want to talk to others and see what works for you. But what's great about it is we're going to have this resource available for you at all times. Now, we have a very simplified pricing plan at Barn to Door. I won't cover it here. What I'll just tell you point blank, though, is that we don't take any percentage of your sales at all. And we don't mark up your products at all. We just simply charge a one-time setup fee and then a flat monthly fee.
00:33:13
Speaker
That's it. So the key here is that the way we are profitable long-term is by scaling and serving thousands and thousands of farms, right? We're not trying to be profitable off the back of any one farm, right? So for us, it's much more about scale and then building the pieces in place to help you be successful. We won't turn a profit on a farm that we sign up for two years. And that's okay, because we know once we get a farm set up and going with Barnadore, then we help them be successful, they're going to be a customer with us for the long haul.
00:33:42
Speaker
Now, like I said, there are a couple of other things we do in addition to those core
Building a Brand Early for Customer Attraction
00:33:46
Speaker
capabilities. A lot of farms need help with marketing. And if you're here today, perhaps you're thinking about building a direct-to-market business. One of the most important things you can do is start building your brand today. When restaurants open, as an example, oftentimes what you don't want to do is make a big capital investment, try to go build a restaurant, and then open up one night and then pray that people show up. Restaurants do just the opposite. Six months before the restaurant is going to be open,
00:34:12
Speaker
They build out their website, they build their social media, they start driving FOMO, start bringing people into the story that, hey, we're going to be opening our restaurant. Let us tell you about what's going on. Draw people into the emotional experience of supporting his local business.
00:34:25
Speaker
And then they start pre-selling seats to that restaurant. So the day the restaurant opens, it's sold out. And so that's a big deal. So you want to be thinking about the same way. If you're thinking about moving from a cow-calf operation, or if you're thinking about making a capital investment and building your own processor, start building that brand now. Start building brand affinity. Start inviting people to come in and support you because people want to buy local. They want to buy from you. There's no shortage of market demand.
00:34:54
Speaker
All of you have a market awareness problem. So we try to provide a lot of assets to help you drive an increased engagement and awareness on social media with email marketing as well. And then the other big part of this is just ongoing education. As you scale and as you have success, we provide ongoing academy classes that are affected with like 201, 301, and 401 classes. These are all taught by farmers, by the way.
00:35:17
Speaker
Every one of these are taught by farmers who are rock stars in their own areas. For instance, our social media classes are taught by farmers who have 60,000 followers on Instagram. These people know exactly what they're doing, right? Now they didn't get there just by happen chance or luck. They got there by building out a social media strategy. And so we teach those classes are again, this is
00:35:37
Speaker
a drop in the bucket. We know of other marketing solutions and marketing organizations who sell their classes for 5,000, 10,000, $15,000, like a lot of money. But that's how they try to make their money is on professional services. We're not that business. We're not trying to, again, make the money on professional services. What we're trying to do is trying to subsidize all these additional add-on value so that we can build a long-term relationship with you with underlying software. Okay. So anyways, all these classes are taught by farmers like you.
00:36:08
Speaker
They just happen to be domain experts in their own areas. The financial class is taught by QuickBooks pro advisors who are farmers, who service other farms to managing their accounting and bookkeeping. They're going to tell you how they do it, what have you, right? So I won't go through all this in detail, but then out of it, I just want you to know that at Barnator, we're really proud of ourselves on farmers who are successful in enabling farmers, again, help bring those best practices and tactics forward to help you be successful in building your business.
00:36:33
Speaker
Awesome. No, thank you so much, James. That's incredibly informative. And like I said, I've read through a fair few case studies on the Barnador site and it looks like ranchers and farmers are getting a spectacular service. And it's good to know that both Barnador and AgriP have saved the marriage or two. I know a few audits that have gone a little bit smoother with AgriP. So I'm glad we're not alone on that one. We've got about five, 10 minutes left. There's a couple of questions coming in through here. So I want to make sure we get to them.
00:36:59
Speaker
First one for you, Bob, do you work directly with the USDA? How does that work with the freeze list setup? I think the question is just wanting to expand on that side of things. Yes, we do. Yeah, we have the ability to speak directly with the USDA. We will help you with the first step, which is applying for a grant of inspection and then have in-house expertise to write your HACCP plan and help you with training and implementation and then follow up support.
00:37:27
Speaker
It's a very important part of it. It's something that scares a lot of people because you're allowing the government to come in on your property, but it's not really that intimidating once the inside track and, you know, have the right people involved. So yeah, that's what we do.
00:37:44
Speaker
Amazing, amazing. Next one, I might tackle, but what are some specific data points that I should be recording? I think honestly that, that comes down to what your goals are, right? It's going back to a couple of things that James said. If you're looking at, is it halves, holes and quarters? Is it boxes? Whatever your goal is, whatever that product is that you're trying to market, look at where your customers might want to know, is it what they've been fed with, treated with, read, things of that nature.
00:38:10
Speaker
really look at what your customers might want to know and capture that information so you can tell that story. I don't know if anyone wants to add anything to that, but that would be where I would start. Yeah, I would echo that big time. It's super important to be transparent about your practices. And if you have any certifications, share them, market them. If you're an AGW grass-fed certified farm or a GFE certified farm, and there's just several certifications that are out there.
00:38:37
Speaker
All those labels add trust to your brand. The other one would be like any affiliation. So you have that might be associated with you as a person. So for instance, like if you're a veteran and you're a member of, you know, farmers veteran coalition or homegrown by heroes. Again, people are empathetic to causes that they care about. So that's a really great, again, another avenue, not just about your product, but who they're supporting because they want to invest in you. Yeah.
00:39:02
Speaker
Great point. Couldn't agree more. One question. I think James, hopefully you can tackle this. I think you mentioned in terms of marketing and the courses, and this is probably where this is coming from. Does Barnetador assist in helping reach new customers or is it around empowering you with tools and training and things like that?
00:39:18
Speaker
We're going to teach you how to fish, right? You own the customer. At the end of the day, again, people have this perception that they have to spend a ton of money on marketing. You don't. Most of our farmers today don't actually quote-unquote spending your money on Facebook, boosting or any of that stuff. Honestly, it's just grassroots bottoms up marketing. For every farm that signs up, we create like little simple marketing assets. They have QR codes that they can post at their kids' school back at the church. Some of our most successful farms that they do, they go in and offer to do education classes.
00:39:46
Speaker
to primary school kids to learn about farming, learn about where your food comes from, right? This is a hot topic with young teachers. And then by doing that, what they end up doing is they end up then giving a flyer about their farm to every kid who's in that class. What do you think that kid does? They take that flyer home and tell mom, dad, guess what? I just learned about how cows are raised, what regenerative farming is, right? And guess what? They get subscribers every time. It costs them absolutely nothing.
00:40:09
Speaker
And yet they're getting exactly a local farm, a local buyer. They'll invite kids. In fact, they'll invite the kids as part of that flyers. Hey, I'm going to have an on-farm event for kids. I'd love to have you come out, visit the cattle, you get a chance to pet some animals, whatever. But just really creative, simple things that cost nothing that will distinguish your brand from a commodity product.
00:40:29
Speaker
Yep. No, I think it's amazing. I love the gorilla marketing tactics from the farmers. We've always said farmers are the most innovative people on the planet. Just don't tell them that. And as you say, distinguish it from a commodity, build that story, build that brand, and then hopefully you can use a little bit of data to power that on the backside of things.
00:40:45
Speaker
One more that's just come through here and I guess maybe this is for everyone. What's the biggest benefit that ranchers see by selling direct to consumer? I know maybe James, if you want to continue on that and then Bob and we can go from there, we can wrap up. Two big things. Number one is higher price point. No question about it. Just like the microbrewery, you're going to be able to sell at a much higher price point. People are willing to pay for it.
00:41:10
Speaker
In fact, we have a lot of farms that if you're not pricing it high enough that someone complains to you, you're probably not pricing it high enough, right? You should have people walking away because believe it or not, people are willing to pay for your product. The second thing is more resiliency, right? Like the more you have a direct relationship, the more that you can have control over your processing, the more that you can control that supply chain and take out the middleman, as I think Campbell's hitting on at the very beginning of his presentation, the more margin you're putting in your pocket long-term,
00:41:38
Speaker
And that's going to give not only peace and satisfaction, but you're also going to be giving your buyers peace and satisfaction because food security is one of the number one concern of families right now. All of us have walked into a grocery store. In fact, we have a whole marketing thing going around food security that we gave out to the farmers asking, Hey, ask your customers, are you concerned? Have you seen empty store shelves in the last few months? Get started with us. I'll make sure your family's fed, right? It's subscribed to this farm. Like just.
00:42:05
Speaker
People are concerned, so that's a big deal. You're going to make a lot more money and your community is going to love you long-term. Love that. Bob? Yeah, I would just put it simply like what you alluded to Campbell earlier. It's a missing link. You need all the links in the chain in order to be strong. And this allows farmers and ranchers to take back control and they can control how fast they want to grow and who they will sell to. It's a beautiful system.
00:42:33
Speaker
when it all works together. That's it. I won't add anything on that. I think that's a fantastic point to end on. And hopefully what we wanted to create today of, you know, this may not be a perfect option for your business, but if it is, hopefully this has given you a little bit to think about a little bit more information on this might not be as hard as you might think. And hopefully there's some pretty smart people out there, James and Bob and included that are willing and.
00:42:57
Speaker
Wake up every day and hopefully help you achieve those goals that you've got for your ranch. So thank you guys so much, Bob and James. Really appreciate you guys taking the time and thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you. Thanks to you Campbell. Have a great night guys. Thank you. Take care.
00:43:14
Speaker
I want to extend my thanks to AgriWeb for involving us in this webinar. Here at Barnadore, we're humbled to support thousands of farms across the country who implement sustainable agricultural practices and support their local communities.
Resource Accessibility and Further Information
00:43:26
Speaker
For more information on AgriWeb and Freeza, you can find links to their websites in the episode description. To learn more about Barnadore, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm, go to barnadore.com slash resources. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week.
00:43:46
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in. For more free farm resources, tips, and tactics that are most successful farms use to grow and manage their business, visit barnadore.com slash resources. Also don't forget to subscribe to the direct farm podcast to automatically download our weekly episodes. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.