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Selling Half and Whole Hogs from the Farm
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In this week’s episode, Janelle talks to Erica of Benoit Family Farmstead (MO) to discuss selling pork to her community. From cuts to bulk orders, she uncovers how she manages her inventory, builds FOMO for her products and keeps her fulfillments streamlined.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Independent Farmer Podcast
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, Barn 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 own brand,
00:00:58
Speaker
and making sure their customers can purchase from their farm online and in person. In today's conversations, we'll be getting into selling half and whole hogs directly to your community.
Meet Erica from Benoit Family Farmstead
00:01:08
Speaker
I'm happy to welcome back Erica of Benoit Family Farmstead in Missouri.
00:01:12
Speaker
Erica has leveraged barn to door for her business for four years and is part of our farm advisor network. Since becoming an advisor, she has helped inspire other farmers across the country, in part because of her success story where she and her husband left off-farm jobs and are now full-time farming.
Transitioning to Full-Time Farming
00:01:28
Speaker
including her tips and best practices on how to grow your farm business from diversifying product lines to building a loyal local customer base. And yes, we did welcome her back. She has prior podcasts, so please go listen to those.
00:01:40
Speaker
It's full of great tips. Today we'll dive in specifically on pork sales. Welcome, Erica. Thank you. We have to still give people a background because we'll just pretend they didn't listen to all the prior podcasts. All right. So tell us a little bit about your farming journey.
00:01:54
Speaker
Let's just start there. A quick, quick little brief overview and then sort of pull up on the pork side of things. Okay. So we bought our farm about 10 years ago now. Bought it from my grandma. Moved here with two kids. We now have four kids. and um We started out just wanting to homestead. We but had a garden in town. We knew we wanted to plant a garden and just kind of expand from there and knew how much better it tasted to have homegrown food.
00:02:19
Speaker
I would have never guessed it would have turned into all this, but i'm glad it has. Just the more we grew, the more people wanted what we had and it just kept snowballing from there and we created this whole business. And yeah, we're both able to stay home full time with our kids.
Diversifying Farm Products
00:02:37
Speaker
We homeschool now. So we've been given a lot more opportunities than we thought we would ever be given with this lifestyle.
00:02:44
Speaker
That's amazing. And so just for folks listening, you're selling poultry, pork, dairy, right? Yes. You want to give a little refresh on what the product mix is and what order you started them because you didn't start it all on day one.
00:03:00
Speaker
and No, I wish we would have probably spread it out a little bit further. Knowing now I would have started just a little bit slower, but we crammed everything in. We started out with like five chickens, like laying hens. We quickly got up to about 200 of those.
00:03:15
Speaker
Started out with just like a boar and a couple of sows, started picking those and just kind of expanded from there. Mm-hmm. We had, think, five cows and a bull that we started with.
00:03:26
Speaker
We're up to 16 now. Hogs, we have about nine sows now. Yeah, we just started out selling like five hogs, you know, keep a couple of to ourselves and sold the rest. And the goal was to just cover our feed costs. So basically we had free meat through it. Thanks. I like that.
The Shift to Online Sales
00:03:43
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it just, the word started spreading and people were just coming to us and contacting us wanting pork. Wow. It's fun to hear that because we so often, and so many our of our podcasts and when we're talking to farms, even about what Barn to Door does and why we're so excited about helping independent farmers, some of it is just, well, you're doing all the hard work, really. Like we just want to facilitate, but a big part of it is we know how much demand there is.
00:04:09
Speaker
Like nine out of 10 people, And I even think that's being conservative, right? But nine out of 10 people prefer local food. They want local food. And they're literally, in your case, coming to you. It's a very sort of palpable example of like our homestead grew into a farm business because of our local community wanting to eat meat they trusted that was local from a farmer they trusted with no supply chain and complete transparency and full of nutrients.
00:04:35
Speaker
And of course, everybody's going to demand that, right? But the neat part of working with farms is the goal, the whole reason why Barns Adore is, can we help you tap into that? Like, let's make sure you're actually really, really tapping into that demand, which is kind of fun and interesting to discuss. And, you know, a lot of it comes to building your farm brand, which you've done an incredible job.
00:04:56
Speaker
And then making sure it's really easy for people to shop from you and to get your food, right? Like you have to get in front of those buyers and sort of make that happen. I don't know if you want to add any comment to that. I'm just so excited to hear that you full on experience that demand even coming to you.
00:05:12
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. I'll also say like right before we signed up for Barn to Door, So like right after 2020, obviously it was easy to sell so locally raised meats in 2020 because nobody could find anything else.
00:05:25
Speaker
And then 2021, it started getting harder. And i contacted our local grocery store to try to get something sold in there. And they just told me, nobody's going to pay your prices. We can't sell what you're offering because nobody's going to pay that in this area. Wow.
00:05:39
Speaker
and Yeah. And then the guy that was in charge of that would have ordered from me, he's like, you have to go online. He said, everybody's going online. If you want to get your products sold, you have to go online.
00:05:50
Speaker
So that's when we really looked deeper into Barn to Door and ended up signing up. That's awesome. So it was that online. I mean, at least in your case, you experienced that like, okay, online, because that's how people buy. And you found out that that's true.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Farming Hogs: A Practical Choice
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Let's talk about pork. I guess, i don't know if you'd sort of explain how or why you even got into pork farming. Like, why pork? Why pigs? Why sows? And then bring us up to how many? You said you have nine sows now, or you started with nine? We started with just two. Okay. Yes, we have nine now.
00:06:22
Speaker
Got it. So hogs is kind of my favorite thing because when I was growing up, we would raise a few hogs, we'd butcher them. I grew up watching my dad and all of his friends come together and butcher hogs in the garage.
00:06:33
Speaker
And so i I knew a lot about that and I really enjoyed the process of that. So that was a good start for us to build on that. It was also a more sustainable item to start with. Like beef cost thousands and thousands of dollars and years to be established.
00:06:50
Speaker
Whereas hogs was lot faster. Yeah. Just didn't cost nearly as much to get started for us. That's more practical, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. At least as a starter, as a starter product, potentially, that makes a ton of sense.
00:07:03
Speaker
And then when do you sell? Like what's the, I guess that's sort of part of the nuts and bolts of it, right? How do you package it? When do you sell it? and So we started out with just whole and halves. Back in like 2020, 2019, we would kind of keep like one or two hogs worth of cuts in the freezer just have something to sell. Like if somebody wanted to try the sausage or something that we were able to sell that to them. And there was a handful of people that just wanted a little bit. But my focus was bulk.
00:07:28
Speaker
A lot of that was because that's what I understand because I like to buy bulk. I want to stock my freezer. I want to pull meat from the freezer. We're in a rural community, so pretty much everybody has a deep freezer.
00:07:39
Speaker
So everybody kind of understands that concept of you fill the freezer and you shop from the freezer. So it was a pretty easy easy sell for people because so many people... you know, buy that way. They knew their parents bought that way.
00:07:52
Speaker
They just understood the concept a lot more than if we were in a bigger city and nobody had deep freezers. But I do subscriptions. I've been dabbling in subscriptions just a little bit, just like one hog's worth a month and whatever doesn't go through the subscription that I keep in the freezer to sell.
00:08:08
Speaker
I haven't been trying to sell cuts because i don't really have the freezer space to hold a lot of cuts. But with our farm store we're building, then I'm really going start pushing cuts and expand on the subscription program.
00:08:19
Speaker
The people that get to subscriptions, they absolutely love it. I really like the cash flow of it
Pork Sales Strategies
00:08:25
Speaker
where I know ah certain date I'm getting this much money from my subscriptions. So that really helps helps the cash flow of a farm kind of even out and it's not just the as much high and lows as it has before.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's fun to hear you say that because I know you've had a lot of success with the haves and the haves and haves and moving larger amounts, which is really great. But you also have had so much success with your chicken subscriptions, including some of that FOMO and knowing how to market that really well.
00:08:54
Speaker
So it's fun and interesting to see you also applying that over on the pork side and certainly offering that. It's interesting because yes, there is a market of people who have deep freezers, but it's actually a smaller market.
00:09:08
Speaker
If you're looking at the overall potential customers, that most customers don't have deep freezers, right? And so it's good to think about, well, if they don't have deep freezers, how do I package this to sell in a way that those people will also buy? And it sounds like you've...
00:09:24
Speaker
thought that through. Yeah. Yeah. So I do a monthly subscription. i also do a quarterly subscription. So I don't want to be running around all the time. I've really tried to condense my deliveries as much as possible.
00:09:37
Speaker
And so instead of doing a so smaller delivery of like five pounds a month, I just do 10 pounds every three months for quarterly. So I try to kind of bulk it up as much as possible. So I'm not running everywhere and really like conserve my time to the best I can for people.
00:09:54
Speaker
And you asked you about like the timeline of when we sell hole in house, we do that all year round. We try to try to Pharaoh year round. We are probably not the best at planning things ahead. we have the boar in there and just whenever it happens, it happens. And whenever we have babies, that's when we plan everything else out. Yeah.
00:10:15
Speaker
Ideally, we'd be a little bit better at that, but we're do it all. You can't do it all. you can't you can't do it all you can't do it all yeah Or we'll take care of the part of the business.
00:10:25
Speaker
but Yes. That's great. That's great. We try to pre-sell them as much as possible. So as soon as we wean them, we'll get them up to about 50 or 60 pounds. And that's when I will make sure butcher dates are scheduled. I will get them listed on barn to door and really start hustling them as soon as I possibly can.
00:10:43
Speaker
For my aspect too, I want to make sure they're sold before I go to the locker amen on customers' aspects. If they're getting 75, you know, over 100 pounds of meat at a time, they need to plan ahead too.
00:10:54
Speaker
And so by planning ahead, everybody's able to you know, have a heads up when there's that much meat coming in at the same time. It also splits the cost up for people. So you have to pay for the entire whole, you know the whole price that goes to meat up front.
00:11:10
Speaker
And then they pay for the processor when they pick it up. And so as somebody, you know, if they order two months ahead of time, then they're able to spread that cost out a little bit further for them, you It's a little bit more manageable for some families that are on tighter budgets. yeah So you do a deposit in a final charge or you you actually charge a full amount for your halves and wholes, like a flat rate? Yes, a flat rate.
00:11:32
Speaker
Wow. I was actually, you guys taught me how to do that. I was really leery. I mean, there's honestly, there's so many options for how to do it. It's just fun to hear. And it sounds like that that's working really well.
00:11:45
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. So before, before barn to door, we would collect a half payment deposit. Some people didn't have the money at the time to pay the remaining balance or something would happen.
00:11:59
Speaker
And it was just a lot easier in the end to just charge the full amount. And, you know if somebody doesn't want to pay the full price, like get a half hog. I charge the exact same for like per pound right for a half hog and a whole hog.
00:12:12
Speaker
You know, half hogs, exactly half of a whole hog. That was something that I think you guys recommended to charge a little bit more for a half hog, you know, not cut it in exactly in half.
00:12:23
Speaker
But I did find that there was people that they would try to like get a friend to come together to buy the whole hog. So they made sure they saved little bit and it ended up being kind of more of an asshole.
00:12:34
Speaker
Yeah. and i can also I can also encourage people to just get started with a half. So they can see that it doesn't cost me any more to just start with half. And then people some people order twice a year. They'll order you know kind of order in the spring for their summer cuts, order in the fall for their winter cuts.
00:12:52
Speaker
And it works out pretty good for a lot of people. Yeah, I like that. It does create a natural way, again, to sort of spread out their payments. But ultimately... when you are buying in bulk, you do tend to get a little better rates than if you're selling cut by cut by cut. Right.
00:13:05
Speaker
So I know a lot of people are very incentivized
Challenges in Bulk Selling
00:13:08
Speaker
to do that and to make sure that they can, they, you know, that they are literally making sure that they have that in the freezer as their option, right? Just, it's some peace of mind to folks to not all of a sudden be out of, you know, farm food and have to rely on ah big box grocer where who knows where that came from. Right. Yeah.
00:13:25
Speaker
So yeah, there's a lot of peace of mind for folks making sure that they're sort of stocked up on on quality. So I appreciate that. So how much do you charge? This is Missouri. i don't know if you have any insights on your particular market or community or state. It's so different from state to state all around the country, what folks can charge.
00:13:44
Speaker
But where did you finally land and how's that going for you? So we finally landed at $400 for a whole hog. We tried to only get them up to about 250 pounds and then they pay for the processing. Processing is around $250 for a whole hog.
00:13:58
Speaker
Got it. That makes a ton sense. And I don't know if I asked you what breed, what type of hog you're raising. So they're Berkshire Hereford crosses. Okay. Okay. So the whole timeframe of getting them up to 250 pounds is how long?
00:14:13
Speaker
About five months. Yep. Okay. That's incredible. Yes. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. Do you plan to expand? Yes. So last year we only sold about 40 hogs.
00:14:23
Speaker
That was a time of us saving back gilts and just kind of transitioning a lot of things. So we sold everything we possibly had, but it was only 40. This year I've already sold, I think at least 50 and taken them to the locker. And wow so we should have over a hundred sure that we'll be selling. Yeah.
00:14:40
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty exciting. That's awesome. Okay. So you're doing a flat rate for half and whole, which is great. It's interesting. one other thing, some, actually, honestly, many of the firms that use Barn D'Or software to sell and manage their half holes of hogs and arguably also, you know, whole goat and whole lamb and quarter half hole.
00:15:01
Speaker
cow, they will take a deposit. Like Barns Door says, hey, we'll take like a $200 or $300 deposit. So it's a meaningful amount, right? But then you're already paid that before. And then of course, the beauty of that is, is you can, to your point, have everything reserved before it goes to the butcher, like You'll sleep better knowing everything's accounted for and you're not having to sell after the fact and have become a freezer business or cold storage business that it's all ready. And therefore, after the butcher, it has a home to go to.
00:15:29
Speaker
But then the way that our system also works, um this is actually possible. patented technology, which is why i'm mentioning it, but they can then, once they have the final hanging weight and they do want to sell by weight, if you will, they can then auto-charge their customers the remainder and it will subtract that original deposit and give that customer a receipt. And so if those customers have a credit card on file, unlike you were talking about earlier, they know that they're going to get paid and they don't have to keep bugging those customers when they might, you know, they
00:16:01
Speaker
it's more security for farmers not to get shorted, which makes us happy is sort of the net net of it. I love it though, because we do talk through all of the proteins, like chickens is another good example. Some people sell those by weight and other people sell it for a flat price, right?
00:16:15
Speaker
I'd say that's a good example of a lot of folks are like, hey, if it's between this and this, it's just going to be 20 bucks or 25 bucks or 30 bucks or whatever else. So it's really great to hear the optionality, including what has worked in particular for you to move those products to, wow, already 50 and we're not even through May.
00:16:33
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that like why I started doing bulk instead of going to cuts was just so my input cost wasn't so high. Like I'm taking that processing fee that I would have had to pay originally.
00:16:48
Speaker
if I put it in the freezer, I'm passing that on to
Educating Customers on Pork Cuts
00:16:50
Speaker
the customer. So they're covering that and they're putting thousands of dollars worth of meat in their freezer instead of me having The responsibility of making sure all my freezers are working and that inventory is moving quickly.
00:17:03
Speaker
So it puts a lot of my stress on onto the customer and they're taking on all of that instead of me. And they're getting a better deal, too. So overall, it works out both for yeah for me as the farmer and the consumer. Like we're all pretty happy about it.
00:17:19
Speaker
Well, I have a bunch of questions. Let's talk about the half hole first. Okay. So when you're talking about like they're buying half or a whole hog, what do you do in terms of cut sheets? I know most folks buying, I mean, maybe folks, you know, who are around farms a ton are very comfortable cut sheets. But when we interview customers, most of them are like, Hey, no.
00:17:39
Speaker
I just want the farmer to say, here's what's normal or the butcher to say, here's what normal. i don't want to I don't want to make a hundred decisions. Just cut them the way that's the most standard. and Unless, of course, you run into a chef, which is a whole different beast, but in a good way, right? Because then they really know what they want.
00:17:53
Speaker
But most of the time we find farmers have the greatest success when they're like, here's two or three standard cut sheets, like cut sheet A, B, and C to choose from. And then if they want custom or something like that, then many of our farmers actually would charge a little more because that accounts for the time required to service that.
00:18:10
Speaker
What are your thoughts there? and I didn't know all that was an option. day I take them to the locker, everybody gets an email with the number of the locker. And I tell them that they're the experts and to talk to the butchers about that.
00:18:25
Speaker
If you can get away with it that way, that's great. Yeah. I do have blog posts over how to fill out a cut sheet. I do have the cut sheet listed on the blog post. ah We use two different butchers.
00:18:36
Speaker
One butcher, even I cannot understand their cut sheet. And so I use the other butchers and their cut sheets on there. and you know, they're all the same. They're all going to, you know, you can only cut up. a So, yeah.
00:18:48
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah, and that's why we often encourage folks to say, here's the two or three standard cut sheets, whether they're handing that to the butcher directly or whether that just goes with the order. Saves time for the butcher trying to over-explain everything, but also it takes a guesswork out for the buyer because again, like many times, folks aren't experts yet unless they are an avid cook or chef and they have really specific ideas. But often you can create cut sheets that are more for the folks who like a lot more ground versus more roasts and you can kind of optimize two or three different ones that
00:19:19
Speaker
If I'm somebody looking at three options, I'm like, oh, I relate to the you know standardized cut sheet B because I prefer more x Y, Z, right? Like I prefer more ground or I prefer more roasts or whatnot. And you can you can sort of go that route, which is neat. It takes, again, if you can remove the guesswork and the time required for both the farmer and the buyer, right?
00:19:42
Speaker
Amen. That's like the perfect scenario. And it sounds like you've already figured that out too. When you're like, here's the options, read this blog. If you want to, you've got this and you're able to pass that on, which is just awesome. And that's essentially what happens when we're recommending, Hey, just give them these three.
00:19:57
Speaker
standard forms for them to use. And then also when I'm buying, I can read those and be very confident and comfortable in my choices when I'm clicking purchase.
Marketing Strategies for Pork Products
00:20:06
Speaker
And I don't have to talk to somebody first before I'm comfortable then purchasing that half or whole.
00:20:11
Speaker
And you do a good job on those. Yeah, that makes sense. I also have like the basic inventory of if you call the locker and say, I just want the basic cuts, you get a little of everything.
00:20:22
Speaker
And I have it listed on like how much bacon, how much sausage, how much everything you should expect. That's really good marketing material too, because a lot of people don't have any idea what's in the a half hog, a whole hog. They can't even picture it. But if you have it all listed out, I have the weights that they can expect from it.
00:20:40
Speaker
And that has actually helped me sell a lot of bulk. Yes. Yeah. I've seen some of your posts and you do a really good job just lining it up. Cause again, you're taking the guesswork out for the buyer and you're right. They don't know.
00:20:53
Speaker
This is too many years ago to count. But when I first started buying like quarter, half whole cows from a farmer, I loved it because they would explain, hey, if you choose a quarter or half or whole, it's X number of full grocery bags of frozen meat.
00:21:07
Speaker
So I'm like, oh, it's like three full grocery bags full of frozen meat. And for me, that was like, okay, I got it. Like, and I know that seems it's so simplified, but it was so meaningful to me, the buyer of like, do I have space?
00:21:20
Speaker
Here's the list of what's going to be, but volume wise, really it's three or four or five, you know, whatever it was in that, however much I was buying, but it was really clear. And I was like, oh, that's cool. Yeah.
00:21:31
Speaker
Right. And I, you know, I can plan for it and yeah, I've got my list and here's what it is. And again, there's no guesswork and it's just all right in front of them. It makes a huge difference for that purchase decision.
00:21:44
Speaker
Okay, so I know you do such a good job marketing your chicken subscriptions because you kind of open up a window and close a window for people to sign up and make sure that they get to have your subscriptions and then you essentially sell out, which is just awesome.
00:21:58
Speaker
How do you do it with pork? Do you do it the same with pork or do you do it differently? How does that work? How do you think about marketing pork? So before, like when we first got started, we had very little to sell. i would let them know when the email was going to go out like couple weeks in advance.
00:22:14
Speaker
Hey, this day at this time, expect your email and people would start ordering. Like there was one time in 2020 that I sold 35 hogs in three hours just by doing that.
00:22:25
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. but There was a lot of factors. And so that doesn't really happen anymore. But a lot of people know that, you know, it's going to sell out and I keep a tally on Facebook.
00:22:36
Speaker
I have like a pinned post that there's half hog left, there's two hogs left or something. And that kind of creates some FOMO where they see that number going down. And so they're going to order a lot faster since we're ferrying so many at a time that there's sometimes I have 50 hogs and the locker will only take up to 12 hogs at a time.
00:22:56
Speaker
So I have several different butcher dates. At one time, I had them all listed. Like, I'm going to do this huge sales launch. going to sell 50 hogs all at once. And I was i was really gung-ho about it. That did not happen.
00:23:07
Speaker
So I learned from that to sell one butcher date at a time. So I will sell and use two lockers. And so I'll kind of like every other one will be from one locker or another locker.
00:23:19
Speaker
So I've learned to just focus on one locker date at a time. And when those sell out, then I'm working to the next one. And that has really helped get each of those filled up at a time.
00:23:29
Speaker
And that was a lot easier to market too. And how often do you do that? Because you're like, you build it up for a few weeks ahead of time for the one date and like, and you lead up and then it's sold out. So you can't do that too soon again, right after that, right? It's a couple of weeks or months later. Like what is the cadence?
00:23:45
Speaker
So, I mean, it just depends on the butcher dates and when piglets were Yeah. So sometimes like this last time probably sold, sold about 30, At a time, like within like a month or two, there's probably 30 of them that went to the locker.
00:24:00
Speaker
that was pretty, pretty close together. And then towards the end of that, i would be like, this is the last butcher date. So I kind of, it seems silly, like the marketing, you got to really like fine tune the marketing. So if it was like the end of the year, i would be like, these are the last hogs going this year, even though I had more going in January.
00:24:20
Speaker
I love that because you have to create the FOMO. You have to create literally the fear of missing out. love that December, yeah January. That's a great catch from a marketing perspective.
00:24:31
Speaker
Well, and frankly, even if it's like, if it's even two months in between as a consumer, I'd be like, oh, I want to make sure to get this time. Cause what if I miss the newsletter announcements the next time? And then I have to wait a whole nother few months.
00:24:42
Speaker
Right. So I think there is some, sort of consumer anxiety you can plug into there to make sure that they are getting, you know, the pasture pork from your farm and not missing out on that quality.
00:24:54
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Just like create, find something like if it's close to Memorial Day, oh this is the last chance you'll be able to pick it up right before your barbecue weekend. Find something that's going to catch somebody's eye and really focus on that.
00:25:09
Speaker
Tax refund time. Try to get them to, you know, you got money. Hey, let's invest this into food for your freezer and just grab something and just really go with it. I love that. It sounds to me like you you're almost telling people like, look at the calendar. Yeah.
00:25:24
Speaker
um Because you're trying to create FOMO according to like days and times and weeks and months and season and holiday and whatever it is, find something, whether it's taxes, holiday, end of year, beginning of year, know, resolutions, right?
00:25:38
Speaker
You know, get it before Easter, get it before the fourth, those sorts of things, anything that you can leverage. That's awesome. I love that advice. Even like the end of the school year, I'm like, everybody's kids are going to be starving. Make sure your freezer is packed. Make sure you have your bacon and your sausage because those kids are going to wake up hungry.
00:25:57
Speaker
And, you know, they're going to, as soon as kids get out of school, they eat so much during the
Understanding Customer Needs
00:26:02
Speaker
summer. So really focus on that. And also like listen to other moms, like how they talk, but just kind of like their struggles, like kids are hungry in the summertime. Oh, that's going to resonate with moms who are women are going to be the most likely to buy a lot of foods anyways.
00:26:17
Speaker
So really kind of pick up on those little key words that you hear I'm talking about, or even like when school starts, Hey, let's get your kids a good breakfast to get them started. the day rights, just kind of, don't know, a little things. I try to just grab anything I can find just talking to people.
00:26:34
Speaker
I love that. And you know, the other one is how many mouths you're going to be feeding. Cause I think about like, you're talking about school-aged kids, but I also think about if if anybody, any mom or dad out there has had a college student come home for a summer, you like, you start buying like four times as much food. It's so much food.
00:26:51
Speaker
So it is definitely like, if you have more mouths to feed, you will need to double down on what's in your fridge and freezer that is for sure yeah and also like I could grab onto that and be like make sure your freezer's full your kids are going to come visit you if you know give them a little bit whenever they come and kind of use that as an enticer to get your grown kids to come home and use it yes I'm all about food as the food as the lure right absolutely yes It's brilliant. I love it.
00:27:21
Speaker
You mentioned, so I know you do some phone one. I think you do email newsletters and social. Maybe talk a little more about social because you mentioned a countdown, which I thought was brilliant. Oh, yes. Yeah.
00:27:32
Speaker
So whenever we start selling a new butcher date, I will have like my main post. So it'll be like hogs going to center locker, July 10th. Like all the information is right there.
00:27:45
Speaker
I also try to make sure that I put all my prices up front. I feel like a lot of farmers kind of like are shy behind their prices. Like they don't really tell people how much they're going to charge for something. And as a consumer, I want to know exactly right up front whether or not I can afford this or, you know, they don't want to click a bunch of buttons just to figure out your prices.
00:28:07
Speaker
So I make sure the prices are all up front. Everything they need to know to buy is going to be on that one main post. So at the very top, after we start selling them at the very top of that, I will just keep editing it.
00:28:19
Speaker
I'll make sure that post is pinned to the top of my page and then I'll just edit it. And I'll just do like the asterisk stars, like a couple of those two hogs left, like asterisk stars. And then I'll just keep updating that. So when somebody buys one, I edit that and get it changed.
00:28:34
Speaker
And then, so that's just constantly pinned to the top of my page for that. Ah, got it. That makes a ton of sense. Lovely. So social you leverage emails, you're sending those out pretty frequently, if I recall. And I'll do that for my emails too.
00:28:48
Speaker
i will add like the button on top. I think with my emails set up, there's like my logo on top. And then directly after that, I will do a button. And that button will say only two hogs left going to Center Locker July 10th.
00:29:02
Speaker
And then they click that button and it goes directly to that link. It's the most important thing. Put it at the top, in the middle with a button. yep Yeah. I love that. Yes. Nobody scrolls to the bottom. Nobody clicks any buttons that are at the bottom of the email. i love it so much So much golden advice.
00:29:18
Speaker
How do you track inventory?
Streamlining Sales with Barn to Door
00:29:20
Speaker
I guess I'm partly asking because I i know we built at Barn to Door, we had worked for a few years on what we affectionately call combined inventory, helping people really track whole animal sales, which is sort of separate from subscriptions.
00:29:36
Speaker
And I think you might leverage that if I'm not incorrect. Oh, I love the combined inventory. Oh, you do love inventory. See? Yeah. I love your inventory. I hate my freezer inventory. That is way too hard. character Don't like it.
00:29:52
Speaker
But your inventory is amazing. It has helped me out so much when it comes to like whole and half hogs. Used to, I had to have two separate leeks. Now everything is all on one. So I don't have to worry about whenever I go to advertise for my pork that there's a link for whole hogs and a link for half hogs. Like now everything is just all on one.
00:30:13
Speaker
And then they can click back and forth on there between like a whole and half hog. And then it tells them the cost. It tells them how much meat they're getting. Everything is all in one spot for them and easy to compare back and forth.
00:30:25
Speaker
So that is my favorite. We started selling bulk beef this year and that has been amazing to keep all that straight. Yeah, I talked to other farmers where they don't have barn to door and I'm like, you need barn to door so bad because going to help you so much with the bulk inventory because it can be hard and it can be really confusing. Yeah, it's a lot.
00:30:46
Speaker
I don't envy managing a freezer, but at least I think part of what we're talking about is the ability to track what's sold or not. accurately, right? Including with a butcher date in mind, which I think can be incredibly helpful. I can't help you with your own freezer though, back there, if when you're grabbing for your own family.
00:31:04
Speaker
oh But yeah, used to. I feel like I still have like PTSD from yeah from selling Whole and Half Hogs, like the old fashioned way. Like now, even when I go to write down the names, I'm counting up, like making sure that I did sell as many as I thought I when I didn't oversell. And it's always perfect.
00:31:19
Speaker
So I really appreciate that. And that helps me out so much. I love it. No, that's good. Happy. Anytime we can take away PTSD, although that takes a while to come off of, doesn't it? It does, yeah.
00:31:30
Speaker
I actually, I cracked up, I think I saw a newsletter from you that said like, we have, what was it? It was either cows or pigs. It was like, we have 17.5 something left. And I was like, yes, because when you use the inventory for folks listening, Erica's referring to inventory management on the backend when you're selling.
00:31:48
Speaker
So if people on the if people are shopping and they're clicking between, let's do a cow quarter, half whole, they can choose one. And and on the backend, you're actually adding up- Oh, I've now sold 1.75 cows and I've now sold, you know, 43.5 cows and I have 0.5 cows left.
00:32:05
Speaker
And the cool part is even in that case, if you like almost sell out and you're down to, let's say you you have less than a cow left, you literally have three quarters or a half and a quarter.
00:32:17
Speaker
The way that barn to door, the inventory works for the store on the front and back end is, As soon as you go less than one cow, it will only show your customers the option of quarters or halves.
00:32:28
Speaker
And if somebody buys half, the only thing it will show the quarter. But if somebody buys two quarters, it will only show a quarter. So it literally is sort of smart in so much as it won't oversell, but it will also provide the buyer every option as long as there's inventory to cover that option currently.
00:32:45
Speaker
Right. So it's just, it's a neat way for farms, especially like yourself, Erica, who have to line up to specific butcher dates and just know like, okay, I've got 17 cows going in or I have, you know, 35 hogs or 35.5 and we'll just keep the other half for ourselves.
00:33:03
Speaker
That's good. yes Yeah. You need your own separate freezer. I'm sure you've done that already. And maybe at this point, that's a good idea.
Efficient Management of Pork Subscriptions
00:33:09
Speaker
Do you have any recommendations for folks, questions that I haven't asked around pork sales? I guess we talked a lot about bulk. We didn't talk too much about subscriptions. Maybe we can take just a couple minutes here before we wrap up to make sure that if you have tips, recommendations, best practices around selling pork subscriptions, that if you were a farmer listening and curious about that, you would want to know.
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah. So I called it somebody else that uses burntador and they did pork subscriptions. You guys recommended her to me and she was super sweet and like talked me through how she did hers.
00:33:43
Speaker
And so I was able to have like a background of how she planned hers, but I was able to plan mine a little bit differently. Whereas she had like one hog going to the locker each month specifically for subscriptions. And so each of her orders were different. Yeah.
00:33:59
Speaker
where I decided to take, so instead of one every month, I would do like five, that would last five months. And so I was able to have a lot more cuts. I was able to use the cuts from, know, there's like tenderloins, well, there's only so many tenderloins and a pork, but I was able to pull from other pork to fill that order.
00:34:17
Speaker
And I had a lot more options, a lot more meat to work with than just one at a time. So that worked a lot better for us. I started writing it down. i did work with our butcher shop and I planned out an entire year's worth of what was going to go in each month for the pork.
00:34:34
Speaker
That was a lot of work, but I just kind of lined it all up. So I was able to make sure that you know, like every three months, a certain cut leg jowl that you don't get a lot of, but I was able to collect it from several hogs. And then like every third month, that's what they get or whatever. you know however that lined up where they weren't getting the same thing over and over again.
00:34:52
Speaker
i do have it set up to where there's six pounds of the exact same thing every single month. So they get a pound of bacon, two pounds of sausage, two pounds of ground pork, and a ham steak.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yep. And that's like, just the basics. And then everything else, the other four pounds gets switched out. And just kind of seasonally, like in the summertime, we'll do more pork steaks or brats.
00:35:14
Speaker
the wintertime, we'll have some roast, just kind of switch it up and focus too on the seasons and what somebody is going to be cooking around that time. That makes sense. Yeah. That it's really interesting. So a bunch of hogs at once that you're then leveraging to put into boxes. How many subscriptions do you sell at a time?
00:35:33
Speaker
And how does that math work for you in terms of how many you're butchering? Yeah. So I stopped, I only advertised it for probably a year and knowing we were going to build the butcher shop, I tried to condense things down as much as possible.
00:35:46
Speaker
So I'm only doing eight a month right now. And I just plan on one hog worth and then whatever's left over from that. You know, the subscriptions get filled first and then everything else just goes as cuts into, you know, where people can buy one package at a time or however they buy it.
00:36:03
Speaker
Yeah. When I planned it all out, I tried to make sure that we were using as much as possible from the hog. So that's lovely. i didn't want to have a bunch of random something that, you know, it doesn't get ate at all. Like if I have 30 roasts, like nobody's going eat those. I need to keep everything more at a manageable level that is either going to get sold or we would eat, or that's going to go into subscriptions.
00:36:27
Speaker
I have it on a blog post to all of my ah monthly subscriptions. everything they're going to get that month. I just have that on the blog post. Because you planned a whole year. you planned a whole year, right?
00:36:39
Speaker
and That was really helpful because I always lose my paper that has all the, everything written down. So when I fill orders, I just go on my own blog post and that's what I tell the bookstores from. And
00:36:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's really funny. yeah i did a stint of food blogging years and years and years ago, and I still go back and look at recipes that I don't know where else, you know, like that's just what you use because you wrote it for yourself too, apparently. Yeah, i appreciate that. Yeah.
00:37:06
Speaker
It's kind of neat to do, quote unquote, a small, I know you condense things down, but for people just starting... I would think doing kind of a small run, right? Like a smaller amount of subscriptions. I think that's how you started your chickens before it sort of blew up, which is like, start small so you can get the hang of it and learn all the hard stuff with a smaller amount. This was your wisdom from another podcast. I remember this, where it's like, learn on a smaller project because there might be ramifications, but then when you expand and scale and grow, you have learned those hard lessons. So you don't make as many mistakes with larger quantities, essentially.
00:37:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's how I got started with the pork subscriptions is I only took on probably five people. They knew that when you sign up, like this is a trial period for me. I'm learning. i need your feedback from it. This is probably the cheapest that this will ever be.
00:37:55
Speaker
and We're learning with me and gave feedback and it was just one year's worth. And I learned a lot from that. And that's when I learned that I have to plan this out a year in advance.
00:38:06
Speaker
I need to be way more organized with it. Yeah. So that's, that was my learning period. I mean, you can even do that for five months or six months or something like somebody could really condense it down. Yeah. And so the next year I upped my price $15 more.
00:38:20
Speaker
i think all but one person signed back up. Amazing. I love two pieces of advice that you just said. One of which is, hey, you can do a shorter seasonal subscription to learn a little faster. You're still going to learn a lot of lessons. We have farms that actually do month, three months, six months subscriptions. It is not uncommon. You do that actually. it's your chicken But like, it's a neat option or opportunity to be able to offer to customers, but also to learn quickly yourself.
00:38:45
Speaker
And I also love that you included like You set expectations with your customers when you were learning, like we're learning, we want your feedback. You set expectations on prices before you even like got into it. So they wouldn't be disappointed later. They knew it ahead of time.
00:39:00
Speaker
Instead, they were like, yeah, we knew we were getting a great deal versus, oh no, you're raising prices, which is just awesome marketing. So lots of good advice. And just to say, hey, we're learning. We want to expand this program.
00:39:11
Speaker
We want your feedback. That's just rich advice. So hope I'm repeating it multiple times so that everybody really hears it. Listen, listen, all these good ideas. Okay. I'm about to sign up. Is there anything else that we didn't cover that's top of mind? and I know we've already covered so, so much on pork sales.
00:39:28
Speaker
and Anything you wish you would have known? Yeah. Oh, geez. Oh, geez. I wish I would have known Barnett and you're a lot sooner. I did not pay her to say that if anybody's listening.
00:39:39
Speaker
no It's good to be organized. I still remember being, yeah, I was at a mom's group and we had like just started selling whole and halves and you guys called me and I'm like, yeah, I'm not big enough for that. But I think we would have grown a lot faster. I probably would have had a lot less stress on me if I would have just signed up a lot sooner.
00:39:58
Speaker
yeah I appreciate that. I don't know. It's funny because people like, what do you do? It's like, well, in some ways we just help people stay organized and save a lot of time, right? You're running a business. You're in charge of every single operation, like from sales and marketing to inventory and actually farming and, you know, veterinarian on the side too. We don't help with that. But, you know, like to help you have your business dashboard to make hopefully...
00:40:23
Speaker
everything organized easier, you know, finances under control, sales, customers, marketing, and it just ideally keeps things organized so that you have brain space, right? and Brain space and some time. Yeah. Yes. appreciate that.
Barn to Door: An Essential Farming Tool
00:40:35
Speaker
I like how you guys feel yourselves a tool because I feel like that really resonates with me that you guys are, you know, I'm the one running the tool. I'm still in charge of my business.
00:40:45
Speaker
I'm just using you like you're the shovel that I'm putting to work yeah and you just make it a lot easier. Maybe you're like a tractor because you're way easier than tractor. yeah You have to put some off. Like a really nice director.
00:40:58
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. I love it. Well, and I think it's important to note, you know, the important thing is it's all your brand. We always say to people like we're under the hood. When you say I'm putting things on burn to door, what you really mean is you're using our software to put it on your online store, right? It's all about your farm, your logo, your connection with your customers.
00:41:16
Speaker
And we just build underneath to make it all go smoothly for you, hopefully. So we are so fortunate to work with you. Thank I want to extend my thanks to Erica for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more from Erica by listening to all the former podcasts, which we hinted at.
00:41:31
Speaker
If you want to find them on Instagram, it's at Benoit Family Farmstead. Benoit is B-E-N-O-I-T, at Benoit Family Farmstead. Here at Bantador, we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country. We're delighted to offer services and tools, haha, shovels, tractors, all of the above, right?
00:41:49
Speaker
to help farmers access more customers, increase sales, and save a ton of time for their business, hopefully just empowering farms to have all the controls to just run it well and and scale and grow if they want. If you're an independent farmer who's just getting started or transitioning to selling direct, or if you've been at it a while and want to simplify your business management, visit barntodore.com backslash learn more.
00:42:09
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to joining you next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
00:42:23
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.
00:42:38
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.