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Berries, Brand and Barn2Door with Grace Lemley
144 Plays4 years ago
Grace Lemley grew up working at Hayton Farms Berries in Washington's Skagit Valley. Hear how she helped them adapt from farmers markets to online sales, and then joined the Barn2Door team to help more Farms!
Show Notes:
https://www.haytonfarmsberries.com/
https://www.barn2door.com/resources
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Direct Farm Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the weekly listen for farm selling direct. We'll talk about the four levers for farm success, which are quality, brand, price, and convenience. We'll hear from outside industry experts and producers like you to delight your customers to save time and to increase your direct farm sales and business. We're glad you're here.
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome
Interview with Grace Lemley
00:00:26
Speaker
back, everyone. You are listening to the Direct Farm podcast, and we have a really special episode for you this week. We interviewed Grace Lemley, and she is not only a former employee and good friend of Angelica Hayden, who owns Hayden Farms Berries,
00:00:42
Speaker
who is one of our speakers for the upcoming brand conference. You'll hear more from her soon. But Grace is also now a Barn to Door employee.
Career Shift to Barn to Door
00:00:51
Speaker
She's on our team and works actually reaching out to other farms and sharing with them what Barn to Door does. So we are really excited to have Grace on to hear a little bit about how she worked with Hayden this summer and then how she's working with us this fall and into the future.
00:01:07
Speaker
Welcome, Grace. It's great to have you here. I'd love for you to introduce yourself. I know you have a background in farming and you are also now at Barn to Door with us. So give us a little introduction. How did that happen?
00:01:20
Speaker
Hey Emma, yeah, I'm super happy to be here. I am a big podcast fan actually, but really never thought I'd be able to be on one. So this is super fun. Thanks so much for having me. So I'm a recent addition to the Barn to Door team as an accountant executive, but small scale farming and gardening is kind of something that I've always been involved in, I would say in some way or another. My mom has a lot of talents and one of them happens to be that she can grow pretty much anything she puts her hands on.
00:01:48
Speaker
So I learned from a really young age sort of about the beauty of planting something with your hands and seeing it come to life. And I would also say that I ate a fairly wholesome diet when I was young and was very fortunate to be able to do that, just sort of learning the importance of eating real food. So I think that's part of the reason why I was so excited to be a part of the Barn to Door team is because, you know, these are
00:02:09
Speaker
important parts for us as well and just it's so exciting to me to be able to know and be able to feel like I'm really contributing to this farming community and local food in a big way.
00:02:21
Speaker
Well, we are super thrilled to have you be a part of the team. I know you bring just such a warm energy and we love that you have some farming experience as well. Tell us a little bit about that.
Hayden Farms Background
00:02:34
Speaker
Let's back up. Yeah. So I grew up living in the Skagit Valley, which if you aren't familiar with the area is just made up of thousands of acres of farm fields. A lot of my childhood was spent riding through these fields on my horse. And that's actually how I came to work for Hayton Farms.
00:02:49
Speaker
I think when I was, I think when I was 14, Angelica and her dad, Robert, they would always run down our road. And so I think one day I was out with my horse and my mom. They came up and started chatting with us and Angelica just casually dropped, you know, when you're ready, I have a job for you. And so obviously I took that and ran with it and the next year I started working for them.
00:03:13
Speaker
And Hayden Farms is just, it's one of those farms in the area that everybody knows about. I think, I believe they were established in 1876, which is wild. They started out as a granary, and then they were a dairy, and then they started farming crops like cauliflower, potatoes, cucumbers, and then berries. So those are all the crops that they currently do.
00:03:35
Speaker
As I said, you know, everyone in the Skagit Valley knows Hayden Farms. I think that that name is just going to be remembered for a super long time and honestly for a really good reason. Angelica, who I've been speaking about specifically, she's one of the daughters and so she took over the berry side of things. In terms of the retail sales pretty early on, I believe she started doing that when she was in high school.
00:03:59
Speaker
I remember when I started working for her and just being so impressed with how she ran things. She was and is, hopefully she's listening to this super young, and it's just inspiring. She's really been always someone that I've looked up to in regards to the management of such a successful business, but also really in her commitment to farming as sustainably as possible.
00:04:25
Speaker
I think it's cool to hear how well-known they are in the Skagit Valley because they're also incredibly well-known in Seattle. They're a pretty iconic farm. Tell us a little bit about that side and your own experience selling in Seattle. Yeah, absolutely. Hayden Farms has a lot going on, honestly. They do it all. Wholesale, restaurants, retail. I remember from a young age dropping berries off at some of these bigger restaurants in downtown Seattle area in these huge farm trucks.
00:04:53
Speaker
I don't even think I actually had my license. I think I just had a permit at this point. They're so well known and you know they've been able to do this just within I think their consistency of their product. So Angelica does more of the retail pieces I mentioned, which is really inclusive of the farmers markets. Farmers markets have been a huge part of the farm.
00:05:12
Speaker
And then I think within the last five years she purchased the farm actually that's directly next to her parents farm. It really seems like every year they're more successful than the year before. Berries are hard though because you know there are so many different external factors that are sort of out of
00:05:30
Speaker
people's control, one being the weather. So as you may or may not know, berries are fairly sensitive creatures, especially when they're being grown organically. But regardless of that, for as long as I've known them and worked their consistency and the quality of their berries has been there. And I really do think that that's kind of gotten them to where they are now. That's why people in Seattle know them.
00:05:55
Speaker
They have quality fruit, they're able to reach a huge range of customers sort of all over the greater Seattle region. And at one point, I'm fairly certain that we were attending about 70 or so farmers markets in a given week.
00:06:10
Speaker
which at this point I think it's about around the 50 number of farmers markets, I think 49 actually, but they've also added delivery and then the on-farm pickup option too. So you actually kind of predicted my next question there, which I really appreciate, but I want to kind of back up. I want to talk pre-COVID and post-COVID because I know if so much of their business was happening through
00:06:37
Speaker
Farmers markets, obviously that was disrupted in a really big way this year. What are some of the other things that you've seen work well for them serving the Seattle area or their kind of on-farm business?
COVID's Impact on Hayden Farms
00:06:50
Speaker
What has really made them as successful as they have been pre-COVID? And then what does that transition look like to adapt during COVID?
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think being able to reach a really large customer base is super important. When COVID hit, it definitely affected the farmer's markets, I would say. A few of our bigger markets were canceled, including that Finney market and the Wallingford market, which were two of our Wednesday, Friday markets that were big and did make a big impact on the numbers and whatnot.
00:07:23
Speaker
I do remember emailing Angelica at the beginning of the season and being like, what is happening? What are we going to do? Everything was just so unknown. It seems like weekly things were changing in regards to the markets and the rules.
00:07:39
Speaker
It seemed like every city sort of had different rules. A lot of markets were being canceled, postponed, shortened, you know. And fortunately, you know, fortunately, berries are very seasonal. And with the timing of COVID around that February, March time, we wouldn't have really been attending markets anyways, just due to them not being ripe at that point in time.
00:08:02
Speaker
So really those couple of months gave Angelica and the farm a good time to be able to figure out, okay, what are we going to do? What is the solution going to be?
00:08:12
Speaker
and really gave us some time to navigate the plan. I just remember going to Home Depot and Lowe's and all the stores trying to buy all this extra stuff that we were going to need to take to the markets, you know, the hand sanitizer, the extra tables to create more space between us and the customers, and the plastic gloves, which were
00:08:32
Speaker
obviously nowhere to be found. I think when we started going to the farmers market, they were requiring, you know, you had to have two people at each stand, one to handle the money, one to bag up and pass the berries. And to be honest, it was just a lot of trial and error, I would say during that first month especially. And just everything was just heightened. It was complicated. Things were just not the same.
00:08:53
Speaker
I think in terms of the greatest challenge that I noticed at the markets, I would say was just that, and I still think that this is happening actually, they're only allowing a certain number of people in. So at some of our super busy markets where we may have had a line for the better part of the day, things were just way slower for us. We would come back to the farm with tons of fruit, which we normally would not have. A lot of people I just don't think were
00:09:20
Speaker
Coming to the market due to being nervous about exposure and then also just not wanting to be waiting in the line. So we were just weren't selling as much fruit, in all honesty. And as I said, a few of those big markets were canceled so
Transition to Online Sales
00:09:34
Speaker
Fortunately, Angelica and her partner, Leland, really, I would say, took matters into their own hands and started opening a farm stand, which went up so fast. And I got to be a part of that project, which was super fun. It offered an alternative for people who didn't want to wait in that line, who weren't able to make it to the market. And then I remember Angelica mentioning something about Barn to Door and just casually saying, I think,
00:10:02
Speaker
I think I'm going to do an online store." And she said that the people that she spoke with at Barn to Door were so awesome. She raved about them. And before we knew it, Hayden Farms is online, which we all thought was honestly so cool because
00:10:18
Speaker
You have to understand that when I started working for them at 15, we only took cash in check. And so then to see us get online, it was like, whoa, this is the big leagues, you know? But it completely made sense. And it was truly just such great timing with everything going on.
00:10:37
Speaker
That is so cool to hear. So just to clarify, so did Hayden have any online presence or any online or direct to market sales that weren't through farmers markets before this summer?
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah, so definitely at a website, I have to say it wasn't super friendly to use. And I can say that because Angelica and I are very close. But really would be getting tons of messages on Facebook about orders, you know, can you reserve this for me at the market? And that's just, you know, as you know, so time consuming, not organized. And Angelica, you know, would try her best to fulfill people's wishes and kind of make those things happen. But you can't always do that when you're going to
00:11:19
Speaker
50, 60 markets a week. Before COVID, I would say there's a lot of email orders, Facebook messages, but no genuine online ordering where people are paying online. Right. So then how did that change? In addition to the farm stamp, that is so much evolution in one summer and so cool to see how did that impact the business? What did the outcomes of that look like?
00:11:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Enhancing Online Presence with Barn to Door
00:11:46
Speaker
Her getting online with Barn Tador was such a big step and honestly has really evolved the business, I think. I mean, setting up the farm stand was key, right? Offering an on-farm pickup is always, always a great option for farms. The property is on a pretty main road, so lots of traffic along there. I like to say it's like the eye candy of all farm stands. You know, when you drive past a farm or a farm stand and someone goes, ah, can we stop there? Exactly. It's like, yeah, it's like that.
00:12:15
Speaker
Flowers, there's, you know, local stuff to purchase jams, obviously berries, all the things. So the farm stand, you've got to go. If you haven't been, you've got to go.
00:12:26
Speaker
But then I would say working with Barn to Door was essential for getting some of those orders that were lost due to either closed markets or people not attending the markets. So we started offering pre-sales to be picked up either at the farmer's market, at the farm stand, and then also started doing deliveries to the Seattle area.
00:12:48
Speaker
And for me, it was really neat to be able to see every week sort of more and more people using that pre-order option. You know, people would come to our booth and give us their name. We'd get that little receipt or their invoice with what they ordered. If it was a mixed half lot of berries, everything would already be mixed up. And people were just super impressed by I think the convenience and the ease of all that. Additionally, you know, this just helped people kind of get in and out of the market faster.
00:13:18
Speaker
And we were then not touching people's credit cards or debit cards or cash at that point, right? Because everything was already pre-ordered. So it really just made things seamless for us at that point. And I would say that in terms of like the marketing piece, Angelica was already really good about getting, you know, knowing that she needed to be on Instagram and Facebook. But after she really started working with Barn to Door, I noticed such a big difference.
00:13:45
Speaker
just about when she was posting, what she was posting, the consistency updates on the farm. When I asked her about this, she really attributed a lot of that to the help and the guidance that she was receiving from her onboarding manager, Anthony, and then her account manager as well.
00:14:02
Speaker
really, really fun. And then it was just so fun to see her website happen. It is a beautiful website. It turned out so well. Shout out to our design team. They did a wonderful job. They totally did. And I sent that one along to a lot of the firms I talked to just because it's so beautiful. But yeah, it was really fun. She was so excited about the website. You know, she's a farmer. She doesn't have time to make her website super spiffy. And so to have someone really take
00:14:32
Speaker
her ideas and sort of what she wanted and put it into a beautiful site that really sort of relays what she does on the farm and her story and, you know, hate and farms in general. It was just, it was really, really neat. So really shines through, I think, on her website. A few of us who have been around in the farm for many years, we sort of always joke around about how things are still the same.
00:14:58
Speaker
like from when we initially started however many years ago. And you know, I was reflecting on this and as much as we joke around about it, it's actually such a unique part of the farm because I think a lot of that is attributed to the fact that Hayden Farms has done such a good job at being consistent in their product as well as customer relationships and service and in their branding. You know, people know the Hayden Farms boxes, the lettering we use on our signage,
00:15:27
Speaker
even our tablecloths, like it's really, really neat. And I think what's cool about this is being able to see Hayden Farms pivot in a really positive way to allow for the growth that their customers need and really require of them in terms of offering online ordering, yet still super maintaining that authenticity that they've had for years and years. Right, taking the tablecloths online.
00:15:54
Speaker
Totally. Taking the tablecloth online. Making that experience just as relatable and those, you know, really key visual and sensory things that it sounds like Angelica has so deliberately done a good job of keeping consistent for customers. I think that's really cool to be able to take that online and build those relationships that way as well. Absolutely. And it's been neat to see a lot of the customers engaged too on social media.
00:16:22
Speaker
and then her repost things and it's just, it's cool. People really romanticize farming and they want to know what's going on in the farm and she's doing a great job at kind of giving her customers what they want. That's awesome to hear. So I want to back up a second too. I know you guys, you did some delivery this summer as well and that was a new addition.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yep, absolutely. How did that go? I would say just trying to figure out who and what and where we were going to offer this delivery to that really made sense with the help of, you know, Barn to doors team that she really kind of
00:16:59
Speaker
kind of nailed in on what's going to work what delivery zones make the most sense and then started charging a delivery fee too and I know she made a comment to me one morning when I was in on the farm and she's like man these deliveries like they're so easy for me I just send off you know I send the kit off to deliver it and it goes right to their door and it's I mean it's seamless right it's it's just how people want their product now and and the fact that they're able to get local product that way is
00:17:28
Speaker
It's just innovative, honestly. So I want to switch gears a little bit here, Grace. And so you are now part of the Barnetador team. How did you go from Heaton to Barnetador? How did that happen?
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah. So I actually found out about Barn to door from Angelica. I didn't even realize that they were based out of Seattle. She just continued to sort of rave about her experience with the support one day. I think she was actually specifically speaking about James and Anthony and just kept saying, they're so awesome. They're such great people. Like I just love them. And so she said to me one day, you know, she should, you should just check out their company.
00:18:06
Speaker
just have a look at their website. So I think I went home that night. I think I watched the five minute demo video. Am I probably listening to your voice? I checked out the website and just was perusing through the positions to see who they were hiring for. And sure enough, there were tons of positions and read through them all and thought, okay, sales, that's me. And it was super exciting for me because I remember reading through the job description.
00:18:31
Speaker
and being like, wait, I would love this. This sounds amazing. So I texted Angelica that night and said, I think I'm going to apply for the sales position. Do you think I should? And she was super supportive and absolutely encouraged me to do it. And so here I am. That is so awesome. And we are so glad you did. What is your favorite part of your job? What is your favorite part of what you get to do on a day to day now?
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's such a good question. I think my favorite part of the job as a whole is just being able to know and really actually feel deep down that I'm contributing to something that's making a big difference in the lives of farmers, who are people that I'm really passionate about, I would say, but also in the local food scene in general.
00:19:17
Speaker
And you know, I just feel so good about what I'm sharing. It doesn't ever feel like I have to sell something. It's more of I get to share this with you and here's the information. You know, I've always said that I would never be able to be in sales or sell something that I didn't believe in or really care about.
00:19:33
Speaker
But this is truly something that I value, you know, sustainability, the little egg community, eating whole foods. And I think at Barned Door, these are all really shared values amongst us and within, you know, our values as a company.
00:19:49
Speaker
I think specifically within my position as an account executive, you know, I just such a wide variety of people doing all different kinds of things and being able to be a part of that in a small way feels really incredible to me.
00:20:06
Speaker
That is very cool to hear. And I think you're really uniquely positioned as someone who has worked on and really closely with a farm, kind of been a part of this transition online and now working at Barn to Door and kind of understanding why we're doing what we're doing and the opportunity that really exists now both at this personal scale for you and also on this national scale.
00:20:28
Speaker
I think my last question for you is just what's one piece of advice or feedback that you'd like to offer farms considering that transition as someone who has insight really to both sides
Embracing E-Commerce
00:20:40
Speaker
of it?
00:20:40
Speaker
I would say try not to be intimidated by the technical terms like platform or e-commerce or online ordering and just to try to be open to learning what it potentially could look like if you were to implement even some of these steps, right? So I think that when I talk to farmers, some of these terms that seem to really scare them off, they want to resist it because it sounds complicated or it sounds scary.
00:21:09
Speaker
It's different from what they've been doing for potentially, you know, a really, really long time. If it's a generational farm and they've been doing it the same way for years and years. But you know, it doesn't have to be this big scary thing, especially I would say when you have the support of people that are literally working to help you succeed, like the team at Barnetador.
00:21:30
Speaker
And I would say too, you know, the reality is that this is the direction that things are going. Online ordering is happening, whether you're excited by that or not. And even if online ordering isn't really something you do regularly, it's something that the next generation is going to do in their sleep if they aren't doing it already. And so...
00:21:52
Speaker
I just think it's important to be able to share these tools in the best way that we can and in the most supportive way that we can too. Because it can sound scary. So my hope is just that buying local food from local farms is sort of at the top of these next generations mine and mine included. So I guess I'm just excited to be involved in this transition in some small way.
00:22:18
Speaker
Well, Grace, thank you so much for your time today. It was a blast to have this conversation with you. And I'm just so thrilled you're part of the Barn to Door team now. Thank you so much, Emma. Yeah, it was it was actually really fun doing this. I was a little intimidated. I'm not gonna lie, but this you made it really fun. So good. I'm so glad.
00:22:37
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed that interview as much as we enjoyed having it and a special thank you to Grace again for taking time out of her busy workday to come and chat with us. It was an absolute pleasure to have her on. So join us next week. We are going to begin interviewing our speakers for the direct farm series and the first conference will be the brand conference on November 10th.
00:22:59
Speaker
So make sure to tune in. You are going to hear from Joe Shermer of Dirty Girl Produce, and then from Angelica Heaton, who was mentioned today. So you've lots to look forward to. We'll see you again next week.