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Direct to Consumer Strategies for Selling Whole Cows
458 Plays21 days ago
In this week's episode, Janelle meets with Will of Old Rich Valley (VA) to discuss how their Farm successfully moves a whole cow through their Farm store. Through Herd Shares, Bundle Boxes, cuts and Value-Added items, the Farm has learned best practices for selling a whole animal. Focus on nomenclature, convenient fulfillments and an easy ordering system.
For more Farm resources, visit: barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
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.
Meet the Host: Janelle from Barn to Door
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,
00:00:57
Speaker
selling under their brand and making sure their customers can purchase from their farm online and in person.
How to Sell All Parts of a Cow?
00:01:03
Speaker
In today's conversation, we'll be talking about moving a whole cow through your farm store, selling all parts of the cow or as much as you can.
00:01:11
Speaker
Today, I'm happy to welcome back Will of Old Rich Valley Farm in Virginia. Will is a part of our Farm Advisory Network and has worked with us for almost four years. And since becoming an advisor, has brought knowledge on successfully selling direct to consumer while running a family farm.
00:01:27
Speaker
I'm excited to talk Will about attracting customers to buy all beef products and selling a whole cow in many parts on their farm store. Welcome, Will. Hey, thanks for having me I'm excited to talk all things cow.
00:01:41
Speaker
It's great. I actually was raised on my grandfather at a dairy farm. And so it's, you know, cows are always sort of a part of my life. So it's really neat to see we work with so many farmers now today who are very successfully selling cows in quarter or half whole, but also in very many other ways as well.
00:01:57
Speaker
So I want to dig into that.
Old Rich Valley Farm's Journey
00:01:59
Speaker
But before we get started, so everybody knows who you are and a little bit of the background in terms of your farming history, we'd love to get to know and learn a bit about you and Old Rich Valley Farm.
00:02:10
Speaker
So maybe you can kick us off with a bit of, you know, who's doing the farming, where your farm is, how it's situated, how long you've been farming and what are you farming? Is it just cows or is it much, much more? So yeah, we're, our air farm is located in Southwest Virginia. And I grew up on a beef cattle farm, been farming my whole life. And that's always been the dream. And so right now my wife, Amy and I, we own and operate Old Rich Valley Farm and we're not cow specific. Now we have added, we have meat chickens and egg layers, pastured pork, and we're trying to sell it locally through farmer's markets or deliveries
00:02:47
Speaker
That's a big operation. I appreciate that. I'm always curious. It's so fun because when I'm speaking to farmers, sometimes they'll like start with something and then expand their product offering. Right. Did you start with cows?
00:03:00
Speaker
Was that always a part of the farm? Because I've talked to other farmers. They started with chickens, then they added pork, then they added cow. What was it like for you on your farm? So we did start with with cows and we were not selling locally when we started out. We were just had a herd of mama cows and were raising calves and selling them conventionally.
00:03:21
Speaker
And the reason we started out with cows is we live in cow country, you know, like our yeah are or the the land here in the valley, a lot of it's steep and rocky and super suitable for row cropping. And it's a good fit for cattle that graze what our naturally produces.
Diversifying Farm Operations
00:03:38
Speaker
And so then after getting turned on to Joel Salatin and Just trying to mimic nature and implement a lot of diversity. We added meat birds and and egg layers, and we've got a lot of wooded land that's not great for cattle, but it's great for pigs. And so we started running pigs through the woods and yeah, that's about it.
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate that. That's a lot. If you don't mind me asking, for example, pork and beef, like how much are you moving through your business each year? What's the the general size of your operation? We're typically finishing close to 100 cows and probably close to 100 hogs. And we raise 5,000 meat birds in that ballpark.
00:04:20
Speaker
And it'll kind of vary year to year. And that's kind of where we are right now. It's a pretty good... Amy and are kind of maxed out as far as, you know, it's a lot of farm work, but it's almost an equal amount of work moving the finished product to the consumers, which has been a learning curve as well.
00:04:40
Speaker
But our farm and the land has the potential to produce a ah lot of really good food. That's amazing. And so we're trying to figure out what we can handle, what the demand locally is, and just try to meet in the middle somewhere.
Managing Farm Finances and Logistics
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. You're farming on the one hand, but on the other hand, you are legitimately running your own business. Like it is a full-blown independent farm business, especially...
00:05:03
Speaker
To your point, like if you're just moving things through distributors or everything else, you know kind of a different business model, but you moved to sort of that independent farming, selling direct, which is incredible, but that also means doubling down on all the parts of the business that you have to manage too, right? Like ideally that gives you a lot more control over pricing and owning your own customer group. They're loyal to you, but you're also like, you know, any quick advice for folks, because you are managing your finances, inventory orders, logistics, et cetera.
00:05:36
Speaker
How do you think of that in terms of streamlining that sort of generally speaking, right? And then we'll get into some of the nitty gritty. So you're yeah, you're absolutely right. There is freedom in taking the the ownership of being an independent farmer and controlling your prices, but that also comes with the responsibility of making that the the pricing and the numbers are are all adding up, you know. And so I don't want to speak for all farmers, but most farmers that I know love farming because of the work and the participation with living things.
00:06:06
Speaker
But for us to keep on farming, we have to make sure that the numbers add up because if not, we won't be farming long. It does mean a lot of number crunching and evaluating and adjusting.
00:06:18
Speaker
continually because your costs are going to fluctuate. There different ebbs and flows with feeds and and everything. And so we just have to stay on top of those to make sure that we're making it work year after year.
00:06:29
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's really smart. I think it's so good to bring to the forefront that, hey, at the end of the day, when you're an independent farmer, you're running a business, right? Like farming is what you're producing to sell, but there's you as a business owner, you are thinking about your inventory, your finances, order management, logistics or fulfillments, whatever that might be.
00:06:49
Speaker
And then marketing and sales, right? Because at the end of the day, you can grow it, but you also need to have customers that you're engaging If you're selling direct from an end buyer perspective, how do you maybe for the sake of folks
Exploring Sales Channels
00:07:02
Speaker
listening today? Because I know that's also a really hot topic and partly how you're able to move so many of your products. I can't wait to talk about those.
00:07:09
Speaker
But in terms of sales channels and marketing, let's first start with sales channels. Like if I'm a buyer, what are the different ways that I can buy from Rich Valley Farms? So obviously a lot of consumers are are interested in buying locally and a lot of them have different preferences. And so we want to find something that fits whatever their needs are. And so so people can buy whole or a half all at once. We do offer...
00:07:33
Speaker
herd shares, which is basically subscribing or buying in bulk. That's an ongoing purchase, or we offer just bulk boxes or shopping just by the cut or by the piece. And so we try to make all of those available, but that also means that we're kind of staying on top of all those options to try to make sure that they're all adding up.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah. It's like Tetris right now. I love that. So if I'm a buyer, then can I buy from you online and in person? Like if I'm making purchases from you to see that mix of offerings that you are providing, which is awesome, right? Because different customers are all going to prefer different things.
00:08:12
Speaker
But if I'm buying from you, how easy is it for me to buy from you? Is that an online situation? Am I showing up in person? Is it all of the above? I would say it's mostly online and that's kind of the of barn to door and what you all have to offer farmers like us is so people that are interested, we can point them to the website, to the online store, and they can see what's available, see what the options are, see which pickup locations suit them and they can put in their order. And mean, that's how most of the transactions occur.
00:08:42
Speaker
Amy does set up at the farmer's market and there are some people that will just show up at the farm and say, Hey, what do you have? But we live in a pretty rural part of the country And so it's not, you know, we don't we don't have like ah like farm store hours.
00:08:55
Speaker
But so so by and large, we we point people to the website and then they just see what the options are and go from there. Yeah, i i appreciate that. We have a lot of farms that are on the more rural side.
00:09:08
Speaker
Some who do farmers markets, some who don't, that we work with. we're We're so happy to power that online experience, but it's the sort of piece of that that's so important that I think you've uncovered quite readily. Us buyers today love to just go shop whenever they want online. They can see, and to your point, you just mentioned They can see all the information to make their purchase decision, right? They can see what's the price.
00:09:30
Speaker
How do I get it? Is there pickup? Is there delivery? Where do I, you know, where do they can make that decision 3am in their pajamas if they want to, because they can go online to your store and have that all conveniently in front of them, make a decision pay readily with a credit card online and then they're just off to the races.
00:09:47
Speaker
It's been amazing to watch the success of many, many independent farmers offering that and it sort of, in many cases, and i don't know if you had this experience, kind of blows things up for them in a really good way because they're like, oh, people are really comfortable purchasing like this.
00:10:02
Speaker
Right, right. And just to add to that too, as far as, which I'm sure we'll get into with the herd shares and subscriptions that you know a lot of people, they do like coming in and making those decisions, but also the herd shares, it makes it really easy for them to just buy one time and then to not have to worry about it for the rest of the year because they say, oh, well I want this share fits what our family
Understanding Herd Shares
00:10:24
Speaker
has to offer. And then the transactions come out every month and they don't have to go in and pick this every week or every month. And They just show up and get their meat, which I think it takes a lot off of them as well.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, I hate using the word lazy buyers. It's a horrible thing to say, but like we are kind of a lazy buyer, you know, society a little bit, right? We just want to click once, subscribe, and then forget it. We always say around here, we're always like click it and forget it. Like they want to buy once and then they have this beautiful meat showing up.
00:10:52
Speaker
You know, and in some cases monthly, if they're subscribing and it and they feel so connected to you, the farmer, too, through your product experience. Like they're going to go home and they're going to cook that. And then they literally are bragging to friends or happy, like enjoying the happiness that it feels giving such good quality meats and proteins to their family. Like they're connecting with your brand through your product, which I just but I just think is amazing.
00:11:15
Speaker
and Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so herd shares, we have to dive into this. so let's just assume people don't know what that is, even though I'm sure most people do. But break it down for us really quickly, just from a high level. So what is a herd share?
00:11:29
Speaker
And why did you decide to do one? Or to offer one, I should say? So the herd shares and the idea of herd shares has been around for a long time. We we implemented herd shares during COVID. And i guess the thought is instead of buying a half a beef all at once, they can purchase a half beef herd share and get that half a beef divided into 12 months.
00:11:54
Speaker
and And so we offer herd shares with our cows, pigs, chickens, and different sizes. So we we have a half beef herd share, a quarter beef herd share, and a few people want a whole beef. And so basically they just get two half beef herd shares.
00:12:08
Speaker
And so that's basically how it works. They pay monthly and they get their share divided into 12 months. And so it's a year long commitment. We implemented it during COVID when meat was ah yeah scarce, I guess. A lot of things were scarce and there was a lot of uncertainty. And we have always offered you know halves and wholes and bulk options. And so with COVID, there were a lot of people wanting a half a beef right now.
00:12:31
Speaker
And with increased demand and the lack of food, processing dates, it wasn't like you could just you know instantaneously add the processing date. You're pretty much set with your schedule. And so hypothetically, you know like if you have let's say you're scheduled for for one beef a month, right?
00:12:48
Speaker
When COVID came around, you were tied to that because you were looking at more than a month out before scheduling new dates. And so if if you've got 24 people that are all wanting a half of beef, right now, it's like, well, yeah, we can we can get you half a beef, but it might be in November. It's like, well, they don't they don't want it six months from now or eight months from now. They want meat now.
00:13:08
Speaker
And so the thought was, well, if you've got 24 people that are interested in a half a beef and you've got one cow a month, why not divide that basically? you know So they're all getting their half beef. It's just spread out over a year.
00:13:22
Speaker
And so, yeah, in theory, one whole beef could do 24 half beef herd share members a month. So yeah, I want to hear the breakdown. This is great. And I love that it was born out of like a situation through COVID of people being concerned about their supply.
00:13:39
Speaker
ah You know, the grocery store shelves were kind of empty. They're still even kind of scant, you know, sometimes today. i think people are wanting to know where to source their meat locally. And it sounds to me like locking into a subscription makes everybody feel better because they're like, that's fine. That's how much we're going to eat. So we're good, right? I don't need it now, as long as I'm getting it every month and I'm locked in That seems like a pretty powerful and very special thing to to help people feel like, okay, I've got this covered.
00:14:07
Speaker
i know where it's coming from. I love it. It's local, et cetera. But yeah, i break it down for folks. So people are committing to either typically a quarter or a half. How does that work? So break it down for us from a one cow perspective. You started talking about how many people that serve. And I'm super curious how you keep track of what everybody's gotten before.
00:14:27
Speaker
Well, Amy is kind of the organizer behind all that, but there's different ways of of setting it up. And I'm sure different farmers do it different ways. But what we do is we pretty much took an average and average hog.
00:14:42
Speaker
And we laid out, okay, and on an average beef, we will have X amount of ground beef, X amount of ribeyes, X amount of everything. If you have an average, whatever, half beef, basically try to divide that into 12 similar boxes. and And of course you can't make them all of the same because you know you can't divide them all easily by 12. There's going to be some variance in the boxes, which also means that you can't give everyone the same box every month you know because if you have a half a beef, you get one flank steak.
00:15:15
Speaker
And so so you can't give everybody a flank steak that month. So basically, yeah, we we made those 12 boxes. And we tell people up front, if you sign up for this half beef herd share or quarter beef, whatever.
00:15:27
Speaker
This is what you're going to get throughout the year. It'll be this, this, this, this whatever. It'll just be divided into 12 months. And so we've got those divided into 12 months. And then if we do have, like we said, hypothetically, if you've got 24 people, you know, person A might get the first box and then person B might get the second box and third and and and so on. And so every month, whenever we fill those shares, Amy will mark off, you that box and put the month number that they got that box. And at the end of the year, all the boxes should be checked off and hopefully they like what they got and want to sign back up for another year.
00:16:02
Speaker
That's amazing. I love that. And I would sign up for that all day long. So you do this with hogs too? Did I hear that? Do you also have a hog share? We do. We do. Half hog, half full hog.
00:16:13
Speaker
And we also offer it with chicken, with whole chickens and with chicken parts because mostly just because of the the seasonality of our chicken production. We just raise our meat chickens in the growing season. And so we typically sell out sometime out of season.
00:16:29
Speaker
And so by signing up for the herd shares, we know what to store away. And we also know that it's frozen. And so it allows them to make sure that they have their chicken in the off season and We know that if we're saving it, that it's going to be sold. And so it kind of, again, it's it's a win-win.
00:16:44
Speaker
That's incredibly smart because you are then making sure that you're the protein on the table ah year round because people are consistently eating chicken and pork and beef year round. It's not like they're going to stop, right? If it's less of the season. And so it's neat that you're providing that opportunity for those folks. That's incredible.
00:17:04
Speaker
Okay. So what, it sounds like it's been very successful because you haven't looked back, right? Like you started this during COVID and you keep building on it. Do you have particular goals of how much of like, we can stick to beef in this case, but like how much of the ah cows that you're moving through are part of this program?
00:17:22
Speaker
Is there an ideal percent? Is there a target? I love the idea that you know how many cows to be butchering on a cadence, right? In terms of scheduling them and making sure that's accounted for. And you can plan that well in advance too.
00:17:36
Speaker
Is it ideal to have 20% or 50% or of your cows being sold that way? Like, what do you think as the business owner who's doing this successfully, you've gotten into this great cadence, it helps you plan for the year.
00:17:49
Speaker
What is the ideal percent? Cause I suspect you don't want it to be a hundred percent, but higher is nice. Cause they're pre-sold, right? Right, right.
Efficient Inventory and Customer Solutions
00:17:58
Speaker
No, exactly, exactly. And so we do prioritize herd shares.
00:18:02
Speaker
Often we are sold out of a lot of other cuts. And we tell people, if you want these cuts, we have them, but you have to sign up for the herd share to get them. I mean, the whole point of this podcast is to move a whole animal, right? And so either selling holes or halves or herd shares,
00:18:17
Speaker
is the best way to move a whole animal. And pre-COVID, we were selling meat, but we were on the lower end of the learning curve whenever it came to moving whole animals because we were selling out of whatever your fillets and ribeyes, and we were getting backed up with thousands of pounds of ground beef. And so really the herd shares just helped us to move that whole animal. And so for that reason, we prioritize those herd shares.
00:18:38
Speaker
and you know Amy does take stuff to the farmers markets and we do have stuff listed to sell by the cut on our website. But with the herd shares, you know people are signing up. And so that does give us a plan for how many animals to process monthly. right And so if we do have 24 half beef herd shares, we want to allow some wiggle room in there. And so pretty much we fill our herd shares and then whatever extra we have,
00:19:01
Speaker
We'll list on the website or take it to the farmers markets and sell it that way. But we are upfront about we prioritize herd shares. And if we don't have what they're looking for, then joining the herd shares is going to be the way to get it I love that. And what you are selling, that's a little bit of the over and above is great marketing because then they try your meat and they're like, yes, I want to lock into that herd share.
00:19:22
Speaker
So that's really fantastic. I have so many questions, but before I move on to some of those, you know, with regard to how you're doing the marketing and everything else, I understand in addition to selling herd shares, you're also selling bundle boxes or like boxes of meat.
00:19:37
Speaker
Is that part of your herd share do you also sell like separate bundle boxes of certain kinds? So the her the herd shares is a great fit for a lot of people, but it's not a great fit for everybody. And so for those that they don't want to join the the monthly subscription, then we still want to provide bulk options for them.
00:19:55
Speaker
But we still put those together in proportion to the whole animal. If your average beef is... this percentage ground beef and this percentage steaks and this percentage ground beef or whatever, we try to put those boxes together somewhat in proportion to the whole animal. That way, if we're selling these bulk boxes, it's in proportion to the whole animal or just in proportion to whatever your inventory is. Or maybe you have a ground beef deal with a restaurant, but you're backed up on roasts or other cuts, and then you can put bulk options together with whatever it is that you're wanting to move the most. And since what we're wanting to move the most is whole animals, we put our boxes together in proportion to that.
00:20:34
Speaker
That's incredible. And do you, I think someone's been telling me that you do ground beef boxes too. It sounds to me like you are packaging them in different ways to appeal to folks.
00:20:45
Speaker
What are some of the examples that you have? You know, I love that you're like, Hey, whatever your inventory is whatever, to compensate for this customer versus that, that it's just a really lovely, very elastic or versatile for your needs of the farmer in terms of moving product. I love that.
00:21:01
Speaker
What are some of the examples of some of the beef boxes that you might have up on your online store today? Right. so if you're selling beef, there's a pretty good chance that you're going to have a surplus of ground beef. And so we have like a 25 pound ground beef box or a 50 pound and And we have like different size bulk options, like a variety box that might have like two filets, two ribeyes, two strips and two roasts and 15 ground or something like that.
00:21:28
Speaker
And then we have a little bulk, which is going to be probably double that. And then our big bulk box is somewhat in proportion to what a quarter beef would be. If they're wanting about a quarter beef, then the big bulk option is going to be the closest we have to that.
00:21:42
Speaker
And then they can get a half beef or more if they just want to put their name on a half beef and fill out the cut sheets and get it the way they want it. Then we offer that as well. You're making me hungry. I want to go buy beef now.
00:21:55
Speaker
I'm like, all of these great options. I need a good steak. No, it's good. Okay. And then you also, in addition to herd shares, which is fantastic and right-sizing that, and then the different various bulk boxes, you do also sell cuts too, correct? Correct.
00:22:11
Speaker
We do. Yes. Yes. And again, with the goal being to move the whole animal, that's where pricing comes into play with the cuts and not just pricing, but knowing what it costs you to produce it, but also knowing the time and what it costs you to move it on the distribution end.
00:22:30
Speaker
And that's one of the things that we've probably learned the hard way whenever it comes to pricing is I think i think a lot of times when you're thinking about selling products, selling in your products, you're thinking about just the feed and what what it costs on the farm.
00:22:43
Speaker
But we often overlook the time at the farmers markets or the the justification of purchasing these freezers that we're going to keep it in an electric bill that's keeping that meat frozen monthly and the deliveries. And so we have to also account or or add that value into the cuts if we're going to sell it by the cut. And so hypothetically, like what whatever the number is that you need for selling your whole beef, if you're wanting to sell your beef for $4,000 by the cut, we typically once or twice a year get a ah spreadsheet and we put in all the ribeyes and filets and everything and the the pounds and the amounts of all those cuts.
00:23:24
Speaker
And then we say, okay, here's the sellable pounds from this beef and if we want x amount for it then we can adjust those prices and make sure it all adds up to whatever the desired number is and then also like if you're getting the way we were getting pre-covid where we're getting backed up on ground beef and selling out of this you know we might need to put our ground beef on sale but if we're going to take a dollar a pound off of our ground beef if if you got 250 pounds of ground beef that's uh taking 250 off of
00:23:55
Speaker
what you're hoping to get. And so we need to add that back into your other cuts. And so, yeah, just going back to those spreadsheets. And if we do take something off here, we need to add it back into somewhere else to make sure that we're still getting what we need to get for it to stay in place.
00:24:10
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I appreciate that. I have another farmer I spoke to, and I'm so glad you're talking about that because it is really important to understand your cost and your margin, you know what you need to be pricing things at to more than cover your cost, right? And then achieve particular profit margins. And frankly, folks are willing to pay more for good quality product, right? Because that's exactly what it is. It's such a ah superior quality product.
00:24:34
Speaker
And it's funny because this other farmer was talking to was selling, I think it was bacon. And he's like, I would raise the price and it would still sell out. So I'd raise the price again and it would still sell out. It was like his way to test sort of the top of the market and tell if you're just continue to sell out, sell out, sell out.
00:24:50
Speaker
That tells you there might be some room for putting the prices just a tad higher. Right. And it's just, it's kind of an interesting exercise, but it's good that you're paying such close attention. We've been talking about, and you've done a great and job reminding us, it's like about the whole cow. So I love that you think about it.
00:25:07
Speaker
Like the herds here is neat because you're thinking whole cow butcher, like you're literally selling them that way. But the other lens and the other side of the story, which we started to unpack is- all of the parts of the cow that you're packaging, not just the meat, right? There's more to a cow that you can sell than just the meat products. and your farm in particular has done a really great job of that. So, and I don't know if all farmers do that or even realize that there is increasingly an opportunity. I feel like buyers out there today are
00:25:39
Speaker
trying to learn more about tallow or the marrow bones or wanting to make their own stock. They're recognizing the benefits of broth and those kinds of things. So let's unpack this a little bit. And I don't know how long you've been selling quote unquote, all parts of the cow, right? Like you've really gone above and beyond the meat.
00:25:57
Speaker
to then package and sell other items. Maybe you can just give us a little bit of a lowdown of the other items that you are currently selling and how you got started. Like, have you always done that?
00:26:08
Speaker
Did that come into the picture more recently? How did that work for your farm? So I would say just in general, you know, like we want to utilize the whole animal. I love that.
00:26:19
Speaker
Well, it's heartbreaking to think about the buffalo or the bison that were killed for the furs and the tongues and then the rest of it kind of laid to waste. And so if we're going to take the life of these animals, then we want to do it to the full, right? We don't want to waste it. We want to make the most of every part.
00:26:35
Speaker
And so that's easier said than done, but I mean, that's the thought. And so... we we started out just trying to get everything back that we could. And then, and again, you've got freezers that are filling up with bones and organs and and a lot of things that are less desirable than other parts. But then we were just thinking, okay, well, what can we use this for? Or what could other people use this for? And and so that's whenever the value adding and, you know, Amy, she makes broth, chicken broth and beef bone broth from the the marrow bones and soup bones or from Whenever we're parting chickens, you know a lot of people want the backs and and the feet to make their own chicken stock, but a lot of people, they just want the stock. And so we have an on-farm kitchen. and And so Amy can, she can utilize these things that we have.
00:27:15
Speaker
We don't want to waste them. don't want to away. And so it not only... uses them, but it it adds value in
Consumer Interest in Unique Products
00:27:22
Speaker
the process. But she renders leaf fat for pork lard and beef kidney fat for tallow.
00:27:28
Speaker
And also we've just learned that the the longer we've been in business, the more people that are looking for those organs and bones know where to come. you know like ah eventually there There are people out there, the longer you you have it, the more they'll they'll find you. And so that's kind of been a part of that the story for us too, is there are people that are just reaching out looking for beef kidneys and beef liver and chicken hearts and whatnot. And so we're just thankful that we can find those people and they can find us. And we appreciate you for helping make that happen.
00:27:59
Speaker
It makes me so happy that you're selling all parts. I agree. It just feels awful for any of that to go to waste when they're really valuable. I'm so happy people are reaching out for the organ meat and You said a key thing here too, which was sometimes people want the backs and the feet of those chicken or the bones of the beef or et cetera to make their own.
00:28:22
Speaker
But then you have other people who are like, please just make it for me. I want the bone broth, but I don't want to do the do-it-yourself version. And because you truly are thinking about the different kinds of customers that some are like, I want to do all, I want to do myself as much as I can, right? They'll get the tallow, they'll make their own soap.
00:28:40
Speaker
different things like that. But some people are like, no, I just want to pay like even tallow products are pretty. i don't know. You tell me you're the one selling them, but a bit of a premium.
00:28:51
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. Amy can't keep it made fast enough, which she has enough on her plate as it is, but she, but she, she keeps on making it and it disappears.
00:29:03
Speaker
That's incredible. Yeah, absolutely. So tallow. And then are you selling bones and bone broth from the cows? We do. And then the fat, do you render it or do you both? you have some rendered? Do you have some that's not rendered? How does that work?
00:29:18
Speaker
Both, right? So yeah, people, there are some people that'll just buy the beef kidney fat and Amy will render some and then she'll sell it that way. so That's incredible. How do you think about pricing? Cause I think that I would suspect folks listening to this are like, oh, that sounds great.
00:29:33
Speaker
I want to do those things. How do I figure out if I'm a farmer? Granted, they're going to be in all different geographies. So it's, you know, you have to take that into consideration, but how do you think about pricing those products?
00:29:46
Speaker
For us, it's pretty consistent with how we price everything. And that just takes knowing what it costs us to produce it and knowing our time, you know, just knowing how much, whether it's pricing a whole beef or or, you know, every step you do, we have to add in what it costs us and how much time we're putting into that.
00:30:05
Speaker
And so that's roughly how we try to price everything. Yeah, which makes a ton of sense. Like if you're selling the beef kidney fat just straight, then Amy hasn't yet spent her time. But if she's the one rendering it or making a bone broth, that's her time that's in getting calculated into those prices.
00:30:22
Speaker
Right. So she'll start out, you know, if you've got 20 pounds of beef fat, if she could sell it for whatever, four or five dollars a pound, then she knows that she's starting out with this amount beef fat. And so if she's going to put time into that, she needs to add value to that, including her time and whatever packaging and labeling comes with it.
00:30:43
Speaker
And so, so yeah, just starting with what it costs you to produce it and then adding your time. And that's kind of how we do it. It's great advice. And I'm really happy that we've covered a lot of the various ways to package in price.
00:30:55
Speaker
and to move cows, you know, consistently. I think that's just incredible. So we've talked about a lot of the options in the store. If I'm a buyer, what I'm going to buy from you. The two things I still want to talk about is logistics fulfillments, how people get the product. Cause we like to shop in a convenient way, you know, but we also like to have it be easy to get those products. Right. I tease, you know, everybody, nine in 10 people want local farm eggs, but they don't want three or four phone calls and emails back and forth to get those eggs. They just won't bother. Right. So How is it that you make it easy for them to then get your products?
Convenient Product Pickup and Delivery
00:31:29
Speaker
And then the next thing I want to ask all about is your marketing. Okay. As far as people getting it, and I'm exactly sure that we do provide the most convenient or easy way. I mean, we try to. So the the options are they can pick up on the farm, which works for a few people that live around us. But that's probably the most convenient way that we offer because,
00:31:51
Speaker
we don't have to be here. Whenever we fill their order or their shares, they can just come by and grab it out of the freezer whenever they want to. And so that doesn't require a mutual schedule, but otherwise Amy's at the market every Saturday. And so she can take orders there.
00:32:06
Speaker
And then we do offer ah monthly deliveries to a few other places. And so they can pretty much just look at our delivery options and then pick whichever one best suits them. And then they,
00:32:17
Speaker
They can meet us. So you do local, you do some local pickups. So you do pick up at the farmer market as a pickup site. And then you do a number of other local pickup sites.
00:32:28
Speaker
Sometimes they're like at a parking lot, sometimes they're somebody's house. And so they kind of vary, but yeah, there's a pickup time and spot and people would if just show up at that time. and And it's pretty consistent monthly. Like it's either the Bristol Kingsport deliveries or maybe the the third Thursday of every month at this time, or one of them might be the the fourth Monday of the month or whatever. So we try to keep it consistent for them.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah, people love routines and habit habits. They love that consistency. That's a really big deal. ah We see that across all the farms that we work with. When they're offering consistency to their buyers, their buyers tend to love that.
00:33:07
Speaker
And local pickups, statistically, we've done a lot of surveys and and dug into our data, like local pickups actually work, right? Not everybody wants to drive to a rural farm. But if you have a pickup site in their neighborhood, that's great.
00:33:22
Speaker
And then they can just swing by at a designated time. It's already kind of in their brain as part of their schedule. And we see that being very, very effective. And so it's neat to hear that you do that. And it really does. It's nice for you too. There's a little bit of hopefully convenience built in for the farms that you're delivering a number of orders to one location. And depending on how that goes, you're servicing a lot of people in one. So there's sort of a mutual, you know, meet in the middle convenience there.
00:33:47
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, I appreciate that. Good. And then marketing. How do you think about marketing? Because there's a lot of products we're talking about. Like, how do you make sure to stay top of mind for the customers? Subscription, I feel like they're already hooked into recurring fulfillments and product and everything else was just lovely, right? Because your ongoing marketing there is just to make sure that they're engaging your brand and happy with the product and newsletters and
Effective Marketing Strategies
00:34:11
Speaker
whatnot, probably. But you also are thinking about new sales, right? And making sure that you're top of mind. So how do you think of, generally speaking, how do you think of marketing?
00:34:21
Speaker
I think marketing is probably not our strongest suit. we're not We're not experts or super passionate about the marketing end of it, just to be honest with you. like We love farming.
00:34:32
Speaker
And raising good meat. And so I don't love the the marketing side of it. And so in terms of me, just the way I think about it is I just think about being transparent, you know, like just trying to be honest about the the food that we're raising and hoping that we can reach people that are looking for that quality of of product. And so just, I guess, transparency is more our focus. And if we can reach people that value what we produce, great. But also,
00:34:57
Speaker
If not, that's fine too. You know, like if you're not about what we're doing, that's okay. You know, so we're just trying to be upfront about what we're doing. And hopefully we find people that love good food and animals and stewardship like we do.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah, and and that's an important part of your brand, right? Knowing that your brand is all about transparency and the quality and stewardship. And no doubt you have a lot of people aligning to that and loving that, which is really important.
00:35:22
Speaker
It's funny you say that because I think there's a lot of firms that quote unquote don't love marketing and yet you own a business and you need customers to purchase from you. So marketing is a requirement. But I also think sometimes people just hear the word marketing and they're like, you know, that's an overwhelming term.
00:35:38
Speaker
But the reality of it is if you break it down, it's what's your brand about and how are you communicating regularly with your customers to make sure that they remember to buy from you? I mean, kind of if you really just break it down.
00:35:50
Speaker
Like Barn to Door early on, we built in an automated order reminder so farms could literally turn it on and forget about it. Like every week, it automatically goes out to you know their different customer groups.
00:36:03
Speaker
Don't forget to buy, you know and it's with the farm's logo and everything else. So There's certain steps that you can take, like that one's nice because it's automated. On the other side, we make sure that farmers have an email form that pops up on their website. So they're gathering emails just naturally, like without doing anything. It's just capturing visitors to the site because email, for customer email list is critical, right? That's who you're sending out the order reminders to. That's who's going online to buy from you. You have their email addresses.
00:36:31
Speaker
So in terms of just thinking about that customer list and making sure that you're on some level you're engaged in I've seen your newsletters. They're great. Well, we used to do a lot of social media type stuff just to try to keep putting ourselves out there.
00:36:47
Speaker
And don't understand all the algorithms that come with social media and who sees it and who doesn't. But one of the things I love about the emails is you send it and they receive it. And so that seems to be the best fit for us. And so we send it and and if they want to open it and read it, they can. Every week we send out just kind of like a weekly email.
00:37:05
Speaker
date and kind of what all was going on on the farm. And because, I mean, you know, farm work is ongoing, like there's not really a week off and the seasonality changes, you know, and so to kind of build that bridge between us and the consumers, you know, we try to give them understanding and appreciation for the food and the work that it takes to produce it. And so that's probably the the most consistent thing that we do in terms of just keeping them in the know about what's going on.
00:37:31
Speaker
And I would argue that's the best one you can do. Like you are doing the best one. I think social media is lovely. We have some firms who do none, no social media. And they have, I don't want to say rigorous email marketing, but like that is how they, like they have their order monitors were set up every single week. They send out one to two newsletters a month.
00:37:50
Speaker
Weekly tends to be. the cadence that most farmers tend to learn and then gravitate towards because that's how often people shop for food. So there's sort of a match their shopping cadence with your reminder to buy from you cadence has worked incredibly well.
00:38:07
Speaker
Social media is great too, because you can also, like you're saying, get in front of more people. You can create a word of mouth online you know experience, which can be very powerful. But in terms of your customers that you've curated and have an email list and reminding them to buy, email marketing is just bar none, probably the most important thing, because that's how people function and shop.
00:38:27
Speaker
And so it's great to see that. And give yourself a little credit. You're doing the right thing and you're doing it at the right consistency. Amy, she does a good job at at the farmer's market. She has a list and and there's always new people that will come. And so she does have a list. So if people are interested in learning more about the farm, where they can sign up and they can put their email on there and then they can start getting those email updates. And if they don't want them, and they can click off of it.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah, my success team and the account managers, you know, it's sort of like marketing 101 is if anybody's at a farmer market, yes, sell things, but like a close second, prior ah top priority is email collection because it's just such a great way to build your customer list. And people love that, right?
00:39:13
Speaker
In other businesses, you have to pay a lot of money for every one email that you get, right? You're literally standing at a farmer market, right? engaging people and building that rapport then and there, and they're trying your product. It's an ideal place to collect emails.
00:39:26
Speaker
What you don't want is somebody to come by, leave, and you didn't capture their email, right? Because that's a customer walking away. If you're at a farmer market and you're the one collecting email, they're going to get your newsletter the next week and learn about your farm, right? They're going to increasingly be connected to you. So really powerful, great, great job doing exactly that and prioritizing email marketing. That's awesome.
00:39:47
Speaker
You do name your boxes different things too, don't you? You have a like a beef bundle box. What are some of the names? Because even nomenclature, like what you call boxes, herd share is great because people get to belong to a herd share. They're sharing cows with other people.
00:40:00
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Amy does the box naming and putting them on the website or the farm store and and she'll adjust them too. Again, like I said, according to to what we have or what we need to move, there's Maybe I can't remember if it's like a pork lover's box or the greatest pork box or variety box, little bulk.
00:40:18
Speaker
Another thing that she's really started to do is put together like a weekly bundle. Like you said, people shop weekly. a lot of people really, really took a liking to those bundles and just kind of started showing up and buying whatever the weekly bundle was. And so she tries to do those before the markets, but sometimes it's Friday evening whenever we're feeling coolers and getting everything ready, but it's somewhere you know around a $50 to $60 bundle.
00:40:42
Speaker
Again, usually there's a couple pounds of ground beef and maybe a couple this or that, but those have been pretty pretty big. That's incredibly smart marketing. Good job, Amy. Tell her, good job.
00:40:55
Speaker
That's awesome. I love it so much. i would be a customer that would buy that weekly bundle. I love that. That's incredible. Yeah. Even how you name them and package them and sell them. That's just great. Well, good for you guys. I know that we've taken up a bit of time and we've covered a lot of great ground, which I'm super appreciative of your time and sharing so much about pricing and packaging and fulfillment and everything else.
00:41:15
Speaker
Any final tip, like if you have a final tip or two before we sign off for folks, maybe in particular, getting started with a herd share. So, yeah, actually, so one thing that I would advise is we typically try to stay like a month ahead of our heart shares just to build in some forgiveness if something was to go wrong. Like, for example, like if we're getting beef back at the end of the month,
00:41:40
Speaker
We try not to use that beef to fill the next month's herd shares because if, let's say you're counting on 30 ribeyes to fill all those shares, and maybe the processor cuts them a little bit thicker and you only have 25, you know, and so we try to stay a month ahead of filling them in case there's a hiccup on the processing end because those things do happen. And people...
00:42:02
Speaker
and people are, you know, that that are committing to the herd share, we we want to stay committed to making sure that they get, we don't want to shortchange anybody. We want to make sure that if we're prioritizing those, we want to make sure that they're getting whatever it is that we say they're going to get.
00:42:15
Speaker
And also just kind of similarly tied to that is you always have some cuts that are, well, and this this just kind of plays into the consistency of your processor and how important it is. Like if you are going to chairs or boxes to try to have consistent cuts. And so we kind of use the markets and the online store to move some of the cuts that maybe don't fit in those averages. You know, if you have some smaller stakes bigger rows or your things that don't really fit whatever your average is, then you can sell those by the cut.
00:42:47
Speaker
And so those would be the other couple of things that we've kind of picked up along the way. but Those are great recommendations. Great advice. Plan for the buffer, plan for some errors. Things aren't going to be perfect. to Make sure that you're sort of looking around those corners. Great bits of advice and also a good way to think about selling cuts.
00:43:05
Speaker
Appreciate that. Good. Well, thank you so much for your time. Thanks, Will, for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more of Will and his farm on their Instagram at Old Rich Valley Farm.
00:43:16
Speaker
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00:43:27
Speaker
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00:43:38
Speaker
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00:43:54
Speaker
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00:44:09
Speaker
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