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Scaling Your Farm to $1M through Farmers Markets
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From a spiral notebook to $1M in annual sales. Learn how Veteran’s Liberty Ranch mastered Farmers Market logistics, "U-Shape" booth branding, and pre-orders to scale their independent ranch.
For more Farm resources, visit:barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:09
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. 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.
00:00:29
Speaker
Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Janelle Mayocco, of Barn2Door and the host for today's episode. As you may be aware, Barn2Door is all about helping independent farmers make more money, ditch the office work, and look like a pro.
00:00:53
Speaker
By getting a system in place to sell direct, market under their own brand, and manage orders, farmers can skip the middleman and build a strong local business with recurring sales. And you guys know this, we just debuted helping farmers with local delivery, which is a whole nother fun topic.
Maximizing Farmers Market Opportunities
00:01:07
Speaker
But in today's conversation, we'll dive into making the most of farmers markets. Julia and Michelle here today, excited to welcome you, but also Veterans Liberty Ranch in Texas are literally veterans of farmers markets because you guys have been to so many. So it's perfect conversation for today. Both Julia and Michelle are part of our farm advisor network. that we've had for many, many years. We love it. It's one of our favorite programs at Barn to Door. Farmers who are having incredible success and have so much wisdom to offer, like Julie and Michelle, are part of the program where farmers host office hours for other farmers using Barn to Door, and they just talk shop and help each other be successful. And it's amazing and we love it. And we're so grateful for all of your time. Not only obviously with what you're doing in Texas for all the people who eat there, but also for all the farmers that you're connecting with through the Barn to Door program and helping others be successful. It's amazing. Thank you for being here today.
00:02:01
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, super excited to do this. Well, I'm excited. I've had you guys on the docket for like, we have to talk to you guys about farmers markets because many, many, many, many farmers do them. And if you're really intentional, you can do them very well, but there's also so much to learn. So I'm excited to hopefully ask all the questions that we think other farmers would want information and tips on. So before we start, you guys are going to to like rock, paper, scissors, who's answering, who's going to start off on each of these questions, I think. But just so that the folks listening can get acquainted
The Story of Veterans Liberty Ranch
00:02:33
Speaker
with who you are and where you are and what you farm and everything else. Can you share just quickly about your farm journey? And do we say farm or ranch? I mean, tell me here.
00:02:42
Speaker
We're a ranch. Yeah, ranch, right? So tell everybody about your ranch in terms of sort of how it evolved and what do your operations look like today? Yes, I am up in North Texas, just north of Fort Worth, and Julie is about three and a half hours west of Austin. So we're about three and a half hours apart. And how Veterans of Bitty Ranch started was really an accident, like a lot of good businesses. So let's see, back in 1999, Julie leased a bull from me from a random ad off Facebook. And through the events of COVID and COVID, Learning to work together, we created a business where we started retail selling some of our cuts of meat. So previously I had been processing some beef. During COVID, a lot of FFA kids had to have someplace to go with our animals. And Julie swooped in and helped us place hundreds of FFA pigs all over Texas. She had the gift of jab and I had the connections for the meat. And the rest is history, I guess.
00:03:41
Speaker
I love it. I love it. Okay, Julie, you want to give your rendition i and add to that at all? I guess the starting is just so fortuitous. Well, yeah, and I think that that's probably what led us into being addicted to farmers markets, because when we did this little thing about placing all these pigs and meat, we literally did it from our pickup truck in a church parking lot. And we started developing lines of people that would show up. And it was almost like our own little mini tailgate VLR farmers market. And we did not intentionally create that.
00:04:14
Speaker
So we soon became addicted. We soon realized that we need help. And that's where Barn to Door came in and really just help us get organized. And it just, it got a little bit overwhelming there for a minute on the back of a deal. But now it has led us to become addicted to farmers markets, which I feel like we are really good at. It is a huge tool for us. We can't do it without Barn to Door and their POS systems and all the stuff that makes it super easy for us to do that. We're lucky for the ride along. I love it. You guys started, i don't know, is it fair to say back of an afghan or is it more like a three ring binder or a notebook? But that was how you were organizing things. And then tell folks how quickly you have grown. I think that's the part where we love being the ride along because when folks like yourself are so dynamic and with it and very capable, it's neat. We're just like the organizational in the background, which is great. But you guys just went for it.
00:05:08
Speaker
The business was formed, well, just to backtrack a little, when we would be meeting up, usually down in Liberty Hill area, we would meet up literally out of the back of the pickup trucks, distributing meat to people who were hungry for good product, good, clean product. We would meet up and we would tally up our cash and Venmos at the end of the day and decide if we had enough money to go get Mexican
Scaling Sales with Barn to Door
00:05:29
Speaker
food. And on one of those celebration meals after the market, the tailgate market, we thought, well, this is fun. Maybe we should make this official. We're kind of growing. So It literally, the idea and the name of the business was sketched out on a napkin. We really kick ourselves for not keeping that napkin. So we came up with Veterans Liberty Ranch. My farm was Veterans Heritage Farm, and Julie lived down in Liberty Hill, so that's the Veterans Liberty Ranch. And then as far as organization, at the beginning, it was great. The spiral binder or spiral notebook, I should say, has about 100 pages in it.
00:06:02
Speaker
You can organize a lot of outgoing meat and finding animals, but there comes a point where the papers are flying everywhere and pencils and erasers and pens and who has the notebook. It really becomes a little overwhelming. So I think we probably maxed out at about $30,000 in sales in a spiral notebook. Does that sound about right, Julie? Yeah, that does. Yeah.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah. And so when we were approached by Barn to Door, I'll be honest, I remember looking at it and going, wow I don't know if we can afford that. Let's consult our spiral notebook. And we took the plunge and that first year, wow, our sales went up to 200,000 just in the first year. We've been doing this now a couple of years and we push a million dollars in sales through Barn to Door every year. And there's just, there's not enough pages in a spiral notebook to handle that.
00:06:51
Speaker
I like the idea of like, when you get to the end of your notebook, sign up for Barn to Door. This is a great message. You guys are so nice to say that. I appreciate that. But the goal is to keep organized, right? If you're going to scale, you can't just have six notebooks and it's going to get easier. It just takes more and more time. That's why we just started saying ditch the office work. Like you don't want to be up to your nose in notebooks. You'd rather be talking to your customers and, you know, doing the farming part of it. So I appreciate that. But tell folks then what your reach is in terms of how many farmer markets you're at and sort of the general vicinity. Like what is your geographical reach?
Geographical Reach and Market Strategies
00:07:26
Speaker
So again, I'll answer for North Texas. So on a normal weekend, we do about five markets up here. How does one person do five markets? We don't. Because of scaling, we have hired some employees. We've added some mobile meat trailers is what we call them. There's a box trailer that have been retrofitted with some freezers inside and it contains all of our supplies. So our iPads, point of sale system, signage, matching tablecloths. I mean, there's there's a uniformity across all the trailers. We do about four to five every weekend. We reach about 30 to 40 miles from the farm up here in North Texas. And then Julie. Yeah. So we do markets down here in Central Texas. I do not have people working for me down here per se. I do the farmers markets. So this is a huge feature that actually Barn to Door just released. That is super beneficial if you're a heavy farmers market thing. And this helped me slim down my markets a little bit because we were doing too many. and not all of them were effective. And we were wasting our time, we were wasting our money, and just really wearing ourselves out. So Kevin, our favorite guy, had emailed us that you can actually go in and see what location did what in sales. And I think we screamed, like all three of us. We have an intern that worked for us. We were like, what? Because we were really guessing last year. It was hard for us just, you know, we would have been back to a legal notebook writing down what each market made, that kind of thing, trying to see. So now we've narrowed the farmer's markets down in both locations to what actually is paying us. And that helped a ton. So i think my max that I do is two to three a weekend. I think I did three last weekend. And other than that, it's one every weekend, pretty much. i think what was our market sales this past weekend, Michelle? Between we had three markets, I think we had $6,000 in POS sales out of three markets.
00:09:22
Speaker
That's a lot. That's very busy for you know markets to pop out. So I feel like the ones we have narrowed down are good ones. That's awesome. And I actually wanted to get into that anyway. So essentially five up north and three-ish down south. So you're looking around eight markets right now. That was sort of the next question, which was how do you choose a market and why? And then how do you measure its success? Right. What is the threshold of that sales where you're like, yes, this farming market is worth our time. And then what are the signals that it's not? And is that just purely a cash based decision?
00:09:56
Speaker
There's a lot that goes into determining if a market is quote unquote good.
Evaluating Market Success
00:10:01
Speaker
There are some things that are not quantifiable at the end of the day. We have both gone to markets where we sit there for a couple of hours and maybe make a handful of sales, but the networking and the amount of people that we hand business cards out to is important also. I think it's important in those instances for ah the ranch owners to be a part of that because obviously we're the ones that are most vested. I love our employees and they're passionate about working for us, but they really don't see the big picture At the end of the day, Julie and I know, for example, there is a sip-in shop that I go to once a month here in Decatur. The market is from six to nine on a Saturday evening, right outside of a high-end, very classy bar. And it is exactly what it sounds like, a sip-in shop. Well, most people are not going to sip a glass of wine and buy a ribeye, frozen ribeye to carry around. But the amount of contacts that and relationships that have been built just hanging out at that market is huge. And and we see that when people then go online and they order shares of cows or they find us, we give them a business card, has the QR code to our online store, you know. Sunday morning after they wake up, after that little hangover, you know, they might hop on and buy some meat at that point. That's certainly not the case for the majority of the markets. For us, you know, we like to see, i don't know, what is our threshold? I feel like sometimes we've gotten a little greedy with our time.
00:11:26
Speaker
That's not a bad thing, Michelle. Do not apologize for that, right? It's such a good thing to learn. Yes. $200 an hour. what do you think, Julie? I think so. And every time that we're at one, just because sales are slow, it doesn't necessarily mean anything because the weather can play a part. You know, that kind of thing on the shoppers, what's going on in the world can play. And then also joining markets, just the market coordinators themselves. It makes a company look very good when you're continually going to something. You don't just stay home because it's sprinkling or canceling. You sign up for every market of that.
00:12:02
Speaker
Like for Liberty Hill, for example, I signed up for the entire year. I don't know what the weather's going to do on August 20th. I mean, I'm probably going dying of heat, but I'm still going to be sitting out there and still handing my cards. And when that happens, then people, we've had numerous times that this happened. People People are like, hey, can you do a farmer's market in my town or another market coordinator? We saw you at such and such. Would you be interested in doing this fundraiser with us? You know, just different things like that. Your name kind of gets around, even if you don't ever make a sale.
00:12:33
Speaker
Networking is future sales opportunity. The branding, to your point, is an important element. And you have to put work into that, right? And you have to keep showing up sometimes when things aren't quote unquote perfect. How many farmers markets did you start and you did a season there and you're no longer there? Because you're like, it's not enough money.
When to Leave a Market and Find Better Opportunities
00:12:51
Speaker
It's not enough networking.
00:12:52
Speaker
Yeah, there's probably been about 10. And I've got one good I just want to touch base on. And Julie will know where I'm going with this, but there's a big one. It was one of our first big farmer markets that we started doing in North Texas. We, for a four-hour time period, could easily make $2,000 in sales. It's where we debuted the point of sale system through barn to door. We had very good relationships there with other vendors. We had customers that would come to the market just for us. Everything about this market was a plus for us.
00:13:23
Speaker
Like you don't miss this under any circumstance. One of the market managers decided that because we weren't raising one of our, we do seven different animals, but we weren't raising the bison here locally in Decatur, which I'm not that far out of the city. I'm about 25 miles out of the city. Well, if you know anything about bison, bison needs to be raised on thousands of acres. So they decided to die on the hill that the bison were not raised locally. They were raised about five hours away in the panhandle of Texas. And so they deemed that I was not local. And that was not something that Julie and I were were willing to compromise on and go, here you're right, I'm going to move these bison to 10 acres near the city and this is going to be great. So we stood our ground against that market manager and we left that market.
00:14:09
Speaker
And I will tell you that for ah not even 24 hours, maybe about 18 hours, it was hard to walk away from $2,000 in sales and all those relationships. And in less than 24 hours, so many doors opened for us. So I guess my word of advice on markets that don't work out, whether it's you decide in the first couple of markets, there's just not enough sales or it's a fantastic market and they're asking you to bend your morals and values. of your ranch, let it go.
00:14:36
Speaker
There is something better out there for you. And if that hadn't happened to us, we wouldn't have experienced the growth we've experienced in the last year and a half. Wow. That is encouraging. I'm sure many farmers out there have experienced something similar and come to that threshold. So it's good to encourage people to stick to their guns, so to speak, and hold on to those values, right? And it's neat because it is hard right in the moment, but great to see that it's part of the evolution I suspect many farmers out there are like, how do I evaluate if I should even try a farmer's market? Is there any that you just didn't even ever try? Like you're like, we're not going to do that farmer's market. Or would you try them for a season?
00:15:13
Speaker
We've kind of done both. There's some that we've said, no, it's just too far. or We don't have enough people. We just can't physically be there because we're already maxed out. And then there are a couple that I did this past month that were flops. and they weren't technically farmers markets. They were like barbecue cook-offs. So I knew going into it that I probably was not going to have high sales. You're just not going to have high sales at a barbecue cook-off. People are going to be there to test the barbecue that people have made. They're going to be enjoying the fun there. But I wanted to be like, when you're ready to cook your own brisket, this is where you should buy it from. So I had a lot of cards go out. We didn't even make our money back on the vendor fee to be there, but I never know what's going to come from that. I still got to hang out with some cool vendors. I got to meet some new people. i don't know. It was a flop sales wise. next time I'm just going to be a barbecue taster. I'll be a judge next time. Or you can sponsor the meat, maybe. You know, the great part about that, my takeaway from that is, is when you're pushing as a entrepreneurs or business owners like you are, you do need to keep testing the market, right? And so you need to keep trying things. And if they fail, that's good information because you also learned something along the way that's going actually help you be better. But I do think to your point, you need to be able to evaluate like this isn't working. What did I learn? What did I not learn? And then move forward. So let's get into a little bit of the nitty gritty, assuming there's folks out there who maybe, you know, are at their first markets even this year, right?
Market Day Preparation and Branding
00:16:39
Speaker
Or maybe it's their second year or third season and they're still trying to figure out the rhythm of being at markets, if you will. What is your market prep checklist? Like how do you get prepared? Because it's not like you just show up.
00:16:52
Speaker
You're thinking ahead of time and preparing. Is there a mental or physical checklist that you go through before market day? I think a number one thing is just organization. And that is with our meat in our freezers and our trailers. We have it organized. We have a freezer for each protein in there. And then inside those freezers, each protein is either boxed or bagged according to its cut. I take my kids to the market. They're my helpers there. i have a son that's almost 16 and my daughter is almost 12. And they know that they can go into the chicken freezer and find leg quarters super easy. Jacob, Michelle's son, who's also our intern, outdid our trailers.
00:17:32
Speaker
He outdid himself is what he did, but he rigged out our trailers to have shelves in them and hanger hooks for bags. Our canopies are hooked to the wall so stuff's not sliding when it's going down the road. So basically we get there. It's right there every time. And then we just put it back. And then inside the trailers also are outlets and plugs. So our POS systems stay charged in there. Our scales stay charged. Yeah. My husband, even for my birthday last year, he bought me a portable charger so that if I'm not hooked to a generator or hooked to electricity at the place, I can charge the POS if I'm out there for like a 12 hour market or my phone needs charging or something like that. So all of that's within the trailer and all of our trailers are docked out the same.
00:18:18
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah, I also think that that level of organization plays well up here in North Texas because we've got a couple of employees up here. And so it does not matter what trailer I walk into. If I'm working a market, I can go down to Julie's, walk into the trailer, and I know where everything's at because it'll be the same as the other three that we have. And then a step further on that is we've got the inventory updated online, right? So before the markets, customers can actually go in, look at what inventory is available and place a pre-order to pick up at that market. And it becomes a game. I mean, you you get customers, I know up in my area, you get customers that walk up and they're standing in line and they're hearing people in front of them going, oh, you're sold out of chicken breast. You don't have any bison. And they're sitting there kind of smug because they pre-ordered.
00:19:07
Speaker
I was wondering if you were going to say that. They're like, I pre-ordered. That's too bad you didn't get all the good stuff. That's right. So definitely the organization makes it so seamless. And then we can focus on what we're good at and what is necessary to continue to propel our business. And that is making the relationship with the customers, telling them our story and talking to them about our morals in running the ranch, because that's why people keep coming back.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. We always tell people it's like neat to be interfacing with your customers at the market and that's actually what you're doing. And if you have people who order online at a time for pickup or the POS is easy, it's not as much about the transaction or about the orders. It's more just about the relationship, right? It's neat when those things do what they're supposed to do so that you're doing the most important part, which is branding, which I want to talk about next because you guys are awesome at branding. How do you think about that when it comes to your booths? You've already sort of hinted at it. But also how important is it, do you think, to your success at the farmer's markets?
00:20:08
Speaker
It's huge. I mean, this is just the number one. All of our canopies are red. We are not the only red canopy, but people look for that red canopy. The second thing they look for is our super cool logo. And there is a lot of things floating around out there that just have our logo on it and not even our name. So we've been very intentional with our brand. And it is to the point where if you use the Google lens reverse image, it will take you to our website. And I think that is true in everybody's mind. So as trucks with trailers are going up and down the highway between me and Julie, our trailers have our logo and our name on it.
00:20:43
Speaker
Everything in our booth has our logo on it. We've done t-shirts. We all wear t-shirts with our logo. Everything is very patriotic. We stick to that theme and it's all uniform.
00:20:54
Speaker
That's awesome. Brand recognition. It does speak well of your marketing efforts and branding efforts that your logo alone is recognizable. that There's a threshold of effort that it takes to get to that point. So well done. But yes, on everything, everywhere. Good job. That's awesome. I was going ask you about attracting buyers because tell us a little bit about when you have first-time buyers coming to your booth. What are your tips on engaging them that maybe other farmers can learn from you? Because you want the sale, but you also want a lifetime customer.
00:21:23
Speaker
I think for me, I have a lot of first-time buyers and I can just tell. We have chalkboards that are sitting out there that have all of our prices, all of our listings on them, and I can just tell how they're looking. They kind of stand at a distance a little bit, you know, give them a second to look it out. But I always ask or let them know if you have any questions, please ask me. Or come inside the trailer, you can see the meat. Usually, 99% of the time, that engages them to step into my booth. I'm friendly. I'm not just going to sit back and look at my phone while you're staring at the board. You know, come in here, come talk to me. They usually start asking questions. Well, are you local? Where's the meat raised? How is it raised? And usually, i can talk them into at least one cut of something. Something that's just going to be, you know, a trier. And like Michelle said, the little FOMO thing starts happening. We had some gorgeous lamb come in recently. And so the lamb has been selling like hotcakes. And I have another technique and I did this at a Christmas market. It was kind of like people were going by and they're going to lunch. And so I got out these, this is beef actually that I did this on, but I had these really big rib eyes that were just gorgeous. And so I went in the trailer and nobody was my booth and I brought them out and started weighing them. And just pretended like I was writing orders down on on a paper. And i sold all of those revise in five minutes because the men walked by and they were like, so I did that with lamb this weekend because the lamb is so pretty. And I was like, there was this one guy that was shopping there. He wanted to get something for Easter, but his wife didn't want him to spend the money. And I said, Well, this lamb is beautiful and it's farm raised. Don't compare us to Costco. This is different. Like you're paying a little heavier price than Costco, but you're going notice the difference and you're going to be addicted after this and it's going to make a statement. And so I took him in the trailer and he's like, well, teach me about lamb. And I pulled out um all the cuts that I had on top.
00:23:10
Speaker
And we have a cutting board that another vendor made has all of the animals on it that we process. And then on those animals are their recommended cooking temperatures. And he's like, well, so how do I cook lamb? And I was like, you just want it to this temperature that's on this cutting board right here. And he bought a $200 rack of lamb.
00:23:29
Speaker
He's like, my wife is going to kill me. But I'm like, that's all right. Just feed her some lamb. You're going to be okay. I think Julie said something really profound, and I have to remind some of the employees this sometimes. People want to ask questions. People want to know that you're the expert. And we do raise these animals. Julie and I have both raised all of these different proteins at some point in our life. We've touched them. We've had baby lambs under our bed covers trying to save them. We have hemorrhaged. had our hands on an animal that maybe had failure to thrive. We've personally taken animals to the slaughterhouse. We know this process start to finish and not every customer wants to hear the entire process, but they want to know that you're the expert and that is what sets you apart from Costco. Who are you going to go into at Costco and say, are you local? Where was this lamb raised? and Customers, what was its name? What did it look like? What kind of lamb is it? You know, where did this cow come from? People want to know that and they want to ask those questions. They're not asking questions to interrogate you. They're asking questions because they view you as an expert. And so answer it accordingly, answer to the best of your knowledge, taste all your meat, taste your products, be able to say, you know what?
00:24:44
Speaker
I don't like sirloin steak, but my business partner really loves to cook it this way. And once she cooked it for me and I actually liked it. There's always some techniques. The bottom line is to interact with the customer and answer their questions. And again, just know they're looking to you for answers.
00:25:00
Speaker
I love that people are so curious and want to engage. How do you then, like with regard to the folks, who your employees or volunteers or whomever is manning your booths, especially up north at those markets, do you train them specifically? Are there sort of a general set of like, I've trained you, here's the do's, here's the don'ts, because you're not there.
00:25:20
Speaker
Really, the employees that work for us, they all started out as customers. So that's a huge help. I think sharing the products with your employees is huge. They need to be able to have firsthand knowledge and talk about what they're selling. And then as far as like a training program, I closely mentor them. They don't take off with our product and our ranch basically on their own until I'm pretty confident that they can answer those questions. Yeah. So with each one of the employees that work up here, they probably spent six months to a year working with me, being a helper with me. We are very, very cautious about who represents our company. We've worked too hard to create a brand and a reputation for anybody to take it lightly. And so we're really cautious about who represents us.
00:26:07
Speaker
That's awesome. It's important for people to realize you really do need to protect your brand, including whomever is talking about your product or representing you in particular
Professional Presentation Tips
00:26:15
Speaker
markets. So that is important. We have a similar conversation with a lot of farms. You do this too, which is when you're partnering with other brands, it's the same story, right? Whether brand you're associating with that's another brand, you care about their quality and their brand too, because it's associated now with yours. Do you think layout matters? How do you set up your table or your booth in terms of sales?
00:26:35
Speaker
Absolutely. I think that it has to be inviting. And it's interesting. It's kind of a challenge with frozen meat because you can't display it. Except for on the scale when you're trying to move the ribeyes. Exactly. That's right. You do have to be creative. we have some byproducts that I think really draw customers to the table. So we have tallows that are made out of our beef suet. We've got ah dehydrated thin strips of beef. So it's similar to beef jerky. We've got cooking tallow, cooking lard, you know, things that can set out on the table that draw people in. And then we have billboards, like a sandwich chalkboard that sets right beside our table with a listing of all of the meat available and the pricing. I know when we first started out, we would take ice chests and it works. But
00:27:21
Speaker
But I would encourage you to get away from ice chest sooner than later from a food handling safety perspective, but also from a customer perception. It looks much more professional, safe, and what customers are used to when meat is actually held in a freezer. And so we were able to accomplish that fairly early on with our farmer market career.
00:27:42
Speaker
It was not near as pretty as what we do now, but it was a start. So to answer the question, yes, I think it matters how your table is set up. You've got to have something that's inviting. It can't be cluttered. And I get really nitpicky at our booths. And I'm like, you know, employees are not allowed to have food and drinks up there. This is not a party table.
00:28:00
Speaker
Keep it professional. People are looking at you like the expert. I have found even the past couple of markets, we have added some longhorn hides for sale. And I was like, where am I going put these? Like, don't have anything to hang these on to show them off. And they're pretty big. So I almost have like a letter U now. And so I have stuff in the middle.
00:28:19
Speaker
And then on each side, it has some of the longhorn hides like laid out. But it also creates that when people walk into your booth, it kind of hugs them. if that makes sense. And now they've stepped into your booth and they're with your product. And then see, I have these crazy techniques that I do. I put a stuffed baby goat on my table and fake eggs.
00:28:38
Speaker
Every time that draws people's kids, they want to grab the fake eggs and they want to play with the baby goat. So the parents follow them to the table. And also I have a name contest going on for my baby goat.
00:28:51
Speaker
So while their kids are sitting there petting the goat, the parents are buying the needs. For everybody who's just listening, one of my employees is literally wearing Veterans Liberty Ranch t-shirt and logo today to work. So.
00:29:04
Speaker
That's awesome. That's so fun. So i'm walk by I'm like, come in here. I'm like waving at the people out of my office. That's awesome. Yeah, i love the goat contest, playing with egg. I have seen that U-shaped booth set up It's good to hear your feedback that that's been working well for them. There is a comfort to it. I think once they're in, so many good marketing tactics. I love that you're like, no, ran be professional. Don't sit there on your phone and drink your Coke. This is not what we're about here. So I appreciate that.
00:29:33
Speaker
I feel like in our Connect sessions that we do, that's probably the number one question we get is, do you do farmer's markets? How do you get into them? So it's definitely a common question. So here's something I want to emphasize too, which we work with a lot of farms who, when they're first coming to us, sometimes they're at a farmer's markets or a few, sometimes they're not and they want to be. Sometimes they're farmer's markets and they don't want to do that, which is also absolutely viable. We have lots of farms who aren't at markets. We have all of the above because we can support their business, whatever it looks like. But we're very passionate at Barn to Door that farmers at farmers markets collect emails. And however that may be, because you always need to be building your customer list. When you're at a farmer market, collecting emails almost doubles the value of your time spent. At least that's how we believe it to be true. Because if you have their emails, then you can start emailing them and try to build them into recurring customers, which is really the goal of the business, which is recurring customers, recurring sales, etc. I'm jumping in and assuming you're doing that.
00:30:32
Speaker
Yes, we do still collect emails. This was growth for Barnador and for us, I think, because at the beginning we were collecting emails on a signup sheet with pen and paper, probably a spiral notebook. And I don't remember exactly when this feature was added, but it's been a while now. When the customer puts their email address in for a receipt on the point of sale system, there is an option to sign up for the newsletter. And it's interesting because most people want to go ahead and sign up for the newsletter. If for some reason they don't want a receipt, I still
Building Customer Relationships at Markets
00:31:03
Speaker
ask them. That's okay. Don't need to send you a receipt, but do you want to be on an email list?
00:31:07
Speaker
That's where you're going to get firsthand knowledge of specials that are coming out and know where we're going to be this coming weekend, things like that. And most of them say yes. I love that. Why would they not? Right? They've had that great experience. They're about to go home and taste your meat, which is just like in a double down on their experience of your brand, which is really cool. Yeah, whatever way it is to collect emails, like notebooks are fine. codes. I know that we build out QR codes for our farmers too to just have right there, which I think you folks use on your business cards. And then yes, on the POS, that barn to door powers for farmers, it collects emails during checkout. And you're right. That was, I feel like that was like two years ago, Michelle, but a great feature because we know how important it is for farmers to be building those customer lists always. I don't know. For me, it's a bigger ah ROI right there that you're turning a one-time customer into a long-time customer. And anytime you can do that, it's just gold. And then to say one little mention on the pre-orders, because one thing that happens at booths, and maybe there's multiple ways besides just the pre-order online ahead of time to pick up at your booth. But what are the couple of ways that you try to make sure that you're efficient? Because I suspect there's times when it's really busy and then you're wanting to sort of manage that customer experience.
00:32:20
Speaker
I did have that happen even this past weekend. There was a line. There were some people there to pick up their thing. But again, that U-shape kind of came in handy because I was like, come here. and then the more people that were picking up their pre-order, they heard me talking about that lamb to that guy. And then I sold more lamb. And I don't know. I feel like people are patient when they've pre-ordered and they know they know you. Most of our pre-orders are people that have ordered from us before.
00:32:46
Speaker
Yes, I think the pre-orders can certainly help make sure people are going to show up and get items right. And I think it's especially nice for your loyal customers to make sure that they are getting exactly what they want. And then they've already paid in most cases. Is that true too?
00:33:02
Speaker
Yes, they're fully paid when they pre-order. When I go to markets, I have one particular freezer that I keep all the pre-orders in and they're generally going to be repeat customers so that I know them. And if I do have a line, when I go in to grab whatever the customer in front of me is ordering and I see my repeat customer, five people back in the line, I just grab their order and bring it out with me and just kind of do the multitask. And sometimes you might think, well, gosh, now you're taking people out of line. But I would argue that it actually demonstrates to the people that are in line, I know my customers and why is that person getting special treatment? And a lot of times I'll just say hey, Shaylin, here's your pre-order. See you next time. She grabs your order and goes and everybody else in line is going, Whoa, how do you do that? So it leads to more conversation.
00:33:52
Speaker
It does show that we as ranchers have a relationship with our customers and that we do know you. I think customers appreciate that you have loyal customers and that they get special treatment, if I'm being honest. It's almost like a loyalty club or something. It's like, yep, you get special treatment because you ordered ahead of time and I know you. I love that. And then I suspect if they want to buy more, which hopefully they do, even while they're in person, that they could they would see it in line too. Like that wouldn't change that.
00:34:20
Speaker
ah Right. And that does happen sometimes. They'll say, thanks, I'll wait, i'm going to grab some more things. But sometimes they're in a hurry and they just grab it, say thanks and go. And it's and it's a neat feature. I'm glad we have that.
00:34:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. But it is neat too. i appreciate your point, Julie, that when it does get really busy, you certainly don't feel like you're losing sales because people are afraid if it gets too busy, they're going to fall off the back end of the line or something like that. But if you have some pre-orders in the mix that can help it go faster. And then to your point, it sounds like people are pretty patient and excited.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yes, we get lots of hugs and just good to see you. And yeah, it's really cool. I love that. I don't know if people talk much about that, but even if you're giving hugs to customers, it's a display of customer loyalty, which is enticing to customers who don't yet know you. But they're like, wow, that's really cool. So that's even part of the brand package. That's neat. I love that. You're really just not intentionally putting on display, but just it is what it is. It's a wonderful outcome and display of your brand. but I wanted to shift to after the farmer market, like packing up and getting organized after the fact. How do you do that? Because I know there's a whole range of farmers, probably more so folks who are on notebooks. It takes a little more to like gauge what we do and don't have and that kind of thing. But what does it look like for you today in terms of like end of day? You want the back end of that to be pretty efficient and then check the box and move on to the next thing. So are there any tips? that but you've learned along the way. Like, I love how you've built out your trailers on the front end. That's just brilliant, right? Do you have something like that at the end of the day as well?
Efficient End-of-Day Procedures
00:35:52
Speaker
I think the number one thing is having a spot to put everything. Like Julie said earlier, Jacob has retrofitted our box trailer. So box trailer is literally just that, just four blank walls. Up in the nose of the trailer, he's built shelves. There's literally a spot with a plug-in outlet for the scale.
00:36:12
Speaker
And there's a spot to plug in the iPad and the point of sale. There's a spot to put the cash box. All the freezers. There's a beef freezer. There's a chicken freezer. Everything has its place. The canopy has a bungee cord that tightens it up to the wall. So again, doesn't matter who's working the trailer.
00:36:29
Speaker
If you put everything back in its place and everything is plugged in, in that wall power, when we do bring the trailer back to the ranch and you plug it into the shore power. So the entire trailer is plugged back in. Everything's charging. The freezers are on. Everything's put away and you're just able to, you know, head out to that Mexican restaurant and get your margarita.
00:36:50
Speaker
There you go. When do you figure out how much you made in a given day? or are you having to think or worry about inventory? Or is that just easy part of the process? I mean, the POS system, we're kind of addicted to watching our sales like add up on the thing because it it tells you exactly what you've done. So we we literally screenshot and we send it and we send it also to our employees because it's an incentive.
00:37:15
Speaker
how are you doing over there? Like it makes it a game kind of like, oh, well, I'm going to beat you on such and such, or, you know, who can sell the most of this today? Kind of fun, just a little fun competitions. And, um and then as far as inventory goes, we actually, because we're in two separate locations, it makes inventory a little different than if you just had one farm. But we have been taught by Kevin and then Jacob helped us around making a Central Texas item and a North Texas item. And so when we're checking out on the POS system, it literally says Central Texas is only chicken breasts.
00:37:48
Speaker
And so I know to pull only from Central Texas chicken breast if I sell one and same thing for North Texas. And so it's pulling that inventory at the same time that you're checking somebody out at the same time somebody goes online to place an order. It's really cool. Like it's really working. It's doing really well.
00:38:05
Speaker
Love that. You guys are crushing it. It's amazing. Now, the farmer markets, is it your entire business? Like a lot of, we have farmers, that's their whole business. They might do just the farmer markets and they might also do some online sales, especially like in your case, you're doing pre-order for pickup at the market. And that's FYI, if you're listening and you don't know, that's a little bit how Barn Dural works is we make sure that farms can sell online and in person and have the inventory work and everything work beautifully. And so- We have some farms that that's all that they do, and it's the primary part of their business. We also have farmers who only use a little bit of farmer market or none.
00:38:39
Speaker
It's just interesting how different farmers think about farmer's markets. I have another farmer who has a very substantial operation and often will use farmer's markets when he's He'll go to the farmer's market first in a new neighborhood or community to then push his brand out, get the email, get the connections, do the networking. And he may or may not stay at that farmer market long term, and that's fine with him, but he uses it as a mechanism to basically put his brand in the middle of the community, if you will. And so how do you think about farmer's markets? Are they like a long-term part of your business?
00:39:12
Speaker
Do you want to expand them? How do you think about that also in tandem with other ways and places people can buy your product?
Long-Term Market Participation Benefits
00:39:19
Speaker
I'm going to answer for up here. I think that being part of a long-term farmer's market is a good idea. There's a sense of community. And yes, we want to expand from that market and be able to just do the home delivery and have customers pick up. But I think there's also something to be said for joining forces with a hundred other small entrepreneurs and staying at that farmer's market and capturing the next generation of shoppers. So I think that's not viable to, you know, be long-term in five markets every weekend over the course of the next 10 years, but picking and choosing ones that you can make an impact and be a mentor to other entrepreneurs and help be a draw to that market. I think there's actually a lot of value in that. For our business specifically, we like to give customers as many options as possible to get our product. And not everybody can hit a farmer's market on a weekend. So we are in a few stores and those relationships have primarily come from being in farmer's markets. Julie does a drive-thru farmer's market co-op type thing on Wednesday evenings. So I think, you know really thinking out of the box, giving the customers as many options as possible to find our product, whether that's home delivery, coming to the farmer's market, hitting a drive-thru on Wednesday night, giving them options. That's a good point too, that drive-through on Wednesday night, I don't even take meat for sale. All of that is pre-order from our website. That's all everybody's pre-ordered. The bags are made. Our subscriptions, probably 90% of them go through there. And so I literally am just bagging up the orders. I'm charging the customer and they drive through and I load their car. So I don't even take my trailer. I drive up there in my pickup truck and I have three ice chests in the back and, you know, move it from ice chest to their car. And I'm there for four hours. And again, people come through, they're giving you hugs. They come in, they're smiling. That is the part of the day they look forward to. And that bloomed from being at a farmer's market though. That's how we met. The person who runs it.
00:41:23
Speaker
So yeah, you have to get yourself out there a little bit. You can't expect it all just to come to you. I love hearing sort of how you think of it from a business lens. That's very smart. And including like giving customers every opportunity to buy. We certainly talk a lot about that. Not every customer can come to the farmer market on a Saturday or a Wednesday night or whenever it is because it's different in every community. But that doesn't mean they don't want to buy from you. Right.
00:41:48
Speaker
And so giving additional windows or fulfillment options can open up the gate to more customers who want to buy from you, but can't do that one thing, that one opportunity or the farmer market. And when you said Wednesday evenings, I was like, yeah, I work all day, every day, but I get my farmer market food in the evenings. That's when I can be at home for delivery. You want to catch all those buyers at whatever life stage they're at.
00:42:15
Speaker
Yes. And now having fun with delivery too, we've hit another notch of people. There's some young moms that have newborns and they're not ready to take their babies out. And I don't blame them, but they can get that meat delivered to their door.
00:42:27
Speaker
Yeah. Even at the workday when I know somebody is delivering food during the day on a Wednesday or whenever it is, and I can track when it's showing up. I just know that's me, but I put my cooler out. So you're right. I'm glad you mentioned delivery. That's another whole genre of buyers who might not go to the farm markets, but boy, will they gladly pay $10 or $15 for a delivery to their doorstep and then they get home from work and they didn't have to go to the grocery store. Like, yeah, I'll pay $10 not to go to the grocery store.
00:42:51
Speaker
No kidding. That's cheaper than fuel right now from wherever most people are driving. That $15 is cheaper than driving around to go get all these things. I love that. So opening up the timeframes. And then the other part of it I really love is the building habits. And I feel like you mentioned subscriptions because that was the next thing I was going to ask is your advice to farmers out there, you know, over and above
Turning Market Interactions into Recurring Sales
00:43:12
Speaker
everything else. Like at the end of the day, you need recurring sales, ideally, and typically from recurring customers. That's the best way to do it right versus first time sales every single time. it To build them into recurring sales and through the lens of a farmer market, how do you think about that or accomplish the recurring sales through the activity of a farmer market? Because you're wanting to take that initial buyer or those recurring buyers and obviously turn that into something consistent for your business. For me down here i just this past weekend, I had several people ask, well, how often does this particular farmer's market happen? And I said, once a month. But take my card.
00:43:49
Speaker
Here are all the options on the way that you can get meat. And I also, you know, the place that I do the drive-thru market also has raw milk. Michelle has her store now where she has other things that you can buy too. So that's an incentive to pull them in there. But also I tell them, you never want to have to worry about remembering to come to a market. You have an automatic subscription option that you can do all kinds of different things. It's something to fit every family and every size of family. And then you don't even have to think about it.
00:44:18
Speaker
Love it. Very powerful. You know what? My favorite part of that was when they asked at the farmer market how often it was, and it was once a month. That you didn't have to say, nope, that's your only choice. See you next month. But instead, you're like, here's three more ways to get it more regularly and easily. That is just gold in terms of ensuring that you're capturing all that sales and demand.
00:44:38
Speaker
Michelle, any final bits of advice for farmers out there, you know, pushing to have consistent sales and grow and considering farmer markets that you want to leave them with today? Be intentional every day. Wake up and go, how are you going promote your brand today? how are you gonna reach your customers? Every day.
00:44:54
Speaker
Barn to Door makes it super addicting because Michelle and I literally get on every day. and i get on, I archive my orders that I've picked up. Michelle jumps on, we check our inventory. It's like addicting. It is not a hassle. It's exciting for us to see. It's just, we we love you guys and cannot recommend all of the things that you guys bring out every month enough. We try to utilize everything to the max. And if we're not utilizing it to the max, then we get a lovely phone call from Kevin and he builds all things for us. And we say, okay, just push the button. And so your whole team is amazing. We we love working with you guys.
00:45:26
Speaker
Well, we love working with you too. It brings us so much joy to hear your success. I know it's hard to build a business. And you guys are doing so much hard work. It is. It's so many decisions. It's so many things to figure out and to stay organized and love on your customers the way that you are. But nothing makes us happier than to see you thriving and successful.
00:45:44
Speaker
And here you took time out to be on this podcast and help other farmers. Like, it's amazing. We're super appreciative. So thank you. I know you've got to get back to work. Thank you for all the rich advice. I want to extend my thanks to Julie and Michelle for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more and follow Veterans Liberty Ranch on their Instagram at Veterans Liberty Ranch. Go check them out.
00:46:06
Speaker
Here at Barn to Door, we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country. We're delighted adopt for services and tools to help farmers make more money, dish the office work, and look like a pro. We literally talk all day, every day to farmers. Aren't we lucky? And farmers working with Barn to Door can go to office hours or connect with literally you can join connect with Julie and Michelle and learn all the things all over again. We exist to support farmers like Julie Michelle. If you're an independent farmer getting started or interested in selling direct, or if you want to simplify your business and scale, visit us at barnsdoor.com backslash learn more. We would love to chat with you. Thank you for tuning in today. Do the quarter joining you next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
00:46:54
Speaker
Come on, can't believe it. 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.
00:47:06
Speaker
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. You are the backbone of our country. For free farm resources or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barntodore.com backslash resources.
00:47:21
Speaker
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