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Veteran's Liberty Ranch Hits 6 Figures in 1 Year with POS
630 Plays8 months ago
In this week’s episode, Janelle speaks with Veteran’s Liberty Ranch (TX) to discuss their success using Barn2Door’s POS for in-person sales. Farmers Markets help Farmers build meaningful relationships with Buyers, while securing purchases. It is crucial to have a POS device that allows for all customers to buy your products. Selling, tipping, reserving and syncing your inventory is made easy with Barn2Door’s POS.
Learn more about Barn2Door's POS: https://www.barn2door.com/point-of-sale
Find more tips and tactics from Farmers across the country: https://www.barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose
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. 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.
Barn to Door Services Overview
00:00:29
Speaker
Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome to the Independent Farmer podcast. I'm Janelle, the CEO of Barn to Door and your host for today's episode. At Barn to Door, we provide software for independent farmers to create and promote their brand, sell online and in person, and save time managing their business. Many listeners may recall that after years of product research and development, Barn to Door debuted a point of sale last year, almost exactly a year ago today.
00:01:08
Speaker
Since its inaugural debut, we've been fortunate to see thousands of POS devices purchased and used, put to great use by farmers across the country to fuel millions of dollars in in-person sales. We're over the moon. And we get to dive in on the Built for Farmers part of it today, which I'm really excited
Veterans Liberty Ranch Collaboration
00:01:26
Speaker
about. This brings me to today's conversation, a conversation with Michelle and Julie from Veterans Liberty Ranch in Texas.
00:01:33
Speaker
Veterans Liberty Ranch has been a customer of Barn to Door for almost two years now. They have utilized the POS to gain over six figures in sales in this last year alone. And today I'm excited to talk with Michelle and Julie about Veterans Liberty Ranch's use of Barn to Door, including the launch of POS to help support their in-person sales. Welcome Michelle and Julie.
00:01:54
Speaker
Hi. Hello. I'm kind of extra excited because I don't know if you know this, but we just rebranded our podcast to
Origin of Veterans Liberty Ranch
00:02:02
Speaker
the Independent Farmer podcast. And I kind of think your farm name literally is probably one of the best names for the new brand of our podcast. Oh, that's so cool. I love that.
00:02:14
Speaker
I'll let Michelle talk about her husband, but he's military. Both of our dads are veterans. So that's where the veterans come from. And then Liberty, I'm located in Liberty Hill, Texas. So we kind of threw that into the mix. So both of your fathers were in military. Yes. That is correct. We both come from military families and my husband just retired about a year ago after doing 36 years with military.
00:02:42
Speaker
Wow. We definitely wanted to incorporate that into the name. That's awesome. The napkin just provided enough space. How do we incorporate both North Texas and Central Texas? We threw the veterans in there. Liberty, we love what Liberty stands for. Yeah. Yes, it's a play on words because she is located in Liberty Hill. Now, the farm is located there too?
00:03:07
Speaker
So our farm is actually, we have two locations. So me, Michelle, I'm up in Decatur, Texas, which is kind of north. Julie is about three hours southwest of me in Liberty Hill, as far as grazing is. Did you just say three hours? It is. It's three hours. Wow. Texas is big. We measure by hours, not miles.
Operations and Inventory Management
00:03:28
Speaker
So it actually just feels like just driving down the road to see her all the time. That's amazing. We've actually secured grazing properties all over Texas and even actually up into Oklahoma because grass fed, we have to utilize a lot of pastures for rotation. Yes, very cool. We'll have to dive into that another time. It's really fun to get into rotational grazing, but I'm very excited to hear that's what you're doing. How many head of cattle are we talking?
00:03:59
Speaker
We all tell our husbands. You can't keep track. We process about, well, for 2024 our projected cross for the year. Okay. So we do bring in other herds and whatnot. Yeah. On the side, we also show cattle. So at any one time, we probably have 60 to a hundred head floating between the two of us. Incredible.
00:04:29
Speaker
That's wonderful. Now, for all the listeners out there, is there anything else that you think they would care to know about your farm and your operations, just so they know how they're able to relate to you? Obviously, 240 Head is a great place to start. And you know, it's amazing to me because there are quite a few farms actually that have land within driving distance, if you will. That's not uncommon. Right. I think something to be aware of, a dynamic that's
00:04:57
Speaker
probably happens with a lot of farms, but I feel like it's a little bit special with us is we've got two working locations. We actually just added a third female farmer into the mix. And so we now have a third location. So we have fluctuating inventory at each location.
00:05:14
Speaker
and customers that are literally three to six hours away. So finding a system that can handle the inventory and purchasing of those products at each location was a challenge. I was going to say this.
00:05:30
Speaker
Yes. But with Barn to Door, we've been able to make all that work and be seamless to the customers. It's a little frantic on the back end sometimes. But as far as the customers see, it's seamless. It's one store. That's wonderful. Well, that makes me happy.
00:05:47
Speaker
Yes. Good. Oh, and by the way, we have in common, my father was in the military as well. I didn't move around. He was in the Navy, right? So it was sort of before I knew any different, but he was in the Navy. So years and years and years ago. So thanks to all of our dads for their service. Yeah, that's incredible. Wonderful.
Efficiency Gains from Digital Transition
00:06:08
Speaker
Okay. So as you grew your ranching business or sort of started it, I should say, how were you initially selling products?
00:06:17
Speaker
Well, we were all over the place. We literally used a piece of notebook paper and wrote orders down. We would write down the location. We lived off of our spiral notebook. It's kind of a joke. Like we still write orders down. We're just one of those right people, but now
00:06:37
Speaker
that we have barn to door. I think I'm probably on there 25 times a day. Just looking and updating and making sure that inventory is following correctly because between three locations, you know, it's a little hairy sometimes.
00:06:52
Speaker
But doing that and then actually, you know, kind of bracketing the orders in their area, but Barn to Door makes it amazing because we can go into the pack list for the end of each day and put the location and there's all our orders. So it's come a long way from a spiral notebook. Now we can print out the actual people. It has their phone number in case we have an issue or they forgot to come pick up or, you know, something easy like that. It's just like Michelle said, it makes it seamless.
00:07:21
Speaker
Thank you, I appreciate that. That's a pretty common story actually, right? The tricky part
Challenges with Manual Systems
00:07:25
Speaker
with taking orders because they come in from everywhere, whether it's phone or email or Facebook message. And this is a pretty common story before Barn to door. It's like, then you're writing it down. But the bigger you get, the scarier it gets that you're missing orders and things are falling through the cracks. I had a great podcast recently with Alex of Chucktown Acres. And one year he oversold turkeys and even his family didn't get one because he had promised somebody a turkey.
00:07:47
Speaker
I mean, it just is what it is, but on the other hand, like great. If you're farming, at least at Barnes & D'Or, we'd rather you spend time on more important things than trying to remember where the orders are. So that's where we get a lot of joy, which is if people are ordering, they can just go online order from you anytime. And like you said, you can just click a button and print it all out at once and you know you're not missing any, which is hopefully headache resolved, but also ideally hours of time saved.
Overcoming Skepticism and Realizing Value
00:08:15
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:17
Speaker
So what initially attracted you to working with Barnshedore? Was it the time savings or was it something different? Michelle, I think you were the one that found Barnshedore because of a chicken farmer that you were next to. Wasn't it Sandy?
00:08:32
Speaker
She was utilizing barn to door at the time. And then Michelle came home and she's like, Julie, you have to hear about barn to door to make our life so much easier. So I think that's what triggered it. If I remember right. I think you're right. I think when do you chicken farms, Sandy was already utilizing barn to door.
00:08:49
Speaker
And so we jumped on and looked at it. And I'll be honest, we were still real small at that time. And we thought, wow, is this really worth the investment? Is our business going to grow? In hindsight, it's an investment that we couldn't afford not to make. Because it literally it did take us from the spiral notebooks. And from the finance side, we were
00:09:11
Speaker
keeping track in an Excel spreadsheet, what our finances were, what our cost was, but we really didn't have a clue. So again, in hindsight, it was a very small, minor investment to get to the volume that we have.
00:09:25
Speaker
And at the end of the first year, we sat back and went, wow, did that just happen? Like, wow. Um, and you know, that's great. I think we can sustain this. We can do this again next year. So the second year rolled around and our business more than doubled. And that wouldn't be possible.
00:09:43
Speaker
Without the inventory management, the point of sale, even something as simple as we have been able to expand our product line because customers can go on our store and see what the product is, see the description and they understand we're not having to answer, you know, 50 times.
00:10:01
Speaker
This is what's the ingredients for marinated stir-fry meat. It's on there. It's on the store. It's how customers are able to get the information. It's what they're
Expanding Product Lines and Market Presence
00:10:11
Speaker
used to. So it has definitely facilitated our growth.
00:10:15
Speaker
I appreciate that. Julie, were you going to say something before I jump back in? I just remember like us actually literally screaming when we got our first order on Barn to Door. We just felt so professional because it's not only the Barn to Door, like the place where you go order our website is phenomenal.
00:10:34
Speaker
It's gorgeous. And we were just blown away by the design and how easy it was. That was one thing that really overwhelmed us when we started is we're not web designers. We know how to load cows and trailers and unpack stakes. And we don't know anything about doing web design.
00:10:51
Speaker
It's interesting too, because at the end of the day, you are independent farmers and that means you are owner operators of a business, right? And so while you might be epic at ranching and organizing that, and to your point, all the state cuts and loading and unloading, there's a thousand things we could go down that rabbit hole. But literally there's this whole business side that in order for things to work,
00:11:13
Speaker
You kind of have to do marketing, have customers promote yourself so that you get sales. Oh, and PS, you have to have finances. You have to know your inventory. Taxes matter. That's where we love to come in. We're like, well, good, let's try to make that as easy as possible. You should not spend your time explaining to 50 customers each time repeating yourself about stir fry ingredients. When they can just go online, read it, click an order.
00:11:37
Speaker
Right. And at the end of the day, if you're trying to scale and run a business, this is how we look at ours, which is where are we, it's not wasting time, but it's like, where are you not scaling? Well, telling 50 different customers individually each time about stir fry meat or the cuts of beef or what may be, what's your schedule, where are you going to deliver? If you have to keep repeating the same thing over and over and over again per customer, then you start to look at that and be like, how can we make that more efficient?
00:12:04
Speaker
Yes, yes, efficiency is a good word for all of that, for sure. Yeah, that's good. That's exciting. Well, have you grown in the last two years? I mean, I think you signed it for Bern Todor about two years ago. Yeah. And it sounds like it's enabled that. 100%. Yes, we would not be able to do it without Bern Todor. And I don't think we would have gotten this big without it.
00:12:29
Speaker
Well, I love hearing
POS System's Role in Market Participation
00:12:30
Speaker
that. Yeah. Go team. Absolutely. Go team, do it. 100%. Yes. I want to say the first year, we absolutely grew. I mean, the first year, we were tracking and we were so busy just learning the ropes and trying to keep up with inventory. That's what actually became the issue in the first year is we were growing so rapidly. It was like, well, we got to get more cows. Well, if you need more cows, you need more grass. You've got to get pastures.
00:12:58
Speaker
So it was an exciting time because it really allowed us to focus on
Impact of Digital Payments
00:13:05
Speaker
growth and physical growth, gaining more pastures, gaining more heads of cattle.
00:13:10
Speaker
and whatnot, to the point that we really weren't even paying attention to all the reports and what was happening in Barnard Door. So a funny little side note at one point, we were still keeping track in Excel of what our sales were. And I'm a little bit better at Excel than Julie, but I'll say she's 10 times better at Barnard Door than I am.
00:13:32
Speaker
But I was keeping track of Excel of our sales and I wasn't available at the moment. So she went to her husband and said, Michelle does this little thing and it tallies up all of our sales. And I want to know what we're at right now. And so her husband's like, well, you just click this button right here and it auto sums it. And I got a frantic phone call from her and she said, do you know how much our sales are?
00:13:56
Speaker
We have since learned that barn to door tracks, all that for us. And we don't need to do an Excel spreadsheet, but let's just say our first year growth, we went from, I think what about 40,000 in annual sales to six figures. So we went from about 40 to 50,000 up to six figures in our second year. I think we tapped out at like 490,000 last year. Yes. And incredible.
00:14:21
Speaker
That is going to start adding zeros. Holy smokes, ladies. Yes. Yes. That's exciting. Well, we like to have fun. And I know that we're also doing this podcast too because of the POS system. And that is one huge thing that helped us grow because before that.
00:14:38
Speaker
We really couldn't utilize farmers markets like we wanted to and that is a big marketing thing. So what did you do before handling? Did you hate it online and in-person sales or what? We would go to a farmers market every now and then and we would have them either pay Venmo
00:15:01
Speaker
It's like this really basic credit card thing that you can run, but it just wasn't like, I don't know. It just wasn't working.
00:15:12
Speaker
the way we wanted it to you didn't have the whole app to show a list to look at prices
Staff Engagement and Efficiency
00:15:18
Speaker
really quick and i swear we're on that pos all the time we use it we're not even in full market season yet it starts march 2nd this next weekend and from then on it's like three to four markets a week
00:15:31
Speaker
Okay. At the different locations. So it's about to explode again for this time of year. But yeah, it just, it really helped us excel in that. And then I think it also develops a trust with our customers because when you go in there professionally and you have a professional device that actually shows things and you're running it through. And we were excited because we didn't even know. I mean, we've been using it for a long time that it does Apple pay. We got excited about that.
00:15:59
Speaker
because we feel very like good in today's world where everybody's using that kind of thing so yeah that matters it it does matter because buyers like to buy a certain way and yeah like it or not we all have our habits of the favorite do you swipe do they like apple pay i mean everybody loves credit cards you know they all love subscriptions right because that's like set it and forget it and it just keeps coming so
00:16:24
Speaker
Yeah, people are very used to easy digital payments. And I hear you on the professional side, we've heard a lot of farms say that about even just having a professional website and a brand, the buyer trust just goes up. And that's a good thing for business. Yes, it definitely makes you more relevant. And I think the trust is huge. I know when we set up at our main market that
00:16:46
Speaker
It's starting next weekend. We actually have two point of sale systems set up on each end of the table and we've got people running it and it's quick. It's efficient. It's professional.
00:16:58
Speaker
And it's a game changer. I have an extra device or two sit around here. You need me to send you an extra one. So we have a pickle that we're about to be in again, and we're going to have to order another device because we have two markets starting and they will both run on Saturdays and at two different locations.
00:17:21
Speaker
So we'll be getting another one to add to our little fleet of POS. There you go. Yeah. And it's so cool. Also the one big deal about it is sometimes we like to go on vacation or leave and we can have other people run the POS system and use an app on their phone. So it's very simple.
00:17:43
Speaker
One of the things that I don't think it bothered Michelle at the beginning, but I was scared because I was like, well, if I give somebody my app, like we hadn't done it yet. So we didn't know.
Seasonal Product Strategy and Marketing
00:17:52
Speaker
I was like, can they go in and see like all of our personal. Information or checking accounts or things like that. And it's not, you can hand it off to anybody to use super safe. And we like to have competitions because on each POS.
00:18:06
Speaker
And each thing it will give you your sales of the day. And so we literally all send screenshots back and forth. Nice. Keep the competition going and it, you know, it just, it's fun. That is fun. We do competitions too. It's fun, isn't it? Absolutely we do. Somebody the other day just won. We buy farm food from our farmers and we put them in cute little baskets and then we have competitions and people literally win.
00:18:28
Speaker
food from farmers that we've worked with. It's super fun. Why not, right? Why not do that? Just, you know, every so often just to have some fun with each other and sort of the work hard play hard thing, I guess. Yes. So how did you before handle, before you said you were doing cash check, Venmo, how would you even handle refunds or track your payments? No. Oh, it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare.
00:18:54
Speaker
A lot of times we would Venmo somebody back, but then you have that question of, well, now there's fees taken out. So does the customer pay that or do we pay that? Do we just eat it? So yeah, it was a nightmare and tracking did become an issue. And probably inventory too.
00:19:10
Speaker
Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Inventory was written on the spreadsheet. And that's another thing too, is we'd have it on the spreadsheet, but we couldn't offer as many items because there was no way to keep up with it. So we would have the basic things and cuts and it just whenever we were able to get barn to door, all of that blossomed. So now we're able to
00:19:30
Speaker
do groups of things and types of things and flavors of things and expand your, expand your offering, which actually is a big deal when you're trying to grow and scale. Oh yeah. Cause then you can always take away. So if something's not working or you just not seeing a whole lot of sales in that. And we like to use the tactic of.
00:19:50
Speaker
uh seasons around here and so texas gets warm pretty quick it's already going to be 90 degrees today so we're starting to see that people are once again so we take away hamburger patties in the winter time okay you can't have hamburger patties
00:20:07
Speaker
But we'll boost up our roast and stew meat and stuff like that. Well, now that it's February and it's 90 degrees outside, we're going to announce, Hey, we have hamburger patties back. We have sausage brats back. So anything that, if it gets too overwhelming, we can always take it away. But we've noticed when we do take it away.
00:20:26
Speaker
And it comes back at a new thing, then it explodes again because it hasn't been there for awhile. That's awesome. Yeah. You have to learn all those sort of marketing tactics, don't you? Whatever, whatever helps for sales. Yes. Did you sell online before?
Integrated Inventory Management
00:20:40
Speaker
Because what a lot of people might not realize about the POS and this is one of the things that it took us a little extra long to really develop and work on it is because we wanted the in-person sales or the POS to talk to the online store. Right. Cause we needed to sort of marry.
00:20:55
Speaker
If somebody buys steak in person, it still subtracts it from the inventory or if somebody buys steak online, same thing. So if somebody buys a steak simultaneously online in person, two different people, it actually subtracts two. So have you used that feature or capability to have that be all one merchant account, all one inventory? Like are people buying from you in both places?
00:21:20
Speaker
Yes. Absolutely. People are buying online. They're buying in person. I mean, consistently, we get several orders every day on a Saturday when we've got farmer markets running, we might have, I don't know, 60, 70 transactions between the farmer's markets plus the online order. Got it. And so that's all happening at once.
00:21:42
Speaker
So without an online inventory system, it would be beyond a nightmare. It just absolutely would not be possible. It would equate to bad customer service and not being able to fulfill orders. So absolutely. Nobody wishes that on anybody. Yeah. And so the other really cool thing that happens is say we have
00:22:05
Speaker
20 ribeyes steaks in inventory and what a farmer's market we're selling out real quick. Well, that'll switch over to reserve now. So our customers online can still order it and they can reserve now. And we're able to fill that hopefully within the week, but we know what we need to fill. We know that when we go to our butcher.
00:22:26
Speaker
and we're taking our inventory out of the butcher's freezer, then we go, okay, I've got to pick up all my steaks today because I've got people waiting. Or maybe this week it's ground. I had a huge push on ground, just regular ground beef. So okay, I'm gonna pick up those boxes of beef right now and leave my steaks at the butcher for another few days.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, very helpful. Oh, that's fun to hear. Good. Hamburger season. I can't believe the grills are all out in Texas. Other parts of the country are like under snow. I don't think they really ever go up. I don't think they really ever go up. That's good. That's
POS System Development for Farmers
00:23:02
Speaker
good fun. OK, so here's the other thing. And again, we kind of geek out about that. We get to build for farmers. I mean, that's just like the cats meow. I have applicants coming through all the time at Barn to Door and they're like,
00:23:13
Speaker
what's the best thing about Barnet or I'm like successful farmers, like farmers crushing it. It's what keeps driving us. And so we got to build POS for farmers, which was really cool because some of the capabilities that we built initially, right? We first built the whole online experience, right? Cause we're like, farmers need to get in front of people. They need a brand, get them out there. You can still work through the in-person stuff, but we'll get to that. Let's get them online first. And so that's why we just more recently added on and debuted
00:23:41
Speaker
the POS and that kind of seamless experience. But we were able then to take things from the online platform experience that we had built for that with Barnetador and pull them through to the POS experience. And a couple of those things are
00:23:58
Speaker
the ability for you to sell by weight and still track inventory. I don't know if you guys do this, but another one is the ability to sell wholesale versus retail and flip back and forth. I don't know if you guys use that. We have. Those are probably two of the bigger ones, so it's fun to hear that you do use those.
00:24:16
Speaker
Yes. There's another feature on the point of sale that I'm really,
Enhancing Customer Service with Discounts
00:24:21
Speaker
really liking. It seems like such a small item. It was not a capability at the very beginning with Barnadore. Point of sale came out. One of the things that we offer is military discount. We're a military family and we want to thank all of our veterans.
00:24:35
Speaker
So one of the things that we asked for is, is there a way to put a discount? Can we just like have a 10% discount button on point of sale? That was an ask on our behalf and Barnes & Noble delivered quickly. And I am telling you that.
00:24:52
Speaker
Huge. It is huge. When you've got a line at a farmer's market and you're trying to manually calculate 10% should be easy, but it's not. We're farmers, we're not mathematicians. That's what technology is for. Technology is awesome at doing math and they don't need napkins. They don't need napkins to do it. Right. That's right. Just being able to offer that discount and have that quick and easy, efficient, it's professional.
00:25:19
Speaker
And I love being able to offer that to our customers. So that's on the point of sale side. And then of course, on the online shopping experience, we're able to offer a special code to our veterans so that every time they shop, they get their 10% off. Again, I just I love that. And that was one little thing that we ran into at the point of sale experience.
00:25:41
Speaker
And it was resolved so quickly with Barn to Door. Yeah, it was almost like the next week. Oh, good. I love that. Doesn't always work out to be the next week. It was foul. I mean, technology is very much like we're going to get it out the door.
00:25:54
Speaker
And it's best initial form possible to do the basics. And then we're going to keep working on it. And that's called a roadmap. And I know you know that. But you essentially have a roadmap for different features. And so like with the POS, literally we're like, OK, what's the next thing? Like you mentioned Apple Pay. That was another thing that wasn't right away. But we added it
Continuous POS Improvements
00:26:15
Speaker
in. So we added in, like you said, the discount promo code line. So you could enter in a percent or dollar off.
00:26:21
Speaker
And then another one we added was wallets. So the Apple, Google Pay, big one. And then recently, I don't know if you guys saw, but there's a tip feature. There's a custom tip feature. And you can change the verbiage. You can say, Hey, you know, covers fees, or you can say tip or donation. You can actually change what it says.
00:26:40
Speaker
Oh, that's fancy. The wheels are spinning already. That's wonderful. Yeah. So I think you just have to go into the main little dashboard place and you can just change the verbiage that shows up to all your customers. Maybe you can do a test at your different POS devices. Like, okay, which one do they like the best?
00:26:58
Speaker
Right. Yes. I'll be very curious. Yeah. So I'm so glad. Yeah. And we still have somebody working on the next thing too now. Maybe I should tell you what it is. Yes. I'm excited. We're not going to stop. We're going to keep getting better, but soon we're going to have somebody working on email capture and check out. Yeah. So that's the next thing we're working on. So keep an eye out for that because obviously we all want you to have lots of emails.
00:27:28
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Tons of emails. The more emails, the better. Yes. That's awesome. And how has your experience been with the cell by weight in person? Right. You're saying you're not the calculator. So hopefully the little magic POS device does it for you.
00:27:44
Speaker
It does. And it makes it, it makes it so easy. One thing I come across at the Liberty Hill market is people want to see, it just helps them see the total of the weight and the thing on before they ever check out. So it's like, we still put the meat on the scale. They're still looking at the scale, but when you put it in the app and you show them.
00:28:04
Speaker
It was 2.17 pounds. Your ribeye is going to be $45 and they can say, Oh, well maybe I'll take a smaller one. It helps them think about that sale and feel good. I think about what they're getting when they can actually see it on the thing. So I love being able to weigh and then they can pick and choose it sort of like taking a hands on, like you're in the grocery store shopping for your meat and you can see the weight, but you're doing it from a farmer.
00:28:33
Speaker
So yeah, I like it. Probably more trust building. I like that. Yes. That's good. So here's what people probably don't realize because people can buy from you and you can sell by weight both online and in person. It's a little different, isn't it, in each place, but you're able to do it in both. Yeah. Because I think, isn't it, that you're flipping then to when you're in person. It's just like you're calculating on the spot, but online you can't calculate on the spot. So it's a little different, but you're still selling by weight.
00:29:02
Speaker
Correct. Absolutely. So when they're buying online, they're putting a deposit down on what our average weight is going to be, but that's written in the description already. So they know that this is just a deposit. And then when we pull the order, then we're putting in the final weight.
Personalized Customer Service
00:29:18
Speaker
Are you going to do some adjustments or whatnot, which is important when you're selling filet.
00:29:24
Speaker
Exactly. And ribeye. You're like, I'll take every ounce. We even try to personalize it even more whenever they go into place an order and barn store automatically has their name and phone number in there. If something is not within the weight range, like say we guesstimated an average and that state just came back gigantic.
00:29:46
Speaker
Well, we don't want to automatically go in there and charge this person's card for something they weren't expecting, or it could go the other way. And maybe they're feeding eight to 10 people, but our cuts came in too small. So we will actually take their phone number and we will personally text or email that's on there too. Each one of that comes up and say, Hey, this is what it's going to weigh. Would you like more or would you like me to take some out or do you want to change? Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Michelle and I have made so many friends.
00:30:16
Speaker
by texting about meat. Talk about customer service. Yeah, but I love it. It works. There's something beautiful about you're not taking an order. You're just completing an order at that point, right?
Future Growth Plans
00:30:30
Speaker
More of a customer. Like that's a good use of your time. Yes. Right. Yeah. Versus they can self serve or order all day long. And then at that little hand holding, it's just like icing on the cake. I guess there's probably some other really better analogy that includes cows.
00:30:47
Speaker
You tell me, you tell me. I love it. That's good. All right. So what are your goals? What are your plans for 2024? Well, the number one goal for 2024 is we're adding more markets. We set some goals at the beginning of the year and we've already hit some of them. We wanted to upgrade our mobile meat storage. We did not have a brick and mortar. Last year had two trailers. One of them was quite small and rickety.
00:31:15
Speaker
As of today, we have three very nice cargo trailers that have been transformed with freezers. They have logos on them. Nice. One of our goals was to have an actual fleet of mobile meat trailers. So we've done that. Another goal is. Put a QR code.
00:31:35
Speaker
on the side of your meat trailers. I'm not kidding. Give them like three ways, do your phone number or you might probably don't need the phone ring off though. Give the QR code so they get either to your website or they can be automatically added to your email list, like either or. Because then you're just gonna, you're like a walking, it's like a billboard. You're just gaining customers. So yeah, website, QR code.
00:32:02
Speaker
Do the thing. Sorry, I got sidetracked. I got so excited. Sharing best practices here. Always. The ideas are always flowing. I love it. The second goal was to process 240 head of cattle for the year.
00:32:17
Speaker
And the third thing is to blow it out of the water. We're going for a million and more. That's amazing. I love it. Oh man. You better tell me what I need to build for you next.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yeah. Work on your wish list. We tell Kevin all the time. Kevin is amazing, by the way. He's don't lose Kevin. He's awesome. He even just got a promotion. We know he's awesome. Oh, good. Yeah, that's good. Well, he can't leave us. We like talking to Kevin. No, no, no, no, no. He's just overseeing and training more people to make sure they're as awesome as he is. I mean, that's just what you do. That's right. Yeah. Well, one of our big
Advanced Inventory Management Desires
00:33:01
Speaker
goals with Barn to Door to work with it is because we have so many locations, is being able to separate that on inventory. Like somebody can say, I want to bracket it down and I want to shop at the Decatur location where all those markets pop up. Exactly. You know, that kind of thing. And that would help us with inventory a little bit. Do you pre-sell for pickup at markets?
00:33:26
Speaker
online. Yeah, I was curious. I feel like that's a more common trend than maybe even we had anticipated, which is really fun. Now, why do you do that? And why do you, I assume, like it? We even do subscriptions picking up at markets, like we give them that opportunity. I think the reason I like it is it's easier to plan
Pre-selling and Customer Loyalty
00:33:49
Speaker
what I'm packing. Now, with the addition of the bigger meat trailers, we do take more inventory to the markets with us. But we have one freezer dedicated just to these are customer pickups. So I already know in my mind, this is sold, this is organized, the name is on it. So it helps with flow. It helps with customer relationships.
00:34:10
Speaker
because chances are good if somebody expected to know their name like yes you really are yeah they order from me every week or every other week i go hi lisa well not only does lisa appreciate that but the customer standing in line go
00:34:26
Speaker
Wow. How did the farmer just walk out with a bag of meat, hand it to her? Lisa walked off, goes to another booth to do her shopping. So they see that it's an opportunity for me to then turn around and say, yeah, all you have to do is go on our website, pre-order your items. It's paid for, you just pick it up. That's amazing. And so it builds from there. That's amazing. It goes back to professional, it's relevant, and it's how people shop.
00:34:52
Speaker
That's amazing. I don't know what it's like in Texas, but we have some farms that have done a really good job. Well, first of all, if it's rainy or bad weather, you really want to make sure people are showing up the farmer market and pre-sales, pre-sales like literally help with that because they've already bought it. They are showing up, right? So there's something about guaranteed sales going into a farmer market that feels good because you don't always know what the market's going to do.
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's a very good point. We have a lot of friends that we market with that have their own booths and stuff. And I think that anytime that we advertise.
00:35:26
Speaker
Hey, pre-order and pick up here. It's helping the market and we want the market to keep going. We want the market to be thriving because it helps us. And so I think it helps everybody around. And then also we sell a lot of stuff very quickly. So it has become a thing that people are like, I better reserve that and pick that up. We love FOMO.
00:35:49
Speaker
That's great. Yeah. Good for you. And I hope you're collecting emails with the markets. Please tell me you are. Yes, we are. We are. Our mail tip has grown quite a bit. It can make a real difference. We've heard so many good stories of farmers just like emailing weekly, essentially. Most of them I've gotten to the point where they just email weekly and it's like automatic sales and people love reminders. It's very interesting.
00:36:12
Speaker
So not on board. I'm with MailChimp at first. That's pretty normal. Trust me. Then they're like, wait a minute. Wait a minute. This is really going to work. Well, Michelle does it now. And I love it when she does it. And we do generate sales. And even if it doesn't click off of MailChimp, like you know how you can see the sales that come from there.
00:36:34
Speaker
Even if they don't click off of there, we know where it came from because a lot of times we will put a promo code in there that you can only see off of MailChimp or different things like that. So it is working for sure. Hang with it. You really are divide and conquer. I love it.
00:36:50
Speaker
Yes, we are. Got it dialed in. Well, that's a great way to grow. I'm telling you. Okay. Okay. So, cause I know we have to wrap up cause I'm getting the eyeballs from other people.
Daily Management and Passion
00:37:00
Speaker
So for any farmer rancher listening, do you have any last words of wisdom on what it takes to build your business and loyal base of customers?
00:37:08
Speaker
Well, I think it's interesting because Julie and I just talked about this earlier this week. And Julie, what did you send me? What was that mean that you sent me? Oh, let me look. Hang on. I'll look it up. OK, while you're looking that up, so Julie's going to look up something that she sent me. But I think as far as growing your business, it has to be intentional. It has to be daily. It's a living, breathing entity.
00:37:36
Speaker
Every morning when you wake up as a farmer, you go out and you check on your herd. That's great. The next step is you come back in and you check on your business. And you have to make sure that it's thriving just like your actual herd is. It's got to be intentional daily. And then Julie's going to share what. Yeah. That's powerful. Thank you. The quote that I sent yesterday, and it's funny that that just came up today, but is working hard for something we don't care about is called stress.
00:38:04
Speaker
Working hard for something we love is called passion. Wow. So if you have the passion and the drive and the want to succeed, then you will. I swear Michelle and I have more fun than we do work. It is hard work.
00:38:20
Speaker
There are bad days and there are days that we lose calves and there are days that we have animals attack. Michelle just lost a Turkey the other day and she was sorry, you know, in tears over that. I think though, if you push through that, things happen and you will get there. You just have to hang in and keep on going and build those relationships up. Like Michelle said. Oh, amen. That's great words of wisdom.
00:38:48
Speaker
I love it. I totally get it actually. I'm super passionate here, but you're dealing with business and humans and lots of everything. Right. But it's so worth it. It's so worth it, but that doesn't mean it's going to be easy. Right. I love it. Good.
00:39:03
Speaker
I want to extend my thanks to Michelle and Julie for joining us on this week's episode of the Independent Farmer podcast. You can learn more about Veterans Liberty Ranch at www.veteranslibertyranch.com. Check them out. Also keep an eye out for their fleet of vans. You can also follow them on Instagram at the handle at veteranslibertyranch.
00:39:24
Speaker
please go check them out because they are exploding and how fun to watch. Here at Barn to Door, we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country. We're delighted to offer services and tools to help farmers access more customers.
00:39:37
Speaker
increase their sales and save time for their business. If you're an independent farmer who's just getting started or transitioning to selling direct, or if you've been with us a while and want to simplify your business management, visit barnetador.com backslash learn more. Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to joining you next time on the independent farmer podcast.
00:40:09
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn to Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country. For free farm resources or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barntodoor.com backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.