Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Reinventing Your Farm's Business Plan with Dirty Girl Produce
227 Plays5 years ago
Joe Schirmer’s farm Dirty Girl Produce was thriving until COVID-19 impacted the Bay Area restaurants and farmers markets they were serving. Joe shares with us how they began leveraging farm boxes, online ordering, and pickup locations to bring stability back to their farm!
Show Notes:
https://www.dirtygirlproduce.com/
https://www.barn2door.com/resources
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Chaotic Business Year
00:00:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's just been a crazy year evolving. The business plan is changing on a day to day basis. I mean, it's just like, if I could, if I knew this was coming, we would have made all these changes already. Having to make all these huge changes in the middle of this has been
00:00:21
Speaker
Just a huge challenge. You have to figure out what your plan is. You need to reinvent the business plan. What's working for you and what isn't working for you. And I think that's the hardest thing with farmers is letting go of what's not working for you. Because there's so much of that right now.
Introduction to the Podcast and Joe Shermer
00:00:42
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the weekly listen for farm selling direct. We'll talk about the four levers for farm success, which are quality, brand, price, and convenience. We'll hear from outside industry experts and producers like you to delight your customers to save time and to increase your direct farm sales and business. We're glad you're here.
00:01:04
Speaker
Welcome back, everyone. You are listening to the Direct Farm podcast. And today we're talking with Joe Shermer, who owns Dirty Girl Produce down in Santa Cruz, California. We're going to talk about the huge transition that they had this summer, moving from being a massive market and restaurant supplying farm to doing more direct to retail sales and what that transition online has looked like for them and for their customers.
00:01:29
Speaker
Joe will also be speaking at our direct farm conference coming up on November 10th. If you have not yet registered, you can go to directfarmconference.com and register for free. It's virtual and we will spend the morning talking about brand efforts ahead of this coming quote unquote off season, but also the holiday season, a great time to drive sales and to really build that brand loyalty with your local customers. Here's Joe.
Joe Shermer's Journey into Farming
00:01:56
Speaker
My name is Joe Shermer. I'm 48 and I started
00:02:01
Speaker
working on farms when I was in college. Second year of college, I started going to community college my second year after dropping out of my first year in business administration down in San Diego State. The Southern California lifestyle was kind of like, nah. I mean, it was first of what I wanted, I thought. And then I went down and I'm like, I don't know. I'm kind of searching. So I went to community college and just started searching and figuring out and taking experimental classes and
00:02:30
Speaker
doing art and I kept stumbling across farming. You try and dig out a lot of the world problems and what's going on and how societies are structured, how can we make improvements and farming is just at the base of everything. And it just always popped up. And so I started interning and then I started working on farms. And since then, I think 92, I started working on farms and I've been doing it since.
00:02:57
Speaker
Had a good couple of friends that started Dirty Girl Produce in 95. I believe I started working for them in 96 or seven. I can never nail down those dates, but then they retired out of it and I just kept going with their farm and it was a little three acre, do everything yourself, kind of do all the hand weeding and harvesting and selling, you know. And it just has grown over the years.
00:03:24
Speaker
So of course I had to ask Joe about the name Dirty Girl Produce.
00:03:28
Speaker
My good friends, Jane and Allie, two women that started the farm and they were big mentors to me. They've essentially held my hand and taught me how to farm. They're really awesome people. They had a partnership that last four years and I had worked at like four or five farms at that point. And I was like, I want to go work for them because they're cool. They're doing just what I want to do with mixed veggie. And so I went back to work for them. They wanted to stop doing it. I wanted to.
00:03:55
Speaker
ramp it up and keep going. So I just did. So that's why I got the name dirty girl produce from them. We're doing 40 acres and, um, we do mixed veg row crop. We don't have any trees. We do strawberries, tomatoes, all kinds of, you know, in our area of South Santa Cruz County, you can grow year round. You can grow a number of things all the time. Of course we have, you know, our seasonal highlights of our early girl dry farm tomatoes.
00:04:22
Speaker
Strawberries in our bean program are pretty big. We just
Impact of COVID-19 on Business Strategies
00:04:26
Speaker
keep going. I mean, we have nice lettuces and we just make everything look really good. And we work hard to try and figure out how to grow the best quality. And that's kind of really what our focus is. What's the best bean? What's the best tomato? What's the best strawberry? So that's kind of what we do. We sell right now five farmer's markets, which are down about 50% from pre-COVID.
00:04:50
Speaker
And that's just the market end. We have a huge list of restaurants that we have sold to over the years. And so our business is just so tied with the restaurants for so many years that if you think 50% of our income was farmer's markets and then the rest tied between restaurants and wholesale, I'd say they're down 90%, maybe more. It's gotta be like 90% down.
00:05:19
Speaker
And restaurants are down 50%. So we've got to figure out how to sell our food. And we have the same footprint. We didn't stop. We didn't shrink. We didn't not plant. We went for it. And we're selling everything, probably more. So Joe and Dirty Girl Produce had exactly the same amount of produce to sell. They had the same amount of product, and they needed to find a place
Shift to Online Sales and Platforms
00:05:40
Speaker
for it. Here's how Joe explained that they evolved and the way their business model shifted over the course of the summer. It's just been a crazy year.
00:05:49
Speaker
evolving, the business plan is changing on a day-to-day basis. It pushed everybody to go online with credit cards, with their phones, with their watches, to probably have like earrings, you know, like I, you know, who knows what's next. It's all electronic and it's all just really a big shift. And I think we were sort of early adopters in that we were accepting credit cards and
00:06:12
Speaker
We had square readers and stuff like that early and we have online QuickBooks. So we were, you know, I was trying to push in that direction anyway. Our shift of using, being able to use a barn to door platform and have like somewhat of a CSA platform, we call it a box program because
00:06:31
Speaker
What we're trying to do with it at this point is have like a retail outlet where there's boxes. We have a farm box, which is a mix of what we grow. We can sell a box of strawberries, a box of tomatoes. Those are generic things that we can send and go. We don't really have a substitution list like people do.
00:06:50
Speaker
And that allows us to get a lot of produce to people. We started delivering as well. So we're doing delivery routes and just changing and trying to keep it going. We're also throwing a lot of pickup sites out throughout the Bay Area. So people are able to pick up. And that really works well. And it's nice because it really works well in combination with everything else that we're doing.
00:07:13
Speaker
It gives us a certain flexibility of what's on. We can't say, hey, we have cannellini beans. These are shell beans. You know, they change. We have this week. Let's run this week. Let's run that. And everything we grow is really high quality. So it's not like we're going to give people a bad box one week. It's just going to change and really helps us balance that kind of coming and going of all these different crops, peaking and having too much and then not enough.
00:07:40
Speaker
In addition to the box program, I wanted to know what other parts about getting online and moving sales management, order management, customer management online. We're really saving Joe time and helping streamline operations. I really like getting all the restaurants on board on the Barnadore platform. One thing I really like about it is that we can inventory and look out in the week and say, how many, which thing do you think we're going to have? And you can put an inventory number on and when people buy it,
00:08:09
Speaker
that much, then it's off the list. And because a lot of times we'll offer like, this is all that we're growing. And if we let people know everything we grow, then we oversell it, then we all do that. It's been really interesting. And it's really good because people pay you upfront. I mean, that's a huge thing and running any business is
00:08:31
Speaker
the difference between going, you know, someone buying something at the point of sale or actually pre-ordering it, pre-paying for something versus going 30 days out. And our model has always been like going 30 days out. I don't know how 30 days was ever invented in this world, but we would like, I would like 30 days upfront because I need the seed money to go. I don't have to borrow as much money. And then I'll chisel out the product later, but you know,
00:09:01
Speaker
having the platform and people sign on and they pay for it. And then, then we receive that order. Then we're harvesting. Cause we pick the order. We inventory based on a field walk where we say we have this much product out in the field, I think. And we have to guess and then people order it and then we go pick it. And that's how we do with just about everything. It's been really nice to have that little bump up of probably like the differences.
00:09:29
Speaker
there's easily $10,000 that would normally be in aging that we would expect to get in the next 10 days to 30 days. And now that whole $10,000 is not just zero, like a day zero that's
Choosing Barn to Door for Farm Operations
00:09:43
Speaker
paid. It's actually about four days in advance. So just is in terms of operating capital, that's the huge difference for us. It's a huge difference.
00:09:56
Speaker
Like I mentioned, Dirty Girl Produce is really well known in the San Francisco Bay area, and so I wanted to hear about moving such an iconic brand online. Clearly Joe already had a social presence, but I wanted to understand how moving more towards those relationships digitally was impacting his existing customers and also how it was helping him reach new customers.
00:10:18
Speaker
using bar and the door is next level. I think it's just the direction of where everything's going. But when you talk about the brand, like Dirty Girl Produce is, people know about Dirty Girl Produce. I think we have a really wide exposure at Fairy Plaza.
00:10:33
Speaker
Um, we've always tied into all the restaurant scene and our, so our name gets out just through social media. People will get ahold of us or even through email sometimes. And they'll say like, how can I get your produce? How can I get it? How can I, I'm like, look, you got to go to the farmer. This is what we do. You got to go to a farmer's market. And so also within the Bay area, you know, one thing I noticed growing in South Santa Cruz County.
00:10:58
Speaker
So we're driving through all these, there's like a hundred thousand people in Santa Cruz County. As soon as we open it up for delivery, all of a sudden there's all these people and I'm thinking like, okay, all our market customers that are seniors that aren't allowed to go out when COVID first started, we got to be able to give them food. So we start doing this and then all the people buying, you know, it's like maybe one in 20, I'd recognize them. There's all these people that were buying from us that we had normally been passing by that now had the opportunity to buy from us.
00:11:27
Speaker
And a lot of people too that buy online, a lot of people buy their food online, any kind of convenience like that. And the old model of farmer's markets is like in person, you're coming there, you like the market experience. That's why you choose to be there. Also, maybe you get, you know how to navigate a farmer's market. You know how to get the best produce, but now, you know, on the way we're dropping off and there's all these people that want that.
00:11:50
Speaker
our customers that we have no way of getting a hold of. We didn't know how to reach them. It's always been like, oh, well, let's try and convince people to come to the farmer's market. Well, yeah, there's only so many people that are going to do that. There's only so many people that aren't working during the hours of any given farmer's market. That's too far away. They've got kids. They've got that. They don't like it. They are shy. I mean, there's lots of reasons why
00:12:15
Speaker
That's not going to work. And as soon as we went online, I was like, oh my God, there's so many people that want our produce that we could probably even theoretically, I'll sell all of our produce because it's only 40 acres in Santa Cruz County. And probably if we tried really hard, we could just sell everything here. I'm not going to do that. I'm not holding the tent stakes up on all the stuff we do around the San Francisco Bay area.
00:12:37
Speaker
But I'm saying that there's just so many more people that are reachable when you have a pickup location and also you offer delivery. There's just a lot, there's a lot more sales opportunity and that's retail sales for its full retail. You know, you add a little, we talked to $7 delivery on it pretty much pays for the delivery. It's just a huge opportunity that we haven't taken up.
00:12:59
Speaker
I was curious to hear from Joe why he chose to work with Barn to Door. What about the capabilities helped him to really make that transition and to be successful?
00:13:09
Speaker
I had had a barn to door tutorial I think in the fall, but it was in the back of my mind and everything about it. And then I went back to barn to door and I'm like, Hey, can you give me that tutorial again? Because you deal with farms. I need something that deals with farms. And I looked at all the apps. I looked at all the options. And then I made the choice just basic based on my experience, doing it the hard way.
00:13:32
Speaker
and doing it, which was just social media and PayPal Venmo. And then once we got into Barnadore, I'm like, oh, this totally makes sense because you're not selling books. You're not selling other items, right? You're dealing with farms. And it's a very unique segment of the economy of our farms and small farms. And the other thing that really helped more than anything about it is just the tech support.
00:13:58
Speaker
You know, I would pay, I don't know, five, 10 times more in monthly fees because I feel like it's pretty reasonable to get the amount of tech support that I get on it. And that is, especially for me, who's, you know, I'm not a tech person, you know, although I'm learning, I'm a tech learner and I'm open to it, but I just have trouble with things that I
00:14:21
Speaker
can't figure out or it's going to take me hours to figure out, or I'm going to spend an hour, try and figure it out, get super frustrated, give up and go do something else on my list of to do things because I'm so busy. So the amount of tax support is just clutch in the whole thing. I think that you really need it going online. And then of course, redoing all our website and getting in line with social media and everything like that is are all things that I need. And in order for me to do
00:14:49
Speaker
all of this stuff on my own, it just would take years. Now looking back, it's absolutely ridiculous. And I was trying to do that. And for whatever reason, it just took me until COVID to do it. Necessity is the mother of invention. Like we had to do it. It became very clear as we had this ordering platform, like, look, if you don't order on the platform, then it's about
00:15:15
Speaker
25% chance that I'm going to lose your order like every day I'm getting really good at saying I am sorry I blew it blah blah blah blah blah I could almost like copy and paste everyone that wants an order that I'm blowing it because there's just too much it's too much there's too much new work going on there's too much taking the old work
00:15:36
Speaker
There is evolving work. I mean, it's so much change and it's been so great to be able to say, Hey, this is how you order people order. And then it's like, I'm done because straight to the field. There's a computer in the field. He's looking at the pick list all day long. Check and see if there's any more order. 10 o'clock comes around the cutoff. Okay. This is what we're going to do. Here's our list. Let's go pick it. If there's any late orders, which there's always late orders,
00:16:03
Speaker
And some of them I throw to our market staff or some of them, if it's reasonable and it's within the hour, sometimes I'll take them, I'll put them in, whatever. My final question to Joe was that if he could go back a year and give himself advice, what it would be. After jokingly saying that he should just buy a boat and set sail, here's what he said.
Reflection on Adaptation and Change Management
00:16:23
Speaker
I mean, it's just like, if I could, if I knew this was coming, we would have made all these changes already.
00:16:31
Speaker
having to make all these huge changes in the middle of this has been just a huge challenge. I would just say in the slow months, because you don't, the problem is in farming is everything breaks when you need to use it. It doesn't break when it's sitting unused in the shed. So when you have your time off, that's when, or your downtime or whatever, that's when you need to invest in the
00:17:01
Speaker
infrastructure of your business. What's working for you and what isn't working for you. And I think that's the hardest thing with farmers is letting go of what's not working for you because there's so much of that right now.
00:17:15
Speaker
And I just really fear that there's a lot of, it's weird because a lot of farms have really thrived in this time because people have tried to find food. They're coming to roadside stands, they're doing CSAs, they're making the effort to buy fresh produce because it's been hard and you have to wait in line and you have to go in grocery stores. And if you feel afraid of that, then, you know, delivery and, or a farmer's market outside is a good way to go. So.
00:17:42
Speaker
I think just getting all your ducks in a row, figuring out what software you're going to use, take a computer class, get help. And then I think you got to choose your software. Well, I, you know, I chose barn to door because I shopped around and I did the research and I felt like, okay, this is, this makes the most sense for our business model. And it seems changeable. You have to figure out what your plan is. You need to reinvent your, the business plan. And that's.
00:18:10
Speaker
It's funny because it's what I was doing last year, but it was just really, I had a difficult time doing it, you know? And having this, everything get locked down and having COVID take over, it forced me to do it, just shove it in and make the change.
Conclusion & Conference Invitation
00:18:29
Speaker
It was great to get to talk to Joe a little bit more about Dirty Girl Produce, and we hope you'll join us on November 10th to hear even more from Joe about the way that his brand has really evolved online over the course of this year. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll talk to you again next week.