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Finding Opportunity to Build a "Farmers' Market on Wheels"
368 Plays3 years ago
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we discuss full-time home delivery, local producer partnerships, and the importance of good customer relationships with Grant Sheeder of Sheeder Cloverleaf Dairy (IA).
Sheeder Cloverleaf Dairy is formerly a grass-based, family owned dairy operation located in Guthrie Center, IA that now currently specializes in full-time home delivery services and partnerships with other local vendors to offer a “farmers market on wheels”.
sheedercloverleafdairy.com
barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Introduction to Direct Farm Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the go-to resource for farms across the US looking to grow and manage their business.
Weekly Tips and Tactics for Farmers
00:00:10
Speaker
Tune in weekly to hear tips and tactics from our most successful farmers on how to increase sales, access more customers, and save time and money. We'll
Insights from Industry Experts
00:00:18
Speaker
also speak with industry experts, business leaders, and partners to share the latest farm business trends selling direct to market.
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to the direct farm podcast.
Grant Sheeter's Farm History and Operations
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm Rory, your host for today's episode. We've got a great conversation for you today with a member of our farm advisor network, Grant Sheeter of Sheeter Cloverleaf dairy located in central Iowa. Welcome Grant. It's great to have you here. It's been a little while since we've had you on the podcast. Yeah. Hey, Roy, how's it going? Good, good. So to start, could you kind of catch us up or give us a little bit of a refresher on the history of your farm business?
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah.
Transition to Home Delivery During COVID-19
00:00:53
Speaker
So my family, we started using Barnadore back in 2020 when COVID hit and our dairy that we milked cows on and bottle and glass bottles. We're having issues receiving our bottles back at the grocery stores. The grocery stores would not take the bottle deposits back for us to wash, reuse and get back on the shelves. One of our employees reached out to me with an idea of someone out in New York that was doing home delivery. And it all kind of really happened fast as far as actually someone at Barnadore reached out to me.
00:01:21
Speaker
That same week is kind of a perfect storm for us to transform. What we have is just going directly to grocery stores and restaurants to offering a home delivery service to the same area. Just mainly so we can hopefully get our bottles back and then obviously give that more of a hands-on feel direct to consumer experience. It's kind of, kind of how we got started with our home delivery service and barn to door. Yeah. And when your family had been doing dairy for some time before that as well too, correct?
00:01:47
Speaker
Yep. So we started milking cows in 1996. And then we started bottling on our farm in 2006 and glass returner bottles. We did all the milk was that we produced or all the milk that we sold was produced there on our farm. And then any excess milk that we weren't able to use in our ice cream mix or eggnog within season or just fluid milk, we would sell to a co-op outside of that. So it wasn't like we'd have to have a certain amount of cows milking at one time or not be able to generate some cash flow from that excess milk as well.
00:02:16
Speaker
Yeah. Awesome. Well, so then, yeah, like you said, you guys started offering delivery and doing online sales back in 2020 now.
Pivoting to Delivery Services and Partnering Locally
00:02:24
Speaker
And so COVID was kind of the big reason for making that initial leap kind of. It was the reason. I mean, the connection with the customer was an added bonus, but the main reason was we needed bottles in the worst way. I was going down every Saturday in a mall parking lot and having customers bring us bottles and hand them cash and returns so we can keep them in rotation.
00:02:42
Speaker
Transportation was a bigger issue at this point as well. Getting our bottles, we got some bottles without our labels on them. That made it took a while for them to print that on the side. It was just something that we did not anticipate. I guess that was whoever like anybody, I guess. Yeah. And it was always a eight to 12 week timeframe to get our bottles. It was just so long out to get bottles with our label put on them. So.
00:03:04
Speaker
The best thing was is trying to go direct to the consumer to at least help connect with it. I mean, get those bottles back in our house so we can, like I said, wash, sanitize and get them refilled and back to the customer. Yeah. And I'm sure there's a lot out of it, especially even just if you're selling direct, you're controlling that communication and maybe even expectation setting around getting those bottles back. So that makes a huge difference. A hundred percent. We've been.
00:03:26
Speaker
In the market, as I said, since 2006, we've had a Facebook page. We've been able to communicate with our customers over the course of our time. And they understood. I mean, it was one of those unprecedented events, unfortunately, that we all were dealing with. And I guess another plus out of that, there's a lot of people that did not want to go to the grocery store at the time either. So that's where even the grocery stores, they adapted for, they did a lot of in-store shopping for customers and just customer pickup. And I think they still do that to some degree, but yeah. And we were able to partner with other.
00:03:55
Speaker
local producers that, I mean, there weren't farmer's markets that summer. There's just a lot of avenues for local producers that were taken away. That was their livelihood. And luckily we were able to tap into that and help them help us help the consumer. This kind of win-win-win for everybody for us to be able to partner with those other local producers, whether it be for coffee or eggs, meat. We've got a slew of different products from local producers from the area. So it was a,
00:04:23
Speaker
huge bonus for all of us, a farmer's market on wheels, if you will. Yeah, definitely. That was the start of your delivery program. Had you ever thought about doing delivery before all that? It was something that was always in the back of our mind for another avenue to go down. But fast forward to today, we don't even milk cows now, just because there's unfortunately, there's not enough staff in our area. I mean, it's a different line of work. I mean, milking cows and taking care of animals on a daily basis. It's not hard work, but it's always there. And we always say that
00:04:52
Speaker
having milk cows is kind of like raising kids. Cause you know, when they're bad days are when they don't feel well and have that sense about them when you see them every day, twice a day, if not more. And it's hard to get somebody externally to come in and have that same connection with the animals and to be able to keep their welfare at the utmost as well for not only production purposes, but for the animal wellbeing as well. But yeah, it's doing the home delivery part of it. I thought it would be tough to just market our milk alone.
00:05:20
Speaker
So the first two connections I made were a local egg producer and a local bread producer that they do all the stuff in house with no added hormones or antibiotics and that sort of stuff. And it just kind of blossomed into these other items that we have where we have, you know, firewood, frozen pizza, supplier, pies, jams, pasta noodles made here in Iowa. We've got a coffee, beef, pork, we're slowly getting into the produce kind of sorta. We are working with a producer, hopefully here.
00:05:47
Speaker
soon that with some hydroponics, it'll have some year round, but yeah, you have to stay open-minded. And for us, it's what works logistically as well. There's some things we'd love to have on board, but it's just logistically, it doesn't make sense for us to try to make it work for either for us or the producer, but we're not that scale, I guess. Yeah.
Growth and Seasonal Impacts on Delivery
00:06:04
Speaker
Well and I know like so you start out the delivery program and as you've talked about you've kind of added a lot of products to that but how is delivery in terms of the scale of the program with how many deliveries you guys are doing how has that growth been over the past couple years? It's been steadily increasing every season is a little bit different summer months especially this summer we've noticed mainly from our subscription buyers they've been on a lot of
00:06:28
Speaker
family vacations, making them for lost time or a lot of the kids are in sports so they're not around as much or they're gone more, being more active in that aspect of it. And a lot of our older customers, they're off visiting their kids or grandkids in other locations too. So everyone's kind of making up for 2020 and part of 2021 for being homewritten to getting out and about and seeing a lot of families that they hadn't been able to see for a year plus. We're always Admiral customers. We're kind of, we're busy in the summertime too here.
00:06:58
Speaker
I'll admit that I'm not the most marketing savvy person, I guess. I lean a lot on social media and our MailChimp as well. But I know whenever I do it, we see the dividend pays off using that MailChimp and just a little bit of social media to connect and just a general reminder is, Hey, don't forget about us and these different products, whatever it may be. Cause some people forget that, Hey, I forget you have pies or I forget you have, I mean, honey and stuff like that. There's just all those things where just a general reminder, I mean,
00:07:25
Speaker
a simple click of a button, send out some emails really pays off. Yeah,
Starting Small with Deliveries: Grant's Advice
00:07:30
Speaker
definitely. That's a great way of putting it too is just keep reminding people that you're around, that you're there, that you have maybe more products than people even think. So I'm curious, like for farmers, since you have been doing delivery now for a while and you guys have really scaled that program, what would be your advice to maybe a farmer who's just getting started with deliveries or maybe some things they could avoid that maybe were problems that you ran into?
00:07:51
Speaker
I guess one of the things besides investing into the barn to door subscription and working with all the fine staff there, we bought a van, brand new van. And that was one of those things that, Hey, if this doesn't work after six months, the market for these refrigerator vans are through the roof. So at least we can get our money back out of that deal type of thing. But the logistics is a huge part of making it all click. I mean, with efficiency and fuel costs and everything, it all matters. But for us, I guess it was just growing it small because we were doing two days.
00:08:21
Speaker
for quite a long time, an hour up to four days with a lot more zip codes added to it. So we didn't want to bite off more than we could chew more or less and just kind of grow small and be the best vice. Cause I mean, unless you have the people power to be able to provide that service to large area and things take off, the worst things can happen is that customer being upset that you said it was going to be here at this time or this day. And you don't have the people power or the inventory to make that happen. And seeing that through some other people that grew
00:08:50
Speaker
Too big, too fast. And that was something I wanted to avoid at all costs. We could have probably gotten faster, bigger, but I kind of like those baby steps. I mean, we always have those customers like, oh, we're just right across the zip code line. And obviously I wish I could go there because we're all trying to make a living here, but yeah, it just takes time to do some of that stuff. I mean, it was a year and a half before we got to the point where we are today in our delivery area.
00:09:14
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. I think that's a great point. And I think a lot of the most successful farms that are doing well with delivery, they'd say the same thing. It's kind of an acclamation, not only for us putting everything together as fresh as possible to get into their doorstep, but it's kind of a learning curve for the customers as well to get on board and understand the website and what to find subscription or not. And just the delivery process. I mean, again, you don't want to bite off more than you can chew. Cause I was on my phone enough the way it was just trying to respond.
00:09:41
Speaker
and stay ahead of any questions. And it was nothing bad. It was just, they didn't understand something. So they had a question. It was just a simple need to do this or providing them with a link or adjusting the delivery day or whatever it may be, but it all takes time. And that's where that customer service level, you want to stay at the utmost importance along with the quality product, obviously. But that was something that was near and dear to me is keeping people happy as much as it could anyways, have been pretty successful.
00:10:04
Speaker
keeping them happy. So we're pretty fortunate with our market too. I think in today's world, I guess one of the things that taught us is patience. Yeah. No, I think that's always the two things you mentioned there, maintaining quality and maintaining that personal relationship. Cause I think at the end of the day, that's really what your customers, their two highest priorities probably boil down to is having a relationship with their farmer and getting that quality product. So I think you
Importance of Quality and Relationships
00:10:29
Speaker
saying like, those are the two things we had to maintain through delivery is that's really important. Yeah. Cause there's.
00:10:34
Speaker
No question about products that we sell cost more than they would at the grocery store. And that's because it's better quality stuff. It's the freshest you can get. And these people aren't afraid to pay that price. I mean, A, to support local farmers, B, it's the best of the best. It is what it is. And it's not some large factory. And I'm not knocking the big factories. You got to have them too. But yeah, people don't know what they're getting. And they deserve the best when they're paying that premium price for it. And part of getting that is
00:10:59
Speaker
relationship you have when they have a question or concern or whatever, maybe have that open line, whether it be through social media or through email or phone call. Yeah, definitely. Well, you talked about some of those partnerships that you've established and I know that a lot of your business is built around these partnerships now. I was curious because I know this is something that other farms are interested in too. They want to increase that product offering that they have on their store without necessarily having to
00:11:24
Speaker
bring on a whole bunch of other animals to start raising or start growing all these different produce options. So they look to do that through partnerships. How has that kind of happened for you? Have those kind of come to you naturally and people wanting to partner with you or have you gone about looking for people and reaching out to them? How has all that kind of transpired over the last couple of years? A little bit of both. There's some that I
00:11:46
Speaker
Just, I mean, come across my newsfeed or that I look for a specific type of item that's locally produced and I'd reach out to them. A lot of them had reached out to us through our social media as well, just because we were spending money and we were getting our message across to people in the area saying, Hey, this is the best of the best home delivery. Like I said, the farmer's market on wheels, if you will, and a little bit of both. And we had to be careful what we brought on board. People just knowing people in the market.
00:12:12
Speaker
as far as our products go. And then yeah, searching for a little bit. We're always looking for some new things to add. And so of it, like he says, come down to logistics. Unfortunately that we can't make it happen at the moment, but we're keeping that deadline open for down the road. If they get a little closer to the area that we can make that work and make it affordable for both of us to do. Cause I said, it comes down to that. We still got to make some money in the process as much as we want to have everything available. We still kind of be able to make ends meet.
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I was curious, what have some of the outcomes been of having all these different products in your store? Like, have you seen a pretty direct correlation between like average order sizes or anything like that kind of increasing as you've added more products? Yep. Yeah. Oh, for sure. And then again, this kind of goes on a seasonal basis on some things, the honey, the breads, pies, obviously in the full time in the wintertime, we have a lot more pies to go out with ice cream. And, uh, the thing that we like to pair things with, I mean, we have pizza, one thing that I found out one time, if I
00:13:09
Speaker
Ventures was they offered hot honey on their pizza, a local restaurant in the Des Moines market. And I had never even thought of something like that. So I promoted that through our Mailchimp deal. And we had so much hot honey and pizzas go out. It was just little things like that. And just try to help come up with ideas and dinner plans and stuff like that that makes life easier for our customers. And that really bodes well for us to at least help make that association with these different products throughout the seasons.
00:13:35
Speaker
No, that's an awesome idea. I love that. Like put together the whole meal for the person in an email. That's a great idea. Yup. I mean, it's not for everybody, but I mean, sometimes it's just some people are like, Oh, that sounds good. I've never thought of that. And I know that's for me, it was a wood fired pizza, a different location. And I was like, wow, this is like really good. Our honey provider happened to have some hot honey. So I made that push. And we've done that with like our granola and yogurt before paired it well with ice cream and cookies or pies and cookies.
00:14:04
Speaker
Um, just a lot of different things that we've tried to associate or pair it together to help promote within. So. Yeah. Do you guys, do you do like a promo around it or do you just pair the products and people buy it?
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah, we just push it. We don't necessarily do a promo just because there's so many different flavors. It's just a lot easier for the customer to pick and choose which they like and inform them of the idea more than anything. Cause otherwise it'd just be a lot of inventory issues that I don't want to deal with. Well, and I think too, like if you don't need the promo, don't use it again. It's just, I mean, if we had more people on staff and.
00:14:36
Speaker
Here soon we will, but it comes down to time and energy too. And the customers, I think it just kind of gives them the ability to get what they want and how many they want too, because everyone's a little different. So this way we also don't dictate like what they can and can't have. Yeah. No, that's awesome.
Transitioning Focus Due to Family Health Issues
00:14:50
Speaker
As you alluded to there at the beginning, a few months ago now, your business and your farm underwent some pretty big changes. So I was wondering if you could maybe start by just explaining what that was and what kind of went into that decision.
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah, as a man of my dad's well-being, he's 64 now. Just a lot of years of wearing tear in his body that he didn't take the time to go get fixed. Well, I guess he says that he couldn't because we were all working full time. It's tough to get away from the cows and everything we had going on at the farm and heal properly. And there was some truth to that, but it's still one of those things that you got to take care of yourself before anything else. Or otherwise you don't have anything type of thing, I guess.
00:15:28
Speaker
mom and dad made the decision to sell the milk gals so he can get the help he needs as far as he's had a knee replacement with another one coming up here and a shoulder surgery hip replacement. Just a lot of years of not taking care of himself properly led to the decision to make that happen. So sold the milk cows in February, sold a lot of our equipment and all of our processed equipment to several other local producers all across the U.S.
00:15:53
Speaker
We were pretty fortunate to find some people that were in need of our size of equipment and find homes for. So we've transitioned from having a dairy herd to about 90 head of stock cows and calves down too. So we're still utilizing the ground that mom and dad have with rotational grazing for our beef cows, along with growing some crops. And so since then we've been able to partner with another dairy on Nebraska.
00:16:19
Speaker
that bottle of their milk in glass bottles to offer to our customers. And we still have glass bottle of milk that we provide. Ours was grass-based in this other facility. They're not. So that's the biggest difference from what our quality of milk is or a different taste, I guess you could say. And I've grown up on it for 20 some years. I've been doing it since I was second grade and I had to stand on buckets to get up there and milk cows from the pit. And to go from that to not milking cows every day, it's definitely been a very, oh, it's a weird
00:16:49
Speaker
feeling, I guess. I mean, we still have livestock, so that's good because it's an important part of our lives. So since then with our home delivery and fast forward a little bit, I can never keep USDA inspected beef products. This is my biggest thing. We can't keep enough steaks or roast and that sort of stuff in stock. And so I did some homework. I reached out to an old locker owner and did a bunch of homework as far as how and where, what it'd take to get a locker built. And I think it was two years.
00:17:18
Speaker
This last May I met with somebody and from that time forward, I guess we're to the point we're about 30 days away from opening our locker here in Guthrie center.
USDA-Inspected Meat Locker Plans
00:17:28
Speaker
Did a lot of homework, did a lot of research. I got a partner involved with me on this to bring USDA inspected facility to our little town where we'll be able to process up to 30 beef a week. So.
00:17:40
Speaker
I've transitioned kind of myself from the dairy side to providing a locker for locals and for our retail purposes, not only for our home deliveries, but for restaurants and stuff like that, too, in an area that seems to be a giant gap in right now. So yeah, no, definitely. And I think that it complements your delivery service so well too, that yeah, moving into that different space, obviously a huge change for you, like you said, and especially because dairy is just such a nonstop go, go,
00:18:10
Speaker
It is. Yeah. Yeah. That's really exciting. I didn't have any intentions of working here initially, but with mom and dad's decision at the end of January to make that step, I've gone from helping
00:18:20
Speaker
bringing the idea together and financially kind of make all ends meet there with my partner to now I'll be helping run the show there for awhile. So that's where my dad, he's kind of fit in the stock cow side of things. He's got some different lines of cattle that we'll be able to do some pasture fed along with corn fed along with other producers in the area that will have available for our retail work. Yeah. Awesome. So it'll be kind of a mix combo of the processing business as well as this kind of aggregation model through your delivery service.
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And then some, I think we built it to grow into, I guess in a sense. And we've been anticipating this day for long. We've been waiting on cooler and freezer evaporators and condensers. Those darn old chips, everyone wants in their vehicles are in the motors for our system as well. So we're down to the wire to get all that stuff installed at the moment. Yeah. With our home delivery, along with our retail, like different grocery stores.
00:19:16
Speaker
restaurants and then we'll be able to implement some of this with the farmer's markets in the area too. There's other producers in the area that'll have their label on their products that we'll be able to help them get slots filled because in our area, very livestock oriented area, we're getting a date to keep your animal butchered. It's two years plus out for a lot of people. So it's really hard to schedule and make a living off of guessing two years out on things. We're looking forward to being able to bring this to the area.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's going to be here. I mean, we talked to farmers every day who just can't get processing dates or they're having to book processing dates before the animals are even alive. And so yeah, that's a huge headache for everybody right now. I know. So yeah, I went from one headache to the next, but I'm looking forward to it. It's not going to be quite the time restraints I had with the milk and the cows, but there's parts of the milk and cows I do miss being outside more. And there's part of me that I don't miss it either.
00:20:11
Speaker
with two little ones in my wife's job and everything like that. It has allowed me to enjoy a lot more things that I hadn't before, but I guess we don't know. You don't miss it. I guess either. Also, but yeah, no, definitely. So I was kind of curious. Do you think any of this would have, or some of this would have even been possible if you hadn't have started down that direct to market path. So two years ago now and doing home delivery and things like that. Do you think those kinds of initial steps or would have led to this being an option for you? Not at all. I don't think so at all.
00:20:41
Speaker
Very unlikely, I should say. I always knew of the need for, especially for the locker. The locker is one of those things where I knew there was a need for it, but to the point where the driving factor for me was for my pocketbook. I mean, I'm not able to get it. And if I could provide a service to a large group of customers to do their own custom work or their own retail work.
00:21:03
Speaker
along with satisfying my needs for the home delivery side of things and kind of cut out the middle man, say pass on those savings to the customers. We're going to be bringing 12 to 15 jobs to town. We've got a lot of good equipment coming to town to help mitigate some of the staffing issues. A lot of us face, but this type of work is something that people don't mind as much as the milk and the cows things when you're standing in a barn, a hundred degrees and fans blowing flies chewing on you.
Barn to Door's Role in Success
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah. And cows pooping on you, that sort of stuff. It's just a whole different line of work that I think people are more immune to and don't mind doing nearly as much as some of the physical aspects of it that a lot of farmers are unfortunately having issues finding people to work. Yeah. And to the point we are with this facility today, hadn't been for barn to door and help making all this kind of this home delivery thing come to fruition.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah. That's awesome to hear. I think another thing that you've kind of mentioned and talking about like switching milk producers and adding all these other customers or other partners, I guess, to offer all these different products to your customers is having that really strong and loyal customer base who trust you enough to almost pick these items for them. And so I was wondering if you could speak to that and how you've gone about developing that over the years of building that customer base. I was being transparent with something. I asked him questions on our social media. I don't know everything. I'm not going to act like it either. So.
00:22:19
Speaker
And if there's something out there or something they would like to see changed or adapted to or whatever it may be, I just put it out there and ask them on Facebook and or email either way and just kind of get their feedback on things and how we can make things better or offer things that are something that they would like or what they think to change or whatever it may be. And I tell you, we got the best customers in the world. They respond so well and.
00:22:44
Speaker
without attitude. Yeah. So yeah, it goes back to where just having that personal relationship with them and they see me and my family on social media. I try to share pictures once in a while. So they can put a name to the face a little bit too. So they have that connection as well. But yeah, I think having that connection really helps the overall growth because for they've sitting around talking to the neighbors or family or whatever it may be, if they're within our delivery service area, they're able to get online and check it out and get some of those products.
00:23:11
Speaker
And some of them, like I said, they'll reach out to me and I, Hey, what have you ever thought about doing this? Or it's some of the products we have in different sizes. It's just a lot of these little things. And sometimes I say, yeah, we can make an adjustment or sometimes I simply can't do that. And they understand that too. Having that, I guess it's a pretty open relationship with our customers or kind of let them determine some degree along as it's, I mean, fits within our means and budget to do things.
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah. No, and that's awesome that they know they can communicate with their farmer and with the person getting them their food. That's really cool. Yeah, it helps immensely. And the partners we work with do, they do a good job of interacting with the customers because they don't always come to us for the questions either. Again, I'll be the last person to tell you, I know everything. So, so when they go and they reach out to these partners that we work with, those farmers and families appreciate too, knowing that they're being appreciated. We're just fortunate enough to have the service to get it there.
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah. No, that's really cool. Well, so you've been, I think you said this kind of all started at least you got the ball rolling back in about February. I think you spoke to some of the challenges with just supply chain and things moving slow in terms of the meat locker, but in terms of that delivery program, the shift to you doing beef more so, and growing out that kind of aggregation model, how has that all progressed so far? Well, and really just mainly because I mean, it's transportation of goods is
00:24:33
Speaker
been our biggest thing and it's hard to promote like in our meat locker. We're going to have so many different fresh meat items and offer pasture fed. We'll have more types. We'll have a local elk producer. We have lamb. We'll have obviously the pork and the beef. There's just got so many more things that we're going to partner with and do.
00:24:52
Speaker
lot of ready to eat meals where we'll have the roast with potatoes from local farmers and onions and that sort of stuff in a bag where essentially when you get a home, you just cut the top off, put it in your crock pot and hit warm. But we've only scratched the surface I think of this home delivery thing as far as having somewhat of a farm fresh ready to eat meals. Luckily with the meat locker, we've got some equipment that we'll have there that we can really do some partnering with different items that
00:25:17
Speaker
We haven't even touched base like the produce side of things. It's hard to preserve some of that stuff where some of the shrink wrap stuff that we'll be able to do, we'll be able to package things better so they can stay fresh longer in house. And then we'll have a retail space within our meat locker too. So we can offer more things knowing that if we don't have it available through home delivery, we can sell out the front door and have a decent fresh product without having a bunch of inventory worried about throwing it away.
00:25:42
Speaker
To answer your question, yeah, it's been slow, but we're looking forward to really ramping things up here in the next 30 to 45 days to really do a lot of testing as far as what the market wants. Yeah. No, that'll be a fun process too. And getting that, like you said, your customer feedback is such a big part. Yeah. And we'll be able to offer quarters and halves of beefs or pork or whatever it may be. When you pencil it out, if a customer has a space with a deep freeze or just a fresh freezer, whatever it may be.
00:26:06
Speaker
buying those quarters and stuff like that. You're so much money head than you are going to a grocery store, even through us and buying steaks only type of thing. If you get that quarter, you pay for the pound. That's not necessarily the cut. So having that ability to all of our customers, I think will be a good thing for everybody.
00:26:22
Speaker
I know subscriptions were also something that was pretty crucial to you when you were doing dairy and people are getting milk every week or so. And so have you been able to transition that or are you looking to transition? Obviously, you're still selling milk. So I'm sure you'll still do subscriptions there. But as your approach to subscriptions or how you're using those kind of changes, you've shifted your business model a little bit. A little bit. So
00:26:44
Speaker
We still do subscriptions for the glass bottle note that we have before we were able to dictate the prices ourselves. And I don't think we ever changed the price of the note in the year and a half that we were on Barnard door. So, I mean, there's that to take into consideration. So we do it on a, oh, it's a two month timeframe for subscriptions.
00:27:04
Speaker
which it works out well that way because it's eight weeks of not having to worry about people not knowing if they've got milk going or not. But after that, I got spoiled for the first year and a half because it never changed. And it was just an ongoing subscription for us now. I had to keep track of that stuff, which I mean, it's not the end of the world, but not knowing what the market's going to be and the price of product and or transportation, all those different stuff had to take that into effect. So we do our eggs and our milk two months time basis and then revisit things with our farmers
00:27:33
Speaker
And it's kind of forecast if they think they see an increase coming or even a decrease, if whatever it may be. So we can adjust for that, at least for the eight week time period. Yeah. But definitely subscriptions are the way to go for a lot of customers. They love it. I wish I could do more things on subscription, but just because of inventory issues, it's tough to do that. And many more things other than our milk and eggs until we get our own locker go up and going here. And then we'll be able to have a lot more.
00:28:00
Speaker
meat products available through subscription if need be. Are there any kind of ideas already cooking there for what you might want to do for around those meat products or subscriptions? Yeah, we do. It's just, again, it'll be seasonal because there's a lot of different cuts that I mean, are more popular in the winter months and fall months as opposed to main like hamburger patties or whatever, maybe for grilling season in the summer months. It'll be more like hamburger, that sort of stuff by involved that they can do. We'll be able to help.
00:28:28
Speaker
offer savings on that sort of stuff that will actually will be again probably like a lot of two month time period or give or take 15 days here and there, but that's the timeframe that we probably will do at least.
00:28:41
Speaker
Again, it's going to be a new thing for us to learn and it'll probably change on an annual basis as well. So I have to keep that, again, the transparency open with the customers and see what they want. Yeah. Well, and like that, like a roast meal that you were talking about where you just have everything put together at one, I feel like that pairs really nicely with subscriptions too. You could sign up for a description and get two or three of those or something like that. Obviously not all the same thing, but you get your dinners for the week and you're set.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah. And that's where even we've got a local cafe here in town that she's going to provide a lot of our pasta noodles or pasta salads and desserts and that sort of stuff that we'll have fresh in our fresh deli area area and the retail space that it's going to be a pretty unique package where you can literally get your vegetable potatoes and meat all in one. Like that'll be individually wrapped within one package where you just slice open heat up and you're ready to feed a family of four. We'll have different sizes for different sized families. So.
00:29:36
Speaker
Kind of benefits another local producer or family owned business here in town along with just being able to feed their families affordable and easy. Yeah. No, that's awesome. And it's all like you're saying local products for a farmer who wants to work with an aggregator, somebody kind of selling their products for him like yourself. What would be your advice to them kind of going about establishing that relationship and what are some things that you've learned make it easier to do that? I guess. Transparency. I know everyone thinks they've got the best stuff in the world.
00:30:05
Speaker
And I mean, they want to sell, sell, I guess, just keep an open mind too. Cause we get a new product. Every time we sell a boatload of that new product off the bat and then it scales back a little for a little while. And then if they wonder what they did wrong or something like that. And it's just a trend that we see in every new item that we ever have bring on board or try to push. It's just, it's tough to push everything all the time. And our vendors that we work with now, uh, understand that there for a while they're confused. Some of them would be confused why it would be so hot and then not.
00:30:34
Speaker
Our customer base isn't always the same clientele as they have coming in their doors or their farms. So it's just a different environment to not get discouraged. I guess I feel that something's wrong or something like that. And definitely if there's any assistance that you as a farmer could provide someone like myself within the information or just providing the customers with as much information about the products as possible. So yeah, I mean, all that it's the community effort as far as that goes, as far as
00:31:03
Speaker
The marketing, the connection, transparency, the information, providing the customers along with keeping the quality product the way it is. I remember one time we actually had to buy some silage before we got our fresh silage packaged or put it in these big tubes. So we had to buy some from a different farmer around that he didn't seal it the way we do. So the silage smelled different. It looked different. It was just all around different. The milk, our milk tasted different as well. So you are what you eat, literally. And our cows are no different.
00:31:32
Speaker
And one of our coffee purveyors, she couldn't get it to froth the way she wanted. And she didn't understand why. So we were like freaking out something. There's something growing in the pipes or something. So we literally spent an entire weekend tearing everything apart in our processing facility to see if there's any, anything growing somewhere that would give this different flavor to it or why it wouldn't froth or whatever it may be. Cause we hadn't changed anything else as far as our practices or the pasture or anything like that. And we couldn't find anything.
00:32:00
Speaker
And it come down to the time period where it wouldn't froth and had that different taste was the exact same time period where we had that silage that we had purchased through another different farmer, but she was still okay. Cows enjoyed it. It was good, but it was just a totally different quality. It was a year old. It wasn't the top of the notch, but we just had to get enough to get by for a week until we got our fresh stuff. And once we realized that we told our customers and.
00:32:26
Speaker
I mean, they were so happy to hear that because we had a lot of customers, yeah, we tasted the difference too. Or I remember one customer's like, he mentioned his daughter's name to his wife on a Facebook post and said her name said she wasn't crazy, but she wasn't pulling her leg.
00:32:39
Speaker
There wasn't a different taste to it. Having that personal relationship with the customer, just kind of let them know we're all human. The cows are no different really in that respect. In this case, things change throughout the year. There's so many different things that can change, not only the delivery time, but the quality of things sometimes that are out of our hands, I guess. And it's best to get that across or if there's something really good that happens. I mean, the same thing is to let the customers know exactly what's going on or
00:33:05
Speaker
whatever it may be, because they're going to be just as happy for you as we are type of thing. So it kind of has that feeling where people are really pulling for you and the vendors that we work with. So it helps a lot just keeping that open communication. Yeah. Oh, definitely. That goes a really long ways. I guess just looking ahead as a final question, Grant, what's kind of next? I know you've talked about the next 30, 45 days are going to be pretty, sound like they're going to be pretty busy for you. So
Podcast Wrap-Up and Resources
00:33:29
Speaker
what's kind of next step ahead for you in the business? Besides the meat locker, we'll be partnering with a lot of other
00:33:42
Speaker
It's just, I wish we could offer everything all the time. It's just, we haven't had the inventory space to do that until we get our locker up and go on and designed it so we can accommodate more local family produced items. And I don't like for in-store that we'll have it on meat locker, but also definitely through our home delivery service where people will be able to have more of a variety of things. And I mean, more, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
00:34:02
Speaker
varieties of the same things as well. So it can be another pie producer or honey producer or something like that, or not biased, just the one family or farm. We can open it up to more down the road here. So the inventory wise, they hadn't had a lot of space to really do much growth as far as some of those products go. So yeah, I'm excited to hear how everything keeps going and keep an eye on you guys. I love keeping tabs on your website and your Facebook and all that. So it'll be cool to see. Well, awesome. Grant, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
00:34:32
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me again. I want to extend my thanks to Grant for joining us on this week's podcast episode. Here at Barned Door, we're humbled to support thousands of farms across the country, including farms like Sheeter, Cloverleaf, Dairy. We're honored to get the opportunity to learn from our most successful farmers who share these tactics, resources, and tools that they've used to grow and manage their farm businesses.
00:34:52
Speaker
If you would like to connect with these farmers and other farm advisors, attend Barnadore Connect. You can register for weekly sessions at barnadore.com slash connect. For more information on cheater cloverleaf dairy, you can follow them on Facebook at cheater cloverleaf dairy. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.
00:35:12
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in. For more free farm resources, tips, and tactics that are most successful farms use to grow and manage their business, visit barnadore.com slash resources. Also don't forget to subscribe to the Direct Farm podcast to automatically download our weekly episodes. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.