Building Farm Partnerships in your Community’s Local Loop
In this week’s episode, Kevin and Cory of Barn2Door’s Success Team discuss how Farms have built successful partnerships with other local businesses in their community. By identifying ideal partners and uncovering their Buyers' local loop, Farms have created convenient ways to expand their product reach.
For more Farm resources, visit: barn2door.com/resources
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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 Barn2Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand and sell online and in person.
Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
Kevin Soncrant: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Kevin, the head of our success team at Barn2Door, and I'm your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners may be aware, Barn2Door offers an all-in-one business solution for independent farmers who are cutting out the middleman, [00:01:00] taking control of their business, selling under their brand, and making sure their customers can purchase from their farm, both online and in person.
In today's conversation, we're going to get into utilizing partnerships in your community and the local loop to expand your farm's reach. Today I'm happy to welcome back Cory, who's one of our account managers here at Barn2Door, and helps farmers implement best practices when building their brand and direct to consumer operations.
I'm excited to talk to Cory about forming partnerships with other local businesses, uncovering your community's local loop and expanding your farm's reach to increase sales. Welcome Cory.
Cory Hutsen: Thanks, Kevin. Good to be back on the podcast. This is one of my favorite things to do at Barn2Door.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, I've listened to some of your previous episodes.
They are very good. You're a natural for this, that's for sure. And who better to have on this particular episode than someone who's probably had these types of conversations with farms more than just about anybody here? So Cory, can you give us maybe just a little background on how [00:02:00] you help support farmers who are trying to expand their reach within their community?
Cory Hutsen: Yeah so, when I meet with farmers as a farm account manager, I'm covering a lot of different things from the basics of helping farms, you know, help with their store, MailChimp. But a big portion of my meetings is having marketing conversations and having conversations on how to grow your customer list, how to effectively reach customers and drive those customers to your online store. So, expanding out and tapping into their local market and partnering with businesses has been something that I've constantly been brainstorming ways, listening to other farmer success stories of how they've been able to achieve that.
So, it's one of my favorite topics to discuss and yeah, excited to dive a little more into it.
Kevin Soncrant: Awesome. Yeah. Let's maybe just start then with a brief overview, like what does it look like for a farm to partner with other local businesses?
Cory Hutsen: So, [00:03:00] it can look a couple of different ways. From a very basic way, it can look like you are selling another business's products in your store, or another business is selling your products in their store.
Now you take kind of the next step and we'll get into this a little bit more using the example of like a independent grocery, but maybe you're using a local business as a drop off point, a convenient spot where some of your customers already frequent and you are utilizing that business as a drop off point.
They have refrigerators or cold storage, and in exchange you are driving foot traffic into that business. It can look as simply as maybe in a church or a coffee shop, you have your flyer on their bulletin board, or maybe that business is including a link to your store in their newsletter.
So, there's a number of different ways these kind of partnerships can look and formulate. [00:04:00]
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, I've even seen some farms partner with other local businesses to do giveaways to expand their reach. And, you know, they'll launch a giveaway, combine each other's products, use that to capture emails, share it on each other's socials, and really boost each other's presence using their own current followings to essentially dip into each other's customer bases.
But yeah, I mean, ultimately there's an immense amount of ways in which they can partner with other businesses. And one additional topic we'll get into further that kind of goes hand in hand with partnerships is the concept of the local loop. So, anyone that's not familiar with this term, could you maybe just give a brief explanation of what the local loop is?
Cory Hutsen: The local loop is gonna be where yourself and your customers frequently visit. The places of business, the locations. So, this can be churches, grocery stores, schools, gyms. The places that are most frequently visited by yourself and your community or your potential customer base.
Kevin Soncrant: [00:05:00] Yeah, absolutely. And to expand on that a little further, generally, you know, you look at a suburban mom who's the ideal customer for a lot of our top Farms, you know, every week she's kind of making the same trip, traveling throughout the community to and from school, dropping her kids. There might be a local gym in there on a weeknight, maybe a local church on the weekend, a coffee shop on a Saturday, Bar or Brewery on a Friday. And so, those places that she is consistently going on a week to week or month to month basis would be a part of her local loop.
So, we all have slightly different local loops, obviously, but understanding your ideal customers' local loops and where they're already going can give you a leg up on the ability to get in front of them and secure more customers.
Cory Hutsen: Yeah. Securing two birds with one stone situations. If someone's already going to the, you know, church for a Wednesday night Bible study, that's a great, great way to knock out, you know, they're not making an extra trip to go pick up their order, places they're [00:06:00] already visiting.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, absolutely. If you can meet 'em where they are, you're making their lives easier. And convenience is king when it comes to online e-commerce. The more convenient it's for people to get your products, the more likely they are to wanna purchase them. So Cory, let's, let's dive a little bit deeper into some different ways we could partner with local businesses and really just like how to start, as well.
So like, if I'm brand new, I've never partnered with anyone, like what would you recommend? How should I start this process?
Cory Hutsen: To start, before you do anything, I would first think about your approach. And as you're thinking about your approach, one thing I've started to talk to farms about doing, is just take out a pen and paper, or maybe you're on your laptop and start just jotting down names, people you know, whether that's friends, family, parents of your kids, coaches of your kids' sports teams, people you've worked with in the past.
And start to just note down different people and [00:07:00] like how you can network or speak with those people, about your store and your online store. And then you can also start to jot down businesses that you're already familiar with. Maybe you will know the coffee shop owner in town. Maybe your friend or your kid's baseball coach knows the coffee shop owner in town, or your friend's mom goes to the local yoga studio in town.
So, that's a very preliminary start. And then, on top of that, I would start to think about your message that you're gonna present these potential businesses with. Like, what am I going to portray as what a partnership would look like, what the benefits would be for that business when I speak with them. So, you're just not going into it, you know, cold when you first start to approach these businesses with that.
So, you want to be ready to go and have a game plan. Now, I was speaking with a farm very recently, and I think they're an amazing example [00:08:00] of what it takes and what it looks like to form a partnership with a business. This farm had a local grocery, just a small local grocery that was focused on curating local products, had more of a health nutrition vibe to it, and she thought that would be an amazing partner, but didn't know this store owner.
So what she did, she first, she drove and went to that store. The owner, manager wasn't there, so she dropped off her flyer. Now, her flyer had her QR code to her signup form. It had her website, URL on it, had some key bullet points on what she does and what her overall values are like, grass fed or sustainably raised, or just locally raised, whatever's most important to you and you want to portray, those are good things to list as well. Now, she then followed up that after driving home. She followed up a few days later with a phone call and talked to the owner. Did you see [00:09:00] that flyer, owner answered, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, she eventually talked to that owner again and said, Hey, I think it'd be great for us to meet. Let me just get in front of you and talk to you about what I do and what this could look like. The owner was apprehensive. Again, not really knowing her, but once she was actually able to drive and schedule that in person meeting, Hey, here's what it's gonna look like.
I could just do, you know, popups have my bundle boxes. I already have this existing customer base that are placing orders all the time on my online store. They're gonna be placing orders, it's gonna be more customers coming into your storefront on a Saturday afternoon, it'd be great for me 'cause I'm gonna have access to more customers.
So, that was a lot of effort on her behalf and she took all different approaches from emailing and calling to going in person, dropping off a flyer, to following up and actually scheduling a physical in-person meeting. So, that's what it takes a lot of the times, but, the hard work definitely paid [00:10:00] off in that scenario.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah. Amazing. What a great story. And I love the way you started that too. It's just like for people to sit down and just analyze their own current network, 'cause a lot of times we don't realize how strong that network is and how many people we know and how many connections and opportunities may exist right there when we just sit down and simply write out who we know and who they may know, and then start asking people for help.
One other thing that it's probably worth talking about here too, when we're looking at starting is, once we've kind of exhausted those means would be, utilizing the brand basics worksheet at Barn2Door, where we will work with farmers to help them identify their ideal customer and then places those ideal customers frequent.
Could you maybe give a little insight into what that process looks like as well, Cory?
Cory Hutsen: Yeah, the brand Basic Worksheet is an incredible resource as well, and kind of serves as almost a guideline to some of the list building that I was referencing earlier. They will actually send out that brand basics worksheet, before a lot of our academies, like grassroots marketing or Social Media [00:11:00] Academy.
And it's just, it's a thinking exercise as much as anything else. It'll help you kind of go through your local loop, like it'll ask you to identify the places you frequently visit churches, schools. It'll ask you to identify who you think your ideal customer demographic is. Is it, you know, young adults? Is it married folks?
Is it a couple with three, four young kids? Is it, you know, like you referenced earlier, suburban Sally, your active gym goer. So, it's making you think about all these things that, for a lot of farms I've met with who are new to selling in general or selling online, a lot of times they haven't really like put a ton of thought into who is my core demographic, who's going to be my ideal customer?
And that brand basics worksheet does a really good job of helping you dig deeper into some of those things.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, like you said, the simple act of sitting down and identifying who that ideal customer is. Their demographic information, where they're frequenting can really help [00:12:00] you utilize your marketing efforts more wisely.
So you're not trying to market to everyone and not trying to make everyone your customer, but a very select group of people, which can allow you to be much more specific with your messaging as well as where you're going to find those people. You mentioned on the brief overview some different ways we can partner with local businesses.
Could we just maybe go over a few other ways in which some farms can partner with local businesses?
Cory Hutsen: Yeah, absolutely. So, we touched on earlier, some brief overviews of ways that you can partner with other businesses. Now some of the most successful ways I've seen are from a very basic standpoint of exchanging social media shoutouts, like maybe you are partnering with the local coffee shop in town and you've started to build a little bit of a Facebook or Instagram following, you know, you're promoting their store and maybe they're promoting you, send over your Barn2Door store link, and they're posting that for you on Facebook.
And you can get into [00:13:00] things, you know, a little bit deeper. Like I had mentioned, the local grocery, which is a great example because sometimes they might have refrigerator space. So, if you are a protein farm doing beef, pork, chicken, and you need cold storage, partnering with like a local grocery to be able to drop off your bundle boxes for your customers to pick up. And again, you're kind of messaging that to the owner as, Hey, in exchange for this cold storage, like we kind of share ideal customers, customers are buying from me because they want local sustainable foods. Those are kind of the same people who are visiting your store.
So, while they're coming to pick up bundles, I'm driving that traffic into your store.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, that's fantastic, Cory. I know many of our most successful farms, their mindset is never turned out an opportunity to meet with someone or get your name out there so, you know, if it's the local news organization that wants to do a story on you or you know you have an opportunity or seek out opportunities to even go speak at schools or do [00:14:00] school field trips, work with your local church and do giveaways or even speak at the local church.
We've had very savvy farmers as well look at building co-op and workspaces. We have a farm actually that drops their CSA off here where we work. We have a 19th floor in a downtown office with a number of other businesses that share this workspace and they advertise their CSA here and drop it off every week and every two weeks for people to pick up.
And ultimately, the more opportunities farms take to get their name out there, the more opportunities they give themselves to build a strong customer base. So, Cory, let's move on a little bit and talk more about, when farms are forming partnerships, where should they begin?
Cory Hutsen: So, and I should have mentioned this earlier, Kevin, because one of my favorite exercises to do when I meet with farms is when we're actually looking at what businesses we're identifying is to just pull up Google Maps, right?
This is after we've already started brainstorming, using the brand basics worksheet and creating our own list. But, when I'm meeting with farms. I will just pull up maps, [00:15:00] whatever. Where's the town? Where's the city? Where's the neighborhood that you're looking to target? Where do you think your ideal customers are gonna be coming from?
And so, one exercise I'll do is I'll pull up Google Maps and I'm just gonna type in gyms. When you do that on Google Maps, red dots are gonna populate on the screen that are gonna show you each gym in that area. And you can hover over it. You're gonna see what the gym is. You're gonna be able to see the website link. Now, I will, and this goes for other businesses as well, because I'm going to add a few key things that are gonna help us here. We're gonna immediately eliminate any chains, right? Same goes for coffee shops or grocery stores. 24 Hour Fitness, Anytime Fitness, we're gonna eliminate those. We're specifically doing this on Google Maps to identify those gyms where we can actually talk to a decision maker, that's gonna help us.
So, you can do the same thing for whatever businesses you're looking for, but starting there, mapping out [00:16:00] Google Maps, and then you're just going to the website. There's gonna be contact information, pull phone numbers, pull emails. That's your first place to start. Make sure you have something ready to go that has a link to your store.
What you're looking to do, what you're looking to offer, but before driving out to meet people or picking up the phone, I would just start behind your computer and pulling up Google Maps.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah. I love that. And I think coming back to what you said on the front end, because it's worth repeating here, is that going back to the local loop and looking at your own connections, but your own local loop.
Right. Start there first. It's a great simple starting point. Businesses that you go to, restaurants that you visit, a school that maybe if you have any kids that go to a school, if you attend a church, places within your own local loop that you're already frequenting are also very good places to start.
Cory, what are some typical partnerships that you see your farms forming?
Cory Hutsen: So, I just touched on like the Google maps, and I use the example of gyms, but I use that [00:17:00] example for a reason because that's been an extremely successful partnership for a lot of farms I've worked with. I initially started mentioning that because I'm a gym goer myself, I also am someone who cares a lot about the food that I eat.
I'm very nutritionally focused and so, going to local farms, like as soon as you get anybody who is nutritionally focused or fitness focused, they're gonna eventually listen to something or read something that's gonna tell 'em how amazing it is to buy from a local producer. Right? So when they do that, those people are looking for farms.
The big issue right now is they don't have the awareness. Like if I asked any of my friends where they would go to buy from a local farmer, they're gonna say, I guess the farmer's market. You ask that same question, the person's gonna say, well, you know, I go to the farmer's market maybe once a month or once a year even, which I think is actually the statistic in which average Americans frequent the market.
So, gyms is an incredible partnership. [00:18:00] Those people are gonna be nutritionally focused, they're gonna be quality focused. They're not gonna be price focused on the food they're purchasing. Now, I've had it go from as simple as the gym owner allows you to hang up your flyer with your QR code to they're gonna include your store link, your Barn2Door store link on their newsletter to their own internal customer base.
All the way to, I have a gym that drops off a cooler of beef sticks as a quick snack for gym goers. I have farms that do bundle boxes and protein subscription drop-offs at gyms. So, there's a wide range. I mean you're gonna take a little, but you know, you continue to develop that relationship. And generally gym owners are pretty excited, to speak with farms, 'cause there's a reason they're that entrepreneur and they started a gym, they're probably pretty aligned with what you're gonna be doing. So, gyms is a huge one. We already discussed local groceries, utilizing [00:19:00] schools like just going within your own family. A lot of times we've spoken with farms who will go to, you know, their kids' schools and do guest speaking events.
That's a great way to get in front of parents or, you know, in exchange, Hey, we actually do on-farm visits, you can bring your kids out to the farm, but that's an awesome opportunity as well. Just that also, not even building the customer base, but starting to build an actual relationship and a brand loyalty.
You know, If parents are super excited about a farmer speaking to their kids and now knowing there's a place where they can take their kids out to see, you know, animals and spend a day outdoors. And then the last thing I'll highlight just because I've heard it so often, as well is churches. Obviously churches have bulletin boards in their lobbies, but we've even had farms who after Sunday services will have their truck with coolers and do [00:20:00] pop-ups outside of the churches.
As the congregation's flooding out the doors. So, that's an ideal scenario as well. And there's many, many more examples, I could get into, but those are some of the key big ones.
Kevin Soncrant: Great examples, Cory. I'll share a couple I've seen, I've seen local breweries be a great pickup for some farms. Unique thing about a local brewery is the people that are going there value local products, they're generally gonna be paying two to three times more for the same, for a domestic beer versus the local brewery. So, they really want a high quality local product. And, generally you have people that are going there consistently on weekends.
Salons have some potential. You talk about, again, another ideal customer overlap. Suburban Sally. A lot of people going local beauty shops or salons. And then, one thing maybe worth just mentioning here, Cory, one thing you and I were discussing the other day was potential for like firehouses. Do you want to maybe share a little bit about what we were thinking about with that?
Cory Hutsen: Oh yeah, firehouses and another one of our account managers, Ryan Grace has brought [00:21:00] this up as well, but thinking about incredible partnerships, when you think about firehouses, almost every single town, city has a firehouse. A lot of times, those firehouses are gonna have their huge garage doors open, and you're gonna be able to see the firemen hanging out inside.
And those firemen spend a lot of time together cooking, grilling, doing different activities. They're also generally very involved in the community and very highly regarded by the rest of the surrounding community. So, that could be a super approachable business to, you know, just go over to, hey, I know you guys love to grill.
I've got my incredible beef and pork box. If you guys place an order in my online store, I can come drop it off. Maybe we could have some other customers come to the firehouse to pick up or you guys, could start spreading the word for me as well. So, firehouses is a unique one, but I [00:22:00] do really love it, when I first heard it and the more I thought about it, I was like, yeah, that would be an awesome partnership.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, absolutely. Great. Thank you for sharing all those examples, Cory. Let's talk a little bit more about just like uncovering the local loop in your community. Like if we're, again, starting out and looking to find our local loop in our community, where should we, how can we uncover that further?
Cory Hutsen: I mean, I think it's, for a lot of farms, Kevin, and this is, you know, I have this conversation with farmers where you're on a farm, right? A lot of times your farm is generally pretty removed from the actual town or city. You're very rural. Maybe it's 15 minutes, maybe it's an hour away, to where the bulk of your customers actually live and the local loop that you're looking to identify. So, I think the first step in starting to uncover more about your local loop is getting off the farm a little bit. Right, it's gonna be leaving the farm and driving into town and [00:23:00] starting to scout out local businesses, talking to folks, shaking hands, 'cause we can talk about all these different marketing strategies, QR codes, flyers, driving people to your online store.
The best way still to bring awareness to the fact that you have an online store is word of mouth and it's meeting with people and you're never gonna be able to portray the message in a way that you want it to better than you will be able to in person. And actually talking to folks. So, I think that's the biggest thing in uncovering your local loop is starting to get off the farm and talking to folks about where would be a convenient pickup location if you were able to establish one.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, talking to people and asking questions. There's so much that can be learned from asking questions in such a simple practice to implement. Some other things we've seen some farms do that have been helpful, surveying people, right? Sending out a survey on social media or email. And then just getting a grasp on customer routines can be really [00:24:00] helpful as well. Understanding what their routines are, and again, sometimes that comes through just talking and asking questions. So Cory, when we look at partnerships and the local loop, there's some overlap there when it comes to farmers' marketing efforts.
Could you maybe expand on some of the overlap you've seen between those two?
Cory Hutsen: Yeah. And so one thing I wanna highlight that immediately popped into my head, Kevin, you had mentioned breweries just a minute ago. So a lot of our farms might already have wholesale relationships, with clientele like breweries or restaurants that they're already making frequent visits to. Well, it's always worth speaking with some of those owners in your point of contact you have the wholesale relationship with and see if there's an opportunity for that business to be a pickup location for the rest of your customer base.
So, I think that's a great overlap. Again, you're already frequenting maybe delivering that wholesale order each week, and potentially you have a great relationship with them and your customers are already, you know, a lot of [00:25:00] them already like to frequent that brewery, so might be potential for them to pick up their bundle box on their way home. Now, looking at some other ways this kind of overlaps. One thing I actually mentioned to you in the office today, Kevin, maybe you're a farmer with young kids, maybe you have friends who have kids. I was speaking with a farmer the other day who was going to baseball tournaments, little league baseball tournaments almost every single weekend.
And everybody knows like little League Baseball, you have your little concession stands there. Well, he saw an as opportunity to bring coolers with his beef sticks. And what better way where you know a high concentration of customers are gonna be in one area. You're gonna have a lot of parents watching kids baseball getting hungry and you have, you know, a much healthier, better option than what's generally available at those little league baseball games as someone who spent a lot of time playing sports and knows what's offered for [00:26:00] parents and kids playing sports. So, that's an awesome opportunity to just meet people, introduce 'em to your products, get a sampling out there.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah. I can't tell you how many packs of bubble gum, and packs of Skittles I had growing up playing baseball would've been much welcome to have some local farm food. For sure.
Cory Hutsen: Exactly.
Kevin Soncrant: Cory, any other parting words of wisdom you wanna share before we wrap up?
Cory Hutsen: One thing I'll just mention, because it's not as much related to, we've talked a lot about the different local businesses and your local loop, that you can partner with and start to identify. But, sometimes that might look in the sense of like an actual club or an organization. So, I just wanted to mention that to close too, because I've had farmers who have built partnerships because they're part of their local rotary club or the local chambers of commerce.
Right. Where that's a great place to meet local business owners. So, even going to a town hall meeting, or getting involved in [00:27:00] one of those organizations, that can be a great way, again, to get you off the farm and start building some of those relationships and networking.
Kevin Soncrant: I love that. That's great. Well, Cory, thank you so much.
I wanna extend thanks to you for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more of Barn2Door on our Instagram @Barn2Door. Here at Barn2Door, we are humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country. We're delighted to offer services and tools to help farmers access more customers, 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 at it a while and want to simplify your business management, please visit www.Barn2Door.com/Learn-More. Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to joining you next time on The Independent Farmer Podcast.
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