Convenience is King: Quality Products at the Right Price with Sheeder Cloverleaf Dairy
Listen in as Grant Sheeder, owner of Sheeder Cloverleaf Dairy, walks us through how he increased his family Farm's sales by focusing on subscriptions and door-to-door delivery.
-
Allyssa Knutson: [00:00:00]
All right. Welcome back everyone. You are listening to the Direct Farm Podcast. It is nearly January, which means we are quickly approaching the Direct Farm Price Conference on February 2nd. If you've been listening to the podcast, you know, we often refer to our four levers for farm success, and those are price, quality, convenience, and brand.
This coming conference, we are going to focus on pricing insights for your farm and how you can increase your sales by selling direct to market online. And so today I want to introduce you to Grant Sheeder he'll be speaking at that conference and we'll cover the best practices he learned from his own personal experience, selling direct this past year.
It was great to talk to Grant and learn more about his story as a farmer and how Sheeder Cloverleaf Dairy has experienced exponential growth as a result of providing subscriptions and incorporating delivery options to expand their reach. I'm delighted to introduce you to Grant Sheeder one of our newest members of the Farm Advisory Network
Welcome grant. Great to have you here. Why don't you introduce yourself and how you got into farming and selling direct online.
Grant Sheeder: [00:01:05]
Yeah. I'm Grant Sheeder from Guthrie Center, Iowa. my family and I run and operate Sheeder Cloverleaf Dairy. My dad was a full-time UPS driver for about 12 years and my mom was a local K-12 music teacher in town. And I, they were both at a point and young enough where they wanted to do something a little bit more. My dad was always, he always had cattle or hogs and sheep on the side.
And, uh, he just wanted something that he could, build and possibly hand down to me and my two sisters, if we so chose. So with that dream they both quit their full-time jobs bought just shy of 500 acres, bought some dairy cows and started milking cows.
we've been milking cows since 1996 and we began doing our on-farm processing where we bottle milk in glass bottles, make ice cream. And throughout the years, we've done butter and cheese curds as well.
And, throughout the years, obviously I'm the oldest of three. I'm the only one still around full time. We've done the on-farm processing in the glass bottles. It's been a huge boost in a niche market for us in our area. That's really separated us from a lot of the other different dairies that are on the shelves in the grocery stores as far as quality, appearance, and just the local factor.
We milk about a hundred cows year round with two different calving groups. We sell to grocery stores, cafes, restaurants, and just recently with the pandemic, we've begun doing home delivery service and teaming up with other local producers.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:02:42]
It's great to see that for the past 24 years, this has been a passion project for your family. I'd love to hear more about your decision to incorporate delivery options for your customers.
Grant Sheeder: [00:02:52]
Yeah, the home delivery thing is something we've kicked around for a while. In recent years just due to our size and our market, there's a couple of other larger dairies that service multitude of States across the Midwest and, we're in no shape or have a desire to get it that big.
With this pandemic that has taken place this year, it gave us an opportunity to give it a shot. And, one of the fine folks at Barn2Door happened to reach out to us via Facebook and just, it really, it was hit a home run.
One thing led to another and about a month later, we were live and online and promoting through our social media. And, now we're up to about 1100 orders a month right now we're doing home deliveries for.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:03:35]
What were the drivers to explore Barn2Door?
Grant Sheeder: [00:03:38]
It was kind of a perfect storm. One of the individuals from Barn2Door had reached out to us, Originally before we kicked it around. And, touched base with him and he got back to me right away and everything that he was telling me, it almost sounded too good to be true, to be honest.
We're not real computer savvy people, so there's just some of those little questions that we wanted answered. And, yeah, everyone that we've worked with in Barn2Door from the beginning has been very helpful along the way. From just the getting up and going, to the website, to ordering, the inventory, anything that we've ever had questions on, everyone's been really good about getting back to us or assisting us to make sure, we look good to our customers.
We opted to have Barn2Door, assist us with our website and revamp it. Just give it a nice clean new look and that really meshed well with the online store and, it was such a seamless thing for, I guess for us, again, we're not computer savvy. they asked us the questions that what we wanted, how we wanted to look and give us some different options and how we can present our website and our online store. And, just made it very easy to, pick and choose how we wanted things to look and be listened and then be able to train us in a fashion where we can change it if need be too.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:04:55]
On this podcast, we love to talk about levers of success for farmers to build momentum for your business and to keep growing. Can you tell us about the Sheeder Cloverleaf brand in your community and your focus on quality?
Grant Sheeder: [00:05:08]
We're, top quality it's priced that way. we don't do anything with our milk and we only feed the best to our cows. And they're well taken care of than probably myself at times. And , without them, there is no us and same thing with the customer. I mean if they don't like what we present to them on the shelf or at their door. We don't have that customer to continue to survive out here in West Central Iowa. Quality is utmost support to us and obviously the quality of life for animals as well. And that's a huge part of, why it has been from the get go.
But today, as connected as everybody is, with social media and everything, we really try to convey that to our customers because unfortunately not all farms are that way. But having that the top notch quality, not only from our products, but the other products that we work with, from other producers for home delivery is essential, for our livelihood to keep moving forward in the direction we're going.
Because, since May, I think when we started using Barn2Door end of May, we've gone nowhere, but up in sales. So it's pretty exciting for us. And I'm looking forward to the future. Our product really speaks for itself. we've been delivering to the grocery stores now. Like I said, since 2000, the end of 2005 and, we've got that mainstay of the quality and the, and it's in glass bottles and anything, I guess you look at a shelf that means something that just looks presentable and good.
anything in a glass bottle is going to taste really good too. having that, I guess it's not an image, not only an image, but it is, something that is, it's truthfully something of the highest quality. If you're going to be able to buy in a grocery store and get delivered to your home because of the way we take care of our cows and the way we feed them and handle them from the time they're born, up until that milk's at your doorstep. Different facets that we use for our marketing aspect, it all goes hand in hand, as far as you mentioned, the MailChimp is a huge key component for us, not only to gain new customers for home delivery, but just to inform them for any additional changes or new products, or just staying in touch with them on occasion, just have that personal touch, with our several, it's almost a thousand plus customers we have now.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:07:21]
How would you say that quality and price go hand in hand in terms of your strategy and how you promote your business and go about pricing your products?
Grant Sheeder: [00:07:31]
That's a tricky question, because to be completely honest with you, I really, I don't do a lot of grocery shopping. My wife does most of that. So when we were getting some of these other products outside of ours and again, the prices. I would see some of these and be like, Oh my gosh. I just don't think anybody would pay for this regardless of it's delivered to your home or not.
But, I've told all of our local producers that we work with. I said, price it where you're comfortable making money. I mean, we're not into this just to do it, to be doing it. We need, everyone needs to try to, we're making a living, we're not going through the motions only for the fun of it.
We're trying to put food on the table for us as well. we try to be as competitive as we can, as far as, values. And then we tacked on a small margin for our, efforts within marketing and delivering and all of our expenses with our van and delivery driver. Everything that involves the actual delivery part of it.
And, every time I plug in something it's like, Oh my gosh, we're never going to sell this. That's like the number one thing that worked, we sell the heck out of it just blows my mind and it comes back to those people. They get it and they taste it. And it's just that they're astonished by the quality and the taste and the full of flavor that everything that we are able to provide, they get.
We're in the Midwest where pork and beef are a huge part of, a lot of people's lives with Iowa state university being so close. We actually deliver it up in the Ames, Iowa market. And so we've got a couple professors that have been buying. Products here for a couple of weeks now. And we got an email from a couple of, two of them just in the last week saying that they've been, they've traveled the world, doing a lot of different studies and so on and so forth.
And they said that they were naming different products that we have between our beef or milk and pork products specifically that they never had something that tasted so wholesome and delicious and fresh. In their travels across the world in there, one was 30 plus years and the other one was almost 50 years and he just retiring this year.
So when you get things like that from people that are really, they really understand and know what they're tasting, it really makes us feel that we're, more of an assurance thing, that what we are really doing, what we, try to do our best at, is let's say quality across the board, not only for our dairy, but like I said, all the producers that we work with.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:09:44]
I'd love to talk about convenience. I understand you made a commitment to door-to-door delivery for your customers, and you've touched on how that's been able to expand your business. Maybe you want to go a little bit deeper with that and how it's worked for you?
Grant Sheeder: [00:09:56]
Yeah, it's been it's been a crazy fun road. Really. when we started this venture, we had about 800 followers on our Facebook page and now we're, and that was in May. And right now we're closing in on 6,000 followers on our Facebook page and which, I mean to some small farms, that's nothing, but for us, for that growth that fast, it goes to show that people are really grasping the thought of having this service to them and, doing the door to door.
And it's been a learning curve for everybody. And thankfully for our customers, they've been so gracious on everything. They really get it. There are a lot of people working from home for the younger generation that are still working to their more of the retired age, people that are buying our products that are usually home anyways.
They really make a point for their delivery day. Again, it goes back to the communication, make sure that they are aware of what, kind of what time, they can expect the delivery. And it's always the same day each week for based on the zip codes that we service.
We're all humans. We make mistakes or messed up once in a while, but usually it can be fixed pretty readily. and everyone's been so nice about everything. We've had honestly never had a complaint, that we know of yet anyways, and our, our customer base keeps growing. So I'd like to think that we've done pretty well with our excellent drivers being courteous to the customers with the COVID thing.
Some of them prefer that we'd come up to the door with a mask on others and they, as long as we leave it at the door, they don't mind. It goes back again, that communication where, just stay in tune with your customer as much as possible. And it really pays dividends because they will think they're your best form of advertisement as well when they tell their customers.
And that's been a fun thing to see too, how many people, you stop at one stop and you can hit three or four houses. Essentially stopping at one, one neighborhood. and that's an ever-increasing, case, scenario as well, too, as we keep moving forward here.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:11:52]
I know you partner with local stores and other food producers. What does being local and community focus mean to you?
Grant Sheeder: [00:11:59]
In a day and age where people really want to know where their food comes from. The local part of it is such a huge marketing tool that, it's not just a, not just an imagery thing, but it's a quality assurance thing where people will really know and they can put a name with the product and know that it's been handled by people that take pride in what they do.
Or whether it's for our milk or ice cream or our beef producer or pork producers, whatever it is. we try to keep that level of communication at a top notch. As readily as we can with any questions they may have. There's really not much that the customer can't ask him about any of our products that they don't know, like thanks to the communication and relationship we have with our other local producers.
it's been a key component, with our growth and, I can't stress enough. The communication and relationships you can build, not only with our producer, but our customers has been off the charts since we've been doing this home delivery process through Barn2Door.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:12:58]
Looking ahead to 2021, how do you expect to maintain and even build upon your buyer loyalty for your farm?
Grant Sheeder: [00:13:09]
Right now, we're in the process of purchasing another van and, two more drivers to really capitalize on these customers that are on onboard or searching for something like this. And, I think the idea of having fresh local products conveniently dropped off to the store or their front door, is a huge thing.
Whether it's COVID or not. And with this COVID thing going on. I think it's driven some people to maybe work from home a little bit more too. So some of them may be home more. If not, both people in the family or it could be just one. we make a point where they're home for that delivery day for something like this.
So I, I would say a high percentage of our customer base, that regularly order either bi-weekly or weekly, I don't foresee that going away for a very large percentage of our customer current base right now.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:13:58]
I love to hear that because I think, this year, so many farms have definitely pivoted and you guys included and being able to see that it's paid off dividends to implement the door to door delivery and the direct to consumer online shopping experience for them to make. Things convenient and more approachable for people, especially if they're unable to leave their homes. What about subscriptions? How have you tried to secure ongoing commitments from your customers week over week?
Grant Sheeder: [00:14:24]
People really, liked the idea of if they don't have to remember to place an order every week. For the customers, it's an easy thing where it was, they know if they want a certain amount of milk or eggs or whatever, whether it's weekly or biweekly, we have both options for them.
They can, choose to do so. And if they're going to be gone for vacation or for whatever reason, they contact us and we're able to skip a week. So they're not getting charged here, have a bottle of milk sitting on their front door for a week when they're not home. But yeah, no, it's been a good thing. We look forward to expanding on that after the first of the year and some of our other products.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:14:57]
What would you say is the biggest lesson that you learned this past year in 2020?
Grant Sheeder: [00:15:02]
Besides the communication, organization is a pretty, that's been the, probably the thing we've been working on the most on our farm with these different producers that we've been working with, just to keep that fresh products coming in and the logistics to keep, the freshest quality goods to the front doorstep. Early on when we weren't doing a whole lot of home deliveries. It was very simple. And as we, like I said, we were exceeding 1100 stops a month now. It becomes, just this gradual growing pains, which, we're very happy to do. So it's just, yeah.
The organization thing is, made us rethink how we do some things just to make life easier for us, because as much as we love doing the home delivery and still doing the grocery store, we still like living a life a little bit too with our family. That's one thing we've been working on re recently and we've hired a couple more people to step up and help.
Not only to do bookwork, but get the vans prepared for the orders to make sure, sure that whatever's on the van is what is needed for home delivery. So we're not shorting customers or having a bunch of extra so we would have to down the drain or something like that. So yeah. organization, communication it's all part of it. So that would be probably the biggest recent thing that we've the hurdle we were trying to jump over and get through.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:16:25]
Looking ahead to 2021, what's next for Sheeder Cloverleaf Dairy
Grant Sheeder: [00:16:30]
We're actually, we're trying to work with a couple of other producers and actually bring a meat locker to town to work. So we have a better availability of beef and pork products and, working with a couple of other individuals in pretty close proximity. Getting some produce just going with, just we'll have some in-season stuff along with building some greenhouses high tunnels, greenhouses for kind of year round, produce availability for some stuff. We are, we're not slowing down yet.
It's been, like I said, it's been a fun road to travel down, to getting to know our customer base a lot more, indirectly and directly in the way we're doing our farm or home delivery. I went out early on and did some of the home deliveries with our drivers. Just get a feel and get a sense for how and what everything takes place.
So I can have an understanding with any issues that could take place. and the fun thing about this whole thing that I didn't really mention earlier, like the sales we have in our grocery stores. They've only gone up since this deal. And, it hasn't been a , that was a concern of ours, where we started doing home delivery to a degree where our sales in the grocery stores would diminish.
And I think with the publicity we've done through our social media and our, our radio outlets that we've used, it's just. Exposed that many more people to our products and it's yeah, it's just, it's been crazy to see her sales, exceed both in home delivery and our grocery store, both in these essentially it's trying times for a lot of the farmers and just individuals in general.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:18:01]
What's your final piece of advice for farmers selling direct to market?
Grant Sheeder: [00:18:06]
I think, communication. I can't stress enough for me, for us that's been a huge thing where, a I've always done a lot from my phone as far as, keeping in contact, but, just having those important emails where people, just email them. From a simple question to more, just trying to learn more about, home delivery or your products, or just, other the other local producers in our case, having that availability to respond, within a very timely manner has been a huge asset for us.
That's one thing that we've got a lot of, really nice emails and even how we get cards in the mail thanking us and already left at the doorstop or drivers bring home. They just really appreciate our steadfast communication skills where, you get, they ask a question and before they close out of their computer or they got a response back with the answer . And, uh, yeah, that communication thing with your customers and obviously your anybody you're working with along the way, right down to even the folks at Barn2Door it's it all goes hand in hand.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:19:04]
So again, that was Grant Sheeder from Sheeder Cloverleaf Dairy. If you want to hear more from Grant, how he transitioned to selling direct online, adding door to door delivery and subscription options to expand his business and how you can do the same. Please join us at the Direct Farm Price Conference coming up on February 2nd. It is completely free and virtual. You can register at directfarmconference.com.
Join us next week to hear Ashley Clark's story from Sacred Roots Maple and how her family farm has built a brand rooted in keeping maple traditions alive in their local community.
Thanks for listening we'll talk to you next week!