Many Tactics for Selling Pastured Poultry for Profit
In this week’s episode, Phil from Hopewell Farms (GA) shares how he has scaled his poultry operation from scratch to a profitable business. Hear how he thinks about costs, builds in recurring revenue and successfully prices & packages his birds.
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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.
Janelle Maiocco: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Janelle, CEO of Barn2Door, and 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, taking control of their business, selling under their brand, and making sure their customers can [00:01:00] purchase from them online and in person.
In today's conversation, we're gonna get into selling poultry products directly into your community. Today, I'm happy to welcome back Phil of Hopewell Farms in Georgia. Phil has been working with Barn2Door for a number of years and is part of our farm advisor network. Since becoming an advisor, Phil has shared tips for building a local customer base in your community through educating and connecting with buyers.
He helps train a lot of other farmers, basically, he gives 'em all kinds of good advice. He has successfully grown a six figure operation, shares his tips and tactics with other independent farmers across the country. Today though, we are specifically diving into how Phil manages markets and fulfills his poultry sales.
Welcome, Phil.
Phil Bonelli: Thank you so much. The timing is great because every three weeks we harvest our chickens. Which we do turkeys too, so there's more to the poultry of this chickens. But tomorrow we'll be harvesting our next batch of birds and I just stepped in from taking receipt of an additional like [00:02:00] scalder that we needed, that we got just in the nick of time.
Yeah. So, poultry processing and always selling on the brain right now, specifically.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I can appreciate that. It'd be nice to do a tour or an intake of folks like, Hey, what's on your brain right now? 'cause not everybody would say Poultry processing and scalders.
Phil Bonelli: That's right.
Janelle Maiocco: That's great. I love it.
You know, what's on my brain? I'm getting ready for next month 'cause it's the end of May and so, in our business, it's like, okay, you have to get all the things wrapped up in one month and then geared up for the next. So it's a busy, busy time for us too. That's awesome. Okay, so that we can share all of your great ideas and processes and cadence and things that you've learned on poultry, and maybe we should dip into Turkey.
We'll, we'll do that just for fun at some point. Before we get started, for those who maybe didn't listen to your other podcast episode, can you give them a quick four one one on your current operation? Just your farm, where you're from?
Phil Bonelli: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: How long you farm? The [00:03:00] upfront sort of bio, if you will.
Phil Bonelli: Sure. I'm on my home farm right now, which is 43 acres and we recently began leasing 48 acres, so we're farming 91 and we moved here in 2019. We're sitting here and it's 2025 and, we weren't looking to farm. We just wanted some land to play on, but we quickly got into farming and then it became all encompassing.
So, we got some cows, 'cause we wanted to do grass fed beef, which we still do. And then, as I got into regenerative agriculture, through some learning, you know, it dawned on me, nature's very diverse and it's kind of weird for one property just to have one kind of animal.
So, the chickens do one thing to the land. Cows do, pigs do, turkeys do. So, we diversified our animals really more for the impact on the soil. But now I'm very glad that I'm diversified because it brings me joy that I raise all of my own animal proteins that I eat and I get to provide all of the animal proteins to our customers.
So, I think [00:04:00] that that part is fun. It's tough to manage all the different species, but, I like doing it because, you know, I like to have all those different products.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. It makes so much sense, doesn't it? And I also kind of love that you coined yourself the accidental farmer.
Phil Bonelli: I really was. And there's so many good things about that. For one, like my background was in business. I had zero farming background, and obviously I had to learn the farming, but I came about it from a business viewpoint, which it is a business, so that has been very helpful. And also the business I was in before, I was very involved in my community and I still am.
And that was helpful for, you know, getting going on customers. 'Cause that's a lot of my marketing is like getting out there and speaking at things. Just being out and about.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. And you've been on various podcasts and did a lot of business consulting too.
Phil Bonelli: Correct.
Janelle Maiocco: It's pretty special in my opinion, almost that you started with business and [00:05:00] got good at business and then went into farming.
'Cause I feel like the majority of farmers that we help and assist through Barn2Door, we're helping them stretch their business brains, but they're incredible at the farming side. Right? And that's what they've been doing. But they're like, oh, this is a business. Help me think of this as a business. And that's, you know, not only we do the software, you know this, you're part of this.
We do the software and the resources and everything to help them run and operate their farm as a business, which of course, helps with everything, helps with sales, helps with efficiencies, helps with logistics, you know, all of the business moving parts. So I love that you started with business and then went into farming.
I, I don't know what every farmer would say out there, which end they would wanna start at, but it is a chicken and egg people. You do need both.
Phil Bonelli: I will tell you, I did have to remind myself that it was a business because as I got going, I did just like wanna grow and I just was growing in my production.
And I had this other income because I was still working off the farm [00:06:00] at the time and I wasn't really running, I myself wasn't running it like a business for a period of time. And I had to remind myself of that. And I made a bracelet, run it by the numbers just to remind myself to do that.
Janelle Maiocco: Uh huh.
I can appreciate that. Like, it's so fun to grow and if you can just put money there without actually thinking, wait, what is this costed out versus am I making a profit?
Phil Bonelli: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Like nobody wants to spend money to grow food and then essentially give it away. At the end of the day, if it's a business, you need to be putting that food on your own table too.
Let's talk a little bit about poultry specifically. So, did you start with the cows and then you ended up getting chickens intentionally because of the regenerative cycle?
Phil Bonelli: Yep. I wanted to diversify that and now that the chickens are the part that I'm scaling the most and the reason for that, there's a couple reasons for that.
One.
Janelle Maiocco: Love this.
Phil Bonelli: We invested in and built an on-farm poultry processing plant. So, if you process and sell less than 20,000 birds a year [00:07:00] from your own farm and sell them within the boundaries of your own state, then you are exempt from USDA oversight. So, we could do it ourselves and.
Janelle Maiocco: Nice.
Phil Bonelli: Yeah, and it was quite the challenge, to follow then the Georgia Department of Ag's regulations.
But we did that and we invested in building this plant, so that removed a bottleneck. And there's only one place in my state that you could get chickens harvested USDA. And it costs like $13 a bird.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Phil Bonelli: So.
Janelle Maiocco: There's your margin out the window.
Phil Bonelli: That's right. And, I mean, it costs me quite a lot and I'm happy to share for those listening.
And there's ways you could do it different. There's plenty of things I did dumb.
Janelle Maiocco: Mm-hmm.
Phil Bonelli: I didn't know I was talking about, but all in, I mean, it probably cost me around a hundred thousand dollars to build my own plant.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Phil Bonelli: But, I've got my processing costs with labor and packaging down to like $4 a bird.
So, I'm saving $9 a bird. This year, we should harvest between six and 7,000 [00:08:00] birds. So, let's say I do 6,000 chickens and I save $9 chicken, that's $54,000. So that's half the cost of the plant.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Phil Bonelli: So that works.
Janelle Maiocco: Uhhuh. Yep.
Phil Bonelli: And also, chickens are my most profitable gross margin product. And having the plant allows me to do whatever cutups that I wanna do.
So, I can play around with, and I get help from Ryan at Barn2Door and resources and the other Barn2Door folks as I think through how am I even gonna package it? How many breasts should I put per pack? How many thighs should I do? You know, 'cause all those are questions to be answered.
I do significantly better when I cut the bird up versus a whole bird.
Janelle Maiocco: You're taking all my questions away from me for the future conversation, Phil.
Phil Bonelli: We're just tied in like that, Janelle.
Janelle Maiocco: I know. I love it. Well, honestly, it's a good slippery slope to be thinking about cost and pricing and profit and being a viable, sustainable business in [00:09:00] addition to being a viable, sustainable Farm.
Right? It absolutely is the right things to be talking about. But, the reason I'm stopping you is 'cause I know this from feedback from my marketing team, a lot of our listeners actually are current Barn2Door users, and so I'm gonna stop here and pause because of what I wanna say is.
If you really wanna run through costs with Phil directly, you should go to an office hour with Phil. So Phil, because he is part of our Farm Advisory Network, he hosts office hours. You can go online and they can actually find which one you're hosting, if you just search Barn2Door office hours.
But, the great part about it is, is they can find the one you're in and jump in there and you can talk about pricing out poultry. I mean, clearly you're like, Hey, I can scale this. But I've done the math and done the crunching. And to your point, your beginning benchmark included the cost from a USDA facility in Georgia and those regulations, et cetera, et cetera.
Right. And the sunk cost of building the facility. So, that's specific to Georgia. However, if you have the information from other farms all across the country and other [00:10:00] states, you can help them put together that math as well, and sort out, Hey, how can I scale? How can I make this more efficient? How can I make more money doing the same thing?
Which is lovely, right? We're always looking to reduce the cost and increase the revenue, even on our existing business.
Phil Bonelli: Yes. And another great resource is APPPA, the American Pastored Poultry Producers Association.
Janelle Maiocco: A-P-P-P-A for those of you, three Ps in the middle.
Phil Bonelli: Three Ps, and they're awesome. And, I have got a tremendous amount of value from, I went to the, APPPA conference in January.
Hope to go next January. And that's one thing I love about Barn2Door and being on the office hours. You learn so much from these other farmers doing things. So, the more you can do that, the better.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. I actually was on stage once there with Alex from Chucktown Acres at an APPPA conference and we chatted about like email collection, honestly, of all things because people were trying to grow their operations.
It was pretty neat and sort of buyer expectations, which is, of course, also helpful for folks business. [00:11:00] The last resource I'll drop in here and then I wanna get back to your poultry operations. Barn2Door just started, you might not even know this, Phil. We just, with the farmer to consumer legal defense fund.
Phil Bonelli: Mm.
Janelle Maiocco: Who are amazing. It's very inexpensive. It's a hundred and change for a membership for a year. And if any of you know the cost of legal professionals or attorneys, you know that that's a steal. Because you can get on the phone with them and talk anytime and ask legal questions.
And so we are working with them. They actually are gonna host, starting next month, will be hosting an office hour on behalf of Barn2Door for our farmers to go ask legal questions because, you know, the laws are so different, I know that there's some breakthroughs in North Dakota recently on raw milk and there's lots of other things going on all across the country.
Poultry in particular, right? All the regulations. And so you can have a very fantastic legal conversation too. Again, I think that's all on the website where folks can find out when the office hours are or when those are hosted. You gotta have the information to make good business decisions, right?[00:12:00]
Phil Bonelli: Yep. Gotta have the info.
Janelle Maiocco: Love it. Okay, quick back to the birds.
Phil Bonelli: Okay.
Janelle Maiocco: So in particular, I always get a kick out of this, which is, your farm is literally, I don't know, you tell me. Does it stick out like a sore thumb in your neck of the woods?
Phil Bonelli: Yes, so Gainesville is the poultry capital of the world.
This guy, I won't bore you with the whole story, but it's pretty cool. This guy, Jesse Jewell, he invented basically industrialized chicken after World War II. And I find industrialized chicken to be gross. But it was not started out that way. It was not started out with bad intentions. But, it's tons of chicken farms, you know, which really to me don't even, I don't even think of them as farms because it's just a guy who manages a warehouse really, with all these birds he does not even own.
And he is just running machines and carrying out dead birds. But all that to say, there's a...
Janelle Maiocco: That is gross.
Phil Bonelli: It's gross. But there's tons of chicken plants and chicken farms around here, and it is really cool being in this area. And all my [00:13:00] marketing is focused on my county, Hall County, that I live in, and doing kind of like a redeemed chicken.
And, it is great that there's all these different used resources, for example, like these drinkers, these bell drinkers. There's no shortage of drinkers or all my chicken tractors I use, for the roofs, I use recycled aluminum. On the rental farm that I mentioned, this 48 acres, we started renting, there's old caved in chicken houses and I told the property owner we'd clean up the trash for 'em. So, I took all the good aluminum roofing and I used it for my chicken tractors. Which just feels so cool. These old industrial chicken houses.
Janelle Maiocco: That's very cool. What did you do with the footprint underneath the roof, which is gonna be disgusting?
Phil Bonelli: It's been so long since it's been a chicken house. You can't even tell.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Phil Bonelli: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay. I mean, and you know, soil will fight its way back if you give it some help.
Phil Bonelli: It sure will. Especially if chickens were pooping on it for a long time.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, no kidding. [00:14:00] Yeah. My goodness. Okay. That's incredible. This is kind of a selfish question, but do you feel like in that community, because you are not industrial chicken factory farming, in fact, it's regenerative and pasture poultry and all the goodness that we all love. Are you having an impact on farms and people around you? What is that? Is there a tension there? Like what is that like?
Phil Bonelli: Definitely there's a positive impact more on the beef side.
I'll chat about in a second, but the industrial chicken complex, let's say it, I wouldn't think really looks on me favorably because they look at our kind of operation as just this huge threat for bird flu. Whereas I look at it quite the opposite. Like I think our kind of farming is superior when it comes to mitigating bird flu.
But all my buddies that are farmers and that have, you know, I'm involved in like farm Bureau and stuff. That's totally nothing to do with regenerative, but it's just connecting with farmers. Man, they think it's cool. Like they think it's neat and [00:15:00] especially when they taste our chicken, it's infinitely better.
And they can tell, they think it's cool, but as far as impacting the community there lots of farms in my area. They have poultry houses and they have cow calf operations because they just had land that they inherited and then chicken houses got put on it. So, we are having a regenerative kind of all natural meat impact on the cow side because that's something easier for me.
I can't produce enough cows for what their demand is. So I do work with some other farms, say, Hey, if you convert over to doing things all natural, don't use any hormones, don't feed the cows any grain. And then I, you know, purchase, they raise those and purchase some cows for me. So, everything from that to getting my hay guy to not spray herbicide or synthetic fertilizer on the hay.
Like if you're a business, I'm pumped about making the world a better place and business to me is it's the best tool to do that.
Janelle Maiocco: Aw, [00:16:00] I love that. Thank you for sharing that. By virtue of your values, you're just sort of pushing the envelope in different places, and throughout those relationships, as well.
That's really neat. I love that.
Phil Bonelli: If people get paid, they'll do good stuff.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Phil Bonelli: They don't mind.
Janelle Maiocco: I'm like, okay, I won't spray.
Phil Bonelli: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: That's good. Okay. So, if I am listening here now and I'm trying to improve my poultry operations by hearing how you've done it well... let's talk about packaging and pricing and how did you decide your product mix, right?
Did you try certain things at the beginning and you stopped doing those things and changed course? How did that evolve for you in terms of packaging your poultry and then pricing your poultry?
Phil Bonelli: Well, I started out doing all whole birds 'cause that's all that I could do. And that went well and I started eating 'em.
I was like, wow, this is so good. I still do some whole birds, but I moved to cut up because I do get a higher margin. So for example, and I'm happy to share what we price at and everything, but I [00:17:00] always try to think of how can I make things to be what people want, what's easy for them to cook and as much as I can, easy for them to contemplate and purchase.
So, people love boneless, skinless breasts. I particularly am a dark meat man, and I like a skin on, bone in thigh myself is my favorite. But, people pay a premium for breast. And so I charge $20 for a pack of breasts, which is like two breasts or the breasts from one one chicken's worth of breasts, I do $20 a pack.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, that's a good margin. Like compared to the whole. Yeah.
Phil Bonelli: And that's still pretty good.
Janelle Maiocco: Because you're doing the work to cut it up, ironically, and that's closer and more proximate to what that end buyer wants.
Phil Bonelli: Yeah. And I do everything by the cut. I sell the breasts, I sell a pack of four thighs.
I sell a pack of eight drums and I sell a pack of 12 wings and, it's not by the pound because that to me is just so much more difficult. I'm selling things and I'm utilizing online tools, so they need to [00:18:00] purchase an item for a price. So, not selling by the pound is a big win and, I am able to now through Barn2Door, like on the whole birds, have a large and a medium and a small whole bird, let's say, you know, I can do sizes, but getting away from selling by the pound is a big win, to me and.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Phil Bonelli: Because people do love breasts and also tenders, I forgot, we do eight tenders to a pack.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay. How much do you charge for those?
Phil Bonelli: The tenders? It's also $20 for an eight pack.
Janelle Maiocco: Eight, yeah. Right. I get it. Yep.
Phil Bonelli: So all in, like, if I cut up a chicken, then that chicken is going to be a retail value of like $44.
If I cut it up. That is also very helpful, Janelle, to run it by the numbers because again, since I'm taking pounds out of it, I know my exact revenue per bird because last time I checked, every chicken has two wings, two thighs, you know, two breasts, one on each side. So I don't worry about the variables of pounds.
I know [00:19:00] my retail input per chicken.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. Value. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. I love that. I know that we have farms that do it both ways, right? But I do love, especially on poultry, on smaller proteins in particular, that it can make a lot of sense to just do set prices, especially when you can figure out your set cost and just know that you're clearing a margin and clearing a margin, clearing a margin, and it's saving you time too, which if you value time, you're actually bringing your costs down even more.
Because you're not having to get cute with poundage on, you know, on small cuts. Versus we have a lot of farms who will take deposits on half, whole hogs and quarter, half, whole cows or that sort of a thing. And you know, that's great 'cause they can vary. And turkeys, I don't know if you do that way with turkeys, but those are expensive birds.
So, we have farms that'll take a 50 or a hundred dollars deposit on a Turkey and then charge the difference when Thanksgiving rolls around.
Phil Bonelli: Well for the audience too, I do half cows and whole pigs also, and I do it in a similar manner in [00:20:00] that a half cow for me, is 175 pounds, and so I charge $12 a pound, 175 pounds.
So, it's a half cow package, it's $2,100, and yeah, they don't have to worry. I don't want my customer, I mean.
Janelle Maiocco: They don't have to do math.
Phil Bonelli: Yeah, they don't have to do math. And if the cow is 400 pounds of meat, so there's 25 extra pounds per half, well I have a retail store and I plunk it in that, you know, but I want it to be as easy for them as possible.
I wanna make it easy to buy from me.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I love that. It's probably worth repeating the easier it is for a person to buy, which means self-serve, purchase online with a set price so they know exactly what they're paying. They don't have to do any math, they don't have to pick up a phone and talk to anybody.
They can shop anytime of day or night is a win for farmers because there's no friction in that process. So that's just a big, big deal. And then of course if you tack on door to door [00:21:00] delivery or local pickup, it gets even more obvious for people to complete that purchase, ' cause again, it's convenience and no friction in the process for buyers, it's a real thing. It really will impact sales.
Phil Bonelli: And I don't wanna talk about price. I'm more expensive. And so like, I want ultimate clarity. I want people to just be easily able to see, this is what I pay and this is what I get. And if 80% of the people say, woo, I don't want that, and click out, well that's okay.
I just want the 20% that wanna buy from me or whatever percent for it to be easy for them.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, if you're selling out, whether it's 20 or 80 or 43% of the people, it doesn't actually matter if you're selling out. Right. Yeah. I appreciate, I appreciate the math.
Phil Bonelli: Like, in my county, I don't know how many people are there are, but there's plenty, you know, and if I sold the animal proteins and now we started doing organic veggies too, if I sold, but just the animal protein piece to 1% of my county, I'd be crushing it.
It's all I need.
Janelle Maiocco: We [00:22:00] talk a lot to farmers and you know this, but we talk to a lot of farmers about that. Like, we have farmers that consider shipping and we're like, you don't become a logistics machine like you already have a farm and a business to run when you add shipping. And it's not, it's not that, like we certainly have some farms that probably about 5% of the farmers using Barn2Door will do shipping of some, usually the shelf stable items. But at the end of the day, it adds a layer of work for the farmer to then have to deal literally with shipping and shipping costs and food waste.
Often things get damaged along the way, which is a whole other cost at a certain percent of everything that they send. And yet there is some community somewhere near them that has some people that want their product, and sometimes Phil, it's like if you're willing to even drive in once a month or twice a month, that's enough to move all your product.
It's pretty cool. And you're right, if it's just 1% of the people done drop the mic. You've completed the cycle in terms of the sustainability of your business. I [00:23:00] love that. So I love it, set prices across all of your items because you've figured it out. I love that you figured out per bird, and frankly I was chuckling that you've packaged them that way because.
When you're thinking about dinner, yeah, I'll just grab one package of two breasts. That's enough. Like I can make that go from anywhere, from like two to six people depending on what I'm making. I used to buy whole birds and cut them up and do that. I would literally put them into those ziplocs of like, here's all the tenders, here's all the drumsticks, here's all the wings. So, I can appreciate that you have moved the needle closer to the buyer in terms of what they want. And then set prices are just brilliant. That's awesome. Okay. Do you do subscriptions?
Phil Bonelli: I hundred percent do. And I do not have like a chicken box or a beef box.
And this has been critical for inventory management too. I have the family meal, but I got, I have three options, I've got a weekly box, which is a dozen eggs and two to three meats. So, we go every Wednesday we deliver to people's door, which is one of the reasons why staying within my [00:24:00] county is important to me because Caleb, the farmhand goes out every Wednesday and he's going door to door dropping these boxes like we're Amazon.
Janelle Maiocco: Yep.
Phil Bonelli: And I need route density. I can't have him bebopping all over tarnation. He's gotta go, boom, boom, boom, door to door to door. So, I think this last week I think we did a pack of drumsticks, a pound of ground beef and a pound of pastured pork sausage. The week before it was like a pack of bacon, and then it was a pack of chicken breasts.
So, it's Farmer's Choice box, which is absolutely critical because, you know, if everyone was just getting the drumstick or getting the breasts, then now I'm gonna have a whole bunch of drumsticks or thighs. So, I pick what goes in. Now, there's two things which are important for the listeners, I think, and of course I don't have everything figured out, but this is something that's been helpful so far, is you obviously have to only do stuff people, they're gonna want, like, people might order breasts more than drumsticks, but they are gonna like drumsticks and they're gonna be fine with, it's not like I'm [00:25:00] sending out chicken feet, which would have a much more limited audience, you know?
Janelle Maiocco: I'll take those.
Phil Bonelli: There you go.
Janelle Maiocco: That makes the best chicken broth in the world.
Phil Bonelli: Oh.
Janelle Maiocco: But no, I know, I know what you mean. I was hoping you were gonna say that. I was gonna ask, because here you have all these carcasses, if you're parsing everything out, anyway, go on with your subscriptions. Finish that first.
Phil Bonelli: Well, so the managing the inventory, it's critical for me to pick what goes in the box.
And so my offering, my value proposition is highest quality and convenience. It's a subscription. It's delivered right to your door, but it is not, my value proposition is not customized. So, I do have where if you order a certain amount, you get free delivery and you could pick whatever you want.
But my subscription box, it's just what goes in there. Oh, yeah. And then I have to provide empowerment, Janelle, because since they're not picking exactly what goes in their fridge every week, I have to empower them. So, a lot of people, when I do put whole birds in the [00:26:00] box, a lot of people have never cooked a whole bird or they've never cooked a pork shoulder steak or, an eye of round roast.
And so, we send an email out, which here's what's coming in your box this week. And I, I mean, I think we use ChatGPT, or something to put some recipes in there. Here's how we like to cook, what's going in there? We gotta empower them.
Janelle Maiocco: Yep.
Phil Bonelli: Because, I have had people, before I was doing that they would stop getting the subscription box because they were like, Hey, you know, my freezer's got kind of full and I really don't even know how to cook this.
So we gotta make life easy for 'em. And it's not hard to do.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, and I feel like what you're providing, honestly, are the items down the middle of the fairway? I mean, everybody eats all parts of the bird anyway, right? They just might have favorites. You're not trying to, even though I see you have cow tongue in your store, which is awesome.
And I kind of wanna meet the people that also buy that 'cause I bet they're very cool.
Phil Bonelli: Yep.
Janelle Maiocco: But like most of the product on there, and I love that there really is an audience for [00:27:00] everything. Don't you love that?
Phil Bonelli: Oh yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: But for the majority of people, what's showing up on their table every week. Wings, drumsticks, breasts, ground beef. You know, a roast might feel like a little stretch, and yet if you cut it up and make a skewer, it's fine. Right? Like, so it's not, this is not rocket science, so it's not a big hurdle to just make some suggestions to folks. Right? And it's a meat they're already familiar with, and cooks much the same way.
So, I think that's great. I love the rotating items. I think, for me, that feels like Christmas every week.
Phil Bonelli: There you go. That's our plan. Well, and then once you have the clientele and I'm going to their house every week, then you can offer to add on some different things. So for example, I have been turning the carcasses and the necks and the feet into bone broth, which we cook up in package here.
But, I have a dehydrator that's supposed to arrive next Wednesday, and I'm gonna start dehydrating all those feet and vacuum sealing those and the chicken [00:28:00] organs to sell for like a raw, all natural dog food and.
Janelle Maiocco: Amazing.
Phil Bonelli: Any of my customers with dogs. Then I can just say, Hey, we're coming to your house every week.
Would you like to add on 15 bucks a week and feed your dog too?
Janelle Maiocco: Add the subscriptions. Just build them. Stack them. That's really awesome. I love it. We have a whole range of farmers that we work with, Phil, and I think we have one farmer who is crushing it with only pet food.
Phil Bonelli: Come on.
Janelle Maiocco: I kid you not, they just found that the margins were incredible.
Phil Bonelli: The regulatory hurdles are a lot less because it's not for humans.
Janelle Maiocco: Isn't that funny? Like Yeah. Raw milk you can give as pet food and all these various things. And anyway, so what you're saying is, is our pets eat better than us because there's, there's laws against what we're, what we can and can't consume, which is just so interesting. Or sell, I should say, but yes. No, I appreciate that. Okay. This is awesome. So subscriptions, yay, you have that going on. You've streamlined how you [00:29:00] package and price, to the convenience of the buyer, which is incredible. Do you have any specific things you think about when you're marketing your poultry to buyers?
Like, is there a certain time period, do you sell your round? Do you create FOMO in any way?
Phil Bonelli: Well, you know, I get the first chicks mid-March and I will get my last batch of chicks in August to then have harvested in October. ' Cause then it gets a little too cold after that. I sold out in like December or January this year.
So, I am thinking of like, I want to provide people with those different animal proteins every week, so I've got to build up a significant inventory if I'm going to continue to have it through the winter.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay. Yep.
Phil Bonelli: Some things of marketing that I utilize though, like for the turkeys, which this year we should do like 500.
Because I have a plant, then I am able to harvest all the, now this is kind of scary because the logistics are so tight, but I pre-sell the turkeys, which I sell for $8 a pound, and I harvest them the Monday [00:30:00] of Thanksgiving and then people come pick 'em up Tuesday of Thanksgiving week so they're fresh never frozen.
And that is a powerful tool. It's a crazy couple days, but, it is the best Turkey that you can get. At doing 500, and last year I did like, I dunno, 200 or 250, I was the largest provider of fresh, never frozen Turkey in the whole state, 'cause I'm like the only one.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow. Wow.
That's incredible. And you sold out?
Phil Bonelli: Oh yeah. And I, again, I'm doubling this year, which is scary in a way, but I really don't care. I mean, there's a demand. It's on me to get the word out and market all the customers from last year, they keep coming back. So, you gotta go big or go home, Janelle.
You really do.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, you could do, you could do it.
No, I appreciate that. So, do you do set price? You do like a small, medium, large.
Phil Bonelli: Not on the Turkey.
Janelle Maiocco: You sell those by weight?
Phil Bonelli: I sell those by weight.
Again, with my mission, if I wanna make it easier for the [00:31:00] customer, I can have a good idea of the weight now that I've done it several seasons by the timing.
So, I will get them in July, I'll get the poults, that's a baby Turkey, in July for the harvest in late November, and there will basically be two sizes, which are determined by Toms and hens. And I'll know what they are. So, two years ago, I got them maybe three weeks earlier, all the Toms were between 28 and 32 pounds.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Phil Bonelli: And that is too big. I mean, so I ended up giving a lot of people who wanted like a 15 pound bird, that's all I charge them for. So, I kinda lost out. So, you have to know what you're doing on the operation side to like plan what you'll have to sell.
Janelle Maiocco: That makes a ton of sense. I love, well, I'm secretly kind of proud because, you know, the Barn2Door platform enables farmers to do any way you wanna sell.
Like if you wanna sell set weight and flat pricing for all of the above, which does streamline and save time for farmers, and set very direct expectations [00:32:00] to buyers. But, in cases like turkeys, which can be a whole range of sizes and is a very premium product.
Farmers can take, I hope you do this, Phil, so you'll have to let me know, but can take deposits early on. Essentially sell out ideally well before the season, and then once all the birds are weighed, they can go back in and literally list the final weight and charge those customers, and then it'll automatically subtract that deposit, so you're still not having to talk about money.
You could just go complete the sale yourself.
Phil Bonelli: Dang. And see, I didn't even know, I am taking the deposit, but then I just have them true up when they come that day. So you're saying I could just go in and hit the card again for the delta?
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. It's all in there. All you have to do is you enter in, you can literally decide if you wanna just charge a certain price, you can change it back and forth there too, whether you enter the weight and then it will calculate for you the price and subtract the deposit and charge the customer and send them a receipt.
Phil Bonelli: [00:33:00] Fantastic.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, so they don't have to worry about it. You just have to write it down, go back in, punch in the numbers, and then again, you're not having to talk about money to customers, which isn't always the most enjoyable thing to talk about. Why not instead ask about their day? Or how are you gonna cook the stuffing that year?
Phil Bonelli: That's right. You've thought of it all, Janelle, you've thought of it all.
Janelle Maiocco: I think farmers like you help me think of it all, which is just awesome. No, our goal is to remove friction for farmers that are trying to sell, right? And all the ways that farmers could, do and need to sell. Nothing makes me happier, honestly, than when we find out that farmers offer subscriptions because most all farmers haven't done that before. Or they're expanding the subscription offers. And to have recurring sales week go over week, month over month is, it's not just a business changer, it's a life changer for farmers and nothing makes me happier.
Phil Bonelli: Well, and, on the note of subscriptions and pet food and kind of connecting those things that we talked about a little bit of, yeah, the recurring revenue's [00:34:00] important.
It's convenient for the customer, but it just, it tethers you and the customer more together because you're bringing the stuff there every week. And so, you can do more value added products, for example, like dried chicken feet dog food. I am taking a further processing step, and I could do all sorts of things that people want, but I have the relationship and I can just offer, Hey, would you like this? Would you like that?
Janelle Maiocco: Well, and you've already pre-sold the basics, right? So now you're like, okay, that's just my foundational business. Now I can actually, instead of worrying about selling all of that, you instead get to think bigger and, you know, you get to think more about your business. Nothing makes me happier. I often describe it to folks. Well, you know, the process of hopefully helping farmers have literally a system to run their entire business end to end and make it easy, including easy for their buyers, but easy for themselves.
You give them a system, and instead of feeling like sometimes you're drowning, all of a sudden things start to get organized, fall into place, save you [00:35:00] time. Your head goes above water. You then also increasingly have time to start thinking, looking around, and even swimming, right? So, it's like when you can save time and get organized on your business, then you actually can be creative and have information to make decisions.
And it's just, it's so fun to watch. It's so fun to watch.
Phil Bonelli: I love it.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay. Any final tips on poultry? Anything that I have forgotten to ask that I should have asked? Or tips or advice that you would have for farmers who are in the poultry industry, wanting to make it better, wanting to change things, try something new?
Or get started?
Phil Bonelli: Yeah. I'll give a quick thing of advice for people who are thinking about poultry and then something for people who are already in it. So the thing about poultry is you have to look at your business, when I just had cows. And I was selling mostly half cows. That's a lot of revenue at once, but it takes me several years to get a cow to where I can sell it.
Well, pigs, I have them for, let's see, I mean, I farrow pigs here, so I have their gestation [00:36:00] periods just under four months. I harvest them at eight months, so that's a year that I'm buying feed and everything before I can sell a pound of sausage. Chickens are eight weeks. The turn is so fast. And you need multiple turns, so chickens, every eight weeks I can sell them and get revenue to then help support my farm. Pigs, you know, 12 or eight months depending on how you look at, so you need all of that. So, the diversification of your production time is very helpful. It's important. Also chicken is delicious and the omnivores, the chickens and the pigs, I think they have the biggest difference in taste.
When people taste your product and you do a pasture raised chicken, it is so much better than what's at the store. Go and do some samples. Go to a farmer's market and just give away chicken wings that you cooked. Give people a wing and let 'em try it. It, so it's a great thing, what I [00:37:00] would say to people who are already doing chicken is that, man, the processing really is a big bottleneck, at least in my area.
It might not be in your area. And, you know, doing your own processing is a whole other beast. It's really not farming, it's manufacturing, it's converting a squawking chicken to vacuum sealed, you know, boneless, skinless breasts and thighs. But if you really wanna go big on chicken and you don't have a processor in your area, I would really consider it.
And again, you're gonna have to go big and be prepared. You gotta really wanna sell a lot of chicken. But if you do, I'd build your own plant.
Janelle Maiocco: That is some rich advice right there. And it's also like, know your options and opportunities from a processing perspective, right?
Like that's almost like one of the first couple of check boxes it sounds like. I can't resist one more question before. So, route density you mentioned, which I love and we would love every farmer to have, because you are making your time more efficient. [00:38:00] We also have a lot of farms that actually end up making money on delivery.
So can you give some, like, do you charge a delivery fee? And also do you make money like a lot of our farmers do because your route is dense enough? And then, I guess my next question to that is, any marketing tips that you would have to increase the density of a route?
Phil Bonelli: A hundred percent. You gotta go about all of it with route density in mind. So, I specifically targeted subdivisions. I went, I didn't blast, I didn't do very broad marketing. I went subdivision specific. So, I picked the biggest subdivisions. And that has been helpful. I don't charge for delivery because I do have where you could get a delivery for like $10, but I made it so that you get delivery with the subscription because that's the behavior that I desired, is to sign up for that.
So, I just factor that into the price of the subscription. So, I'm basically getting paid, ah like $5 for each delivery. Let's say I pay the guy who goes and does it $17.50 an [00:39:00] hour, and I put gas in the delivery vehicle. So, let's say I've got $20 an hour. So, if I've got built in $5 per delivery, I've gotta do at least four deliveries per hour for it to make sense.
And we probably do, I don't know, eight deliveries an hour. So, yeah, so we should be making money on it. But yeah, you gotta go where people congregate. So, we are starting to do more pickup spots, like at gyms and coffee shops. So, I go to one place.
Janelle Maiocco: Offices are a good one too. I think a lot of times people don't think of offices like, at our office actually hosts some Farmer's CSA, and so anybody at the office can, you know, it's instant FOMO when your desk buddy is getting farm food every week.
I will tell you that right now.
Phil Bonelli: I love that.
Janelle Maiocco: I, I walk around with radishes in my hands and you know, the farm fresh eggs and people, you know, everybody wants it.
Phil Bonelli: Well, and that would be like, how can you get food in the hands of the most people with the least effort? You've got to do that. [00:40:00]
Janelle Maiocco: But, yeah, exactly.
But you have to go to them.
Phil Bonelli: You've got to go to them. Yeah. Or, and I do a good bit of things to bring people to my farm. So, we do a free farm tour, but that's not like, you know, my goal of that, people always buy meat when they're here. But, really a goal would be to build friends and educate and have fun.
Because I like to, but from a sales goal, I would want that to lead to a weekly at home delivery.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. Not everybody wants people on their farm all day, every day either.
Phil Bonelli: No.
Janelle Maiocco: You have to actually have time to do other things.
Phil Bonelli: That is a rarity. But I will tell you, there has not been better marketing for me than having people out to my farm and, that's just who I am. I enjoy that. But when they see, I mean, that's my value promise. I don't need to be organic because I don't need to prove something to someone as a stranger. They have seen the chickens, they've seen the pigs, they've seen the cows. They feel connected.
Janelle Maiocco: I love it. I love it. So many good [00:41:00] bits of advice, so many ideas.
We even mentioned some resources. Hopefully that was helpful for folks. If you do go between set price, and I have to say this, because I'm not sure if you use our POS.
Phil Bonelli: I do.
Janelle Maiocco: You do?
Phil Bonelli: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: So, you probably know then if you do sell the all the chicken online so anybody can make a quick decision at a set price.
You can in person switch to weigh those birds and charge by weight and it will still track all of the inventory precisely across both, which is again, like I will proudly admit like we're building for farmers, right? That's the goal. It's like, what does a farmer need is the question we ask when we build software, to meet the needs of farmers.
And that's an important piece and you know, it might make sense to charge by wait in person, but online sales, you want the birds to literally fly off the shelf. Set prices are a good idea.
Phil Bonelli: I do wanna say too, to the audience, you know, I mentioned that I like having people come to the farm, which sometimes is kind of, not everybody likes that, but we've talked so much about [00:42:00] business and like, you know, I have, again, I have this bracelet run it by the numbers and it's important to make a profit on your farm, but none of us are doing it to get rich. Like I wanna make the best return I can for the farm so I can grow my farm and I can feed more people and impact more land. And my favorite part of the farm is having people that I get to serve. And it's so important to pay attention to your numbers, but it really helps you know, to just have that focus of, I wanna serve the planet, I wanna serve these people and love on people, and I'm just doing it through farming.
And that is also key.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I, I am so glad you said that. And it's actually a great sort of important note for us to end on because, wow, what a good feeling to know that you're helping people be healthier. And it's so clear across our country today, and everybody, I would suspect everybody would agree, we could move the needle towards health.
And food is food and then down to the soil, frankly, right? Is where that begins. And so, [00:43:00] it just makes me so happy because you are literally gifting people health when you're handing them what you produce on your farm. Like that's amazing. That's miraculous.
Phil Bonelli: It really is. And the more you grow, if you, maybe you just want to have your family working on the farm, that's awesome.
You're providing a beautiful life for them. If you want to grow beyond that, and then you get to start to have employees, now you can add a very meaningful vocation for those people. You're just touching people in so many ways with your farm. So I think it's incumbent upon all of us to do the best we can to go grow it, feed more folks, feed more soil, build meaningful vocations.
It's such a beautiful thing we get to do.
Janelle Maiocco: I love it. Oh, that's so great. Thank you for spending time with me today, Phil, and for digging in on poultry and sharing more about your farm and your heart really. And as you're feeding Georgia at this point and setting such a good example, thank you for everything that you do.
I wanna extend my thanks to Phil for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more of Phil and the farm, on their Instagram [00:44:00] @HopewellFarmsGA, so as in Georgia? Yes. So @HopewellFarmsGA is where you'll find him on Instagram. And as mentioned earlier, if you're a Barn2Door farmer, check him out, go check out when his office hours are. You can pop into there and hang out with him directly. At Barn2Door, we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country. We're delighted to offer services and tools to help farmers access more customers, increase 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 wanna simplify your business management, visit Barn2Door.com/Learn-More. Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to joining you next time on The Independent Farmer Podcast.
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn2Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all [00:45:00] the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country.
For free farm resources, or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barn2door.com/resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.