Scaling Your Farm to $1M through Farmers Markets
From a spiral notebook to $1M in annual sales. Learn how Veteran’s Liberty Ranch mastered Farmers Market logistics, "U-Shape" booth branding, and pre-orders to scale their independent ranch.
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[00:00:00] 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 Maiocco, CEO of Barn2Door, and the host for today's episode. As you may be aware, Barn2Door is all about helping independent Farmers make more money, ditch the office, work and look like a pro by getting a system in place to sell direct, market under their own brand, and manage orders, Farmers can skip the middleman and build a [00:01:00] strong local business with recurring sales.
And you guys know this, we just debuted helping Farmers with local delivery, which is a whole nother fun topic. But in today's conversation we'll dive into making the most of Farmers' markets. Julie and Michelle are here today. Excited to welcome you. But also Veteran's Liberty Ranch in Texas, are literally Veteran's of Farmer's markets 'cause you guys have been to so many. So it's perfect conversation for today. Both Julie and Michelle are part of our Farm Advisor network that we've had for many, many years. We love it. It's one of our favorite programs at Barn2Door. Farmers who are having incredible success and have so much wisdom to offer, like Julie and Michelle are part of a program where Farmers host office hours for other Farmers using Barn2Door and they just talk shop and help each other be successful.
And it's amazing and we love it. And we're so grateful for all of your time. Not only obviously with what you're doing in Texas for all the people who eat there, but also for all the Farmers that you're connecting with through the Barn2Door program and helping others be successful. It's [00:02:00] amazing.
Thank you for being here today.
Michelle Smith: Absolutely.
Julie Green: Yeah. Super excited to do this.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, I'm excited. I've had you guys on the docket for like, we have to talk to you guys about Farmer's markets because many, many, many, many Farmers do them. And if you're really intentional, you can do them very well, but there's also so much to learn.So I'm excited to hopefully ask all the questions that we think other Farmers would want information and tips on. So, before we start, you guys are gonna have to like rock paper, scissors, who's answering, who's gonna start off on each of these questions, I think. But just so that the folks listening can get acquainted with who you are and where you are and what you farm and everything else, can you share just quickly about your farm journey? And do we say farm or ranch? I mean, tell me here.
Michelle Smith: We are a ranch.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. Ranch, right? So tell everybody about your ranch, in terms of sort of how it evolved and what your operations look like today.
Michelle Smith: Yes. I am up in north Texas, just north of Fort Worth, and Julie is about three and a half hours, west of Austin. So we're about three [00:03:00] and a half hours apart, and how Veteran's Liberty Ranch started was really an accident, like a lot of good businesses. So, let's see, back in 1999, Julie, leased a bull from me, from a random ad off Facebook.
And through the events of COVID and learning to work together, we created a business where we started, retail selling some of our cuts of meat. So previously I had been processing some beef during COVID. A lot of FFA kids had to have some place to go with their animals and Julie swooped in and helped us place hundreds of FFA pigs all over Texas.She had the gift of jab and I had the connections for the meat and the rest is history, I guess.
Janelle Maiocco: I love it. I love it. Okay. Julie, you wanna give your rendition and add to that at all? I guess the starting is just so fortuitous.
Julie Green: Well, yeah, and I think that that's probably what led us into being addicted to Farmer's markets because when we did this little thing about placing all these pigs and meat, [00:04:00] we literally did it from our pickup truck in a church parking lot. And we started developing lines of people that would show up and it was almost like our own little mini tailgate VLR Farmer's Market.
And we did not intentionally create that. So we soon became addicted. We soon realized that we needed help and that's where Barn2Door came in and really just helped us get organized. And just it got a little bit overwhelming there for a minute on the back of a tailgate. But now it has led us to become addicted to Farmer's markets, which I feel like we are really good at.
It is a huge tool for us, we can't do it without Barn2Door and their POS systems and all the stuff that makes it super easy for us to do that.
Janelle Maiocco: We're lucky for the ride along. I love it. You guys started, I don't know, is it fair to say back of the napkin? Or is it more like a three ring binder or a notebook, but that was how you were organizing things?
And then tell folks how quickly you have grown? I think that's the part where we love being the ride along, because when folks like yourself are so [00:05:00] dynamic and with it, and very capable. It's neat we're just like the organization in the background, which is great, but you guys just went for it.
Michelle Smith: The business was formed, well just to backtrack a little. When we would be meeting up, usually down in the Liberty Hill area, we would meet up, literally out of the back of the pickup trucks, distributing meat to people who were hungry for good products. Good clean product. we would meet up and we would tally up our cash and venmos at the end of the day and decide if we had enough money to go get Mexican food.
And, on one of those celebration meals after the market, the tailgate market, we thought, well, this is fun. Maybe we should make this official. We're kind of growing. So, it literally, the idea and the name of the business was, sketched out on a napkin, we really kick ourselves for not keeping that napkin.
So we came up with Veteran's Liberty Ranch. My farm was Veteran's Heritage Farm, and Julie lived down in Liberty Hill. So that's the Veteran's Liberty. And then as far as organization at the beginning, it was great. The, uh, spiral binder or [00:06:00] spiral notebook, I should say, has about a hundred pages in it.
You can organize a lot of outgoing meat and finding animals. But there comes a point where the papers are flying everywhere and pencils and erasers and pens and who has the notebook. It really becomes a little overwhelming. So I think we probably maxed out at about $30,000 in sales in a spiral notebook.
Does that sound about right, Julie?
Julie Green: Yeah, that does.
Michelle Smith: Yeah. And so when we were approached by Barn2Door. I'll be honest. I remember looking at it and going, well, I don't know if we can afford that. Let's consult our spiral notebook. And we took the plunge. And that first year, wow, our sales went up to 200,000 just in the first year.
We've been doing this now, a couple of years, and we push a million dollars in sales through Barn2Door, every year. And there, there's just, there's not enough pages in a spiral notebook to handle that.
Janelle Maiocco: I like the idea of like, when you get to the end of your notebook, sign up for Barn2Door.
This is a great message. You guys are so nice to say that. I appreciate [00:07:00] that. But, the goal is to keep organized, right? If you're gonna scale, you can't just have six notebooks and it's gonna get easier. It just takes more and more time. That's why we just started saying, “ditch the office work”.
Like you don't wanna be up to your nose in notebooks. You'd rather be talking to your customers and, you know, doing the farming part of it. So I appreciate that. But tell folks then, what your reach is in terms of how many Farmer markets you're at, and, sort of the general vicinity, like what is your geographical reach?
Michelle Smith: So, again, I'll answer for North Texas. So on a normal weekend we do about five markets up here. How does one person do five markets? We don't, because of scaling, we have hired some employees. We've added some mobile meat trailers, is what we call them. They're a box trailer that have been retrofitted with some freezers inside and it contains all of our supplies.
So our iPads, point of sale system, signage, matching tablecloths. I mean, there's, there's a uniformity across all the trailers. We do about four to five every weekend. We reach about 30 to [00:08:00] 40 miles from the farm up here in North Texas. And then Julie?
Julie Green: Yeah, so we do markets down here in central Texas.
I do not have people working for me down here per se. I do the Farmer's markets. So this is a huge feature that actually Barn2Door just released that is super beneficial if you're a heavy Farmer's market thing. And this helped me slim down my markets a little bit because we were doing too many and not all of them were effective.
And we were wasting our time, we were wasting our money. And just, really wearing ourselves out. So Kevin, our favorite guy, had emailed us that you can actually go in and see what location did what in sales. And I think we screamed like all three of us, we have an intern that worked for us.
We were like, what? Because we were really guessing last year it was hard for us just, you know, we would've been back to a legal notebook writing down what each market made, that kind of thing. Trying to see. So now we've narrowed the Farmer's markets down in both [00:09:00] locations to what actually is paying us and that helped a ton. So I think my max that I do is two to three a weekend. I think I did three last weekend. And other than that, it's one, every weekend pretty much. I think, what was our market sales this past week in Michelle, between, we had three markets.
I think we had $6,000 in POS sales out of three markets. That's a lot. That's very busy for, you know, markets to pop out. So I feel like the ones we have narrowed down are good ones.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome. And I actually wanted to get into that anyway. So essentially five up north and three-ish down south.
So you're looking around eight markets right now. That was sort of the next question, which was how do you choose a market and why? And then how do you measure its success, right? What is the threshold of that sales where you're like, yes, this Farmer market is worth our time. And then what are the signals, that it's not. And is that just purely a cash based decision?
Michelle Smith: There's a lot that goes into determining if a market [00:10:00] is quote unquote good. There are some things that are not quantifiable at the end of the day. We have both gone to markets where we sit there for a couple of hours and maybe make a handful of sales.
But the networking, and the amount of people that we hand business cards out to is important also. I think it's important in those instances for the ranch owners to be a part of that because obviously we're the ones that are most vested. I love our employees and they're passionate about working for us, but they really don't see the big picture.
At the end of the day, Julie and I know, for example, there is a sip and shop that I go to once a month here in Decatur. The market is from six to nine on a Saturday evening, right outside of a high end, very classy bar. And it is exactly what it sounds like a sip and shop. Well, most people are not gonna sip a glass of wine and buy a ribeye, a frozen ribeye to carry around.But the amount of contacts and relationships that have been built just by hanging out at that market, is huge. And, we see that, when people [00:11:00] then go online and they order shares of cows or, they find us, we give them a business card, has the QR code to our online store, you know, Sunday morning after they wake up, whew.
After that little hangover, you know, they might hop on and buy some meat at that point. That's certainly not the case for the majority of the markets. For us. you know, we like to see, I don't know, what is our threshold? I feel like sometimes we've gotten a little greedy with our time.
Janelle Maiocco: That's not a bad thing, Michelle. Do not apologize for that. Right. It's such a good thing to learn.
Michelle Smith: Yes. Uh, it's $200 an hour. What do you think, Julie?
Julie Green: I think so. And every time that we're at one, just because sales are slow doesn't necessarily mean anything. 'Cause weather can play a part. You know, that kind of thing on the shoppers.What's going on in the world can play. And then also joining markets. Just the market coordinators themselves. It makes a company look very good when you're continually going to something, you don't just stay home because it's sprinkling or [00:12:00] canceling.
You sign up for every market of that. Like for Liberty Hill, for example, I signed up for the entire year. I don't know what the weather's gonna do on August 20th. I mean, I'm probably gonna be dying of heat, but I'm still going to be sitting out there and still handing my cards. And when that happens, then, people, we've had numerous times that this happened.
People are like, Hey, can you do a Farmer's market in my town or another market coordinator? We saw you at such and such, would you be interested in doing this fundraiser with us. You know, just different things like that. Your name kind of gets around even if you don't ever make a sale.
Janelle Maiocco: Networking is a future sales opportunity. The branding, to your point, is an important element. and you have to put work into that. Right. and you have to keep showing up sometimes when things aren't quote unquote perfect. How many Farmer's markets did you start and you did a season there and you're no longer there?
' cause you're like, it's not enough money, it's not enough networking.
Michelle Smith: Yeah. There's probably been about 10. And I've got one that I just wanna touch base on and Julie will know where I'm going with this, but there's a big [00:13:00] one. It was one of our first big Farmer markets that we started doing in North Texas, we, for a four hour time period, could easily make $2,000 in sales.
It's where we debuted the point of sale system through Barn2Door. We had very good relationships there with other vendors. We had customers that would come to the market just for us. Everything about this market was a plus for us. Like you don't miss this under any circumstance. One of the market managers decided that, because we weren't raising one of our, we do seven different animals. But we weren't raising the bison here locally in Decatur, which I'm not that far outta the city.
I'm about 25 miles out of the city. Well, if you know anything about bison, bison needs to be raised on thousands of acres. So they decided to die on the hill that the bison were not raised locally. They were raised about five hours away in the panhandle of Texas. And so they deemed that I was not local, and that was not something that Julie and I were willing to compromise on and go [00:14:00] here, you're right, I'm gonna move these bison to 10 acres near the city and this is gonna be great.
So we stood our ground against that market manager, and we left that market. And I will tell you that for not even 24 hours, maybe about 18 hours, It was hard to walk away from $2,000 in sales and all those relationships. And in less than 24 hours, so many doors open for us.
So I guess my word of advice on markets that don't work out, whether you decide in the first couple of markets that it is just not enough sales. Or it's a fantastic market and they're asking you to bend your morals and values of your ranch, let it go. There is something better out there for you.
And if that hadn't happened to us, we wouldn't have experienced the growth we've experienced in the last year and a half.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow. That is, um, encouraging, I'm sure many Farmers out there have experienced something similar, and come to that threshold. So it's good to encourage people to stick to their guns, so to speak.
And, hold onto those values. Right? and it's neat 'cause it is hard right in the moment. But [00:15:00] great to see that it's part of the evolution. I suspect many Farmers out there are like, how do I evaluate if I should even try a Farmer's market. Is there any that you just didn't even ever try? Like you're like, we're not gonna do that Farmer's market? Or would you try them for a season?
Julie Green: We've kind of done both.
there's some that we've said no, it's just too far or we don't have enough people. We just can't physically be there 'cause we're already maxed out. And then, there are a couple that I did this past month that were flops, and they weren't technically Farmer's markets.
They were like barbecue cook-offs. So I knew going into it that I probably was not going to have high sales. You're just not gonna have high sales at a barbecue cookoff. People are going to be there to test the barbecue that people have made. They're gonna be enjoying the fun there. But I wanted to be like, when you're ready to cook your own brisket, this is where you should buy it from.
So I had a lot of cards go out. We didn't even make our money back on the vendor fee to be there, but I never know what's going to come from that. I still got to hang out with some cool vendors. I got to meet some new [00:16:00] people. I don't know, It was a flop sales wise.
Next time I'm just gonna be a barbecue taster. I'll be a judge next time.
Janelle Maiocco: Or you can sponsor the meat maybe.
You know, the great part about that, my takeaway from that is, is when you are pushing as an entrepreneur or business owner like you are, you do need to keep testing the market, right?
And so you need to keep trying things. And if they fail, that's good information. 'cause you also learned something along the way that's gonna actually help you be better. But I do think to your point, you need to be able to evaluate, like, this isn't working. What did I learn? What did I not learn? And then move forward.
So let's get into a little bit of the nitty gritty. Assuming there's folks out there who maybe you know, are at their first markets even this year, right?
Or maybe it's their second year or third season, and they're still trying to figure out the rhythm of being at markets, if you will. What is your market prep checklist? Like, how do you get prepared? 'cause it's not like you just show up, you're thinking ahead of time and preparing. Is there a mental or physical checklist that you go through before market day?
Julie Green: [00:17:00] I think a number one thing is just organization. And that is with our meat. In our freezers and trailers, we have it organized. We have a freezer for each protein in there. And then inside those freezers, each protein is either boxed or bagged according to its cut. I take my kids to the market, they're my helpers there.
I have a son that's almost 16 and my daughter is almost 12. And they know that they can go into the chicken freezer and find leg quarters super easy. Jacob, Michelle's son who's also our intern, outdid our trailers. He outdid himself is what he did, but he rigged out our trailers to have shelves in them and hanger hooks for bags.
Our canopies are hooked to the wall, so stuff's not sliding when it's going down the road. So basically we get there, it's right there every time, and then we just put it back. And then inside the trailers also are outlets and plugs. So our POS system stays charged in there. Our scales stay charged.
My husband, even for my birthday last [00:18:00] year, he bought me a, portable charger so that if I'm not hooked to a generator or hooked to, electricity at the place, I can charge the POS if I'm out there for like a 12 hour market or my phone needs charging or something like that. So all of that's within the trailer and all of our trailers are docked out the same.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome.
Michelle Smith: Yeah. I also think that that level of organization plays well up here in North Texas because we've got a couple of employees up here and so. It does not matter what trailer I walk into. If I'm working at a market, I can go down to Julie's, walk into the trailer, and I know where everything's at because it'll be the same as the other three that we have.
And then a step further on that is we've got the inventory updated online. So before the markets, customers can actually go in, look at what inventory is available, and place a pre-order to pick up at that market. And it becomes a game. I mean, you, you get customers. I know up in my area, you get customers that walk up and they're standing in line and they're hearing people in, [00:19:00] in front of them going, oh, you're sold out of chicken breast, you don't have any bison.
And they're just sitting there kind of smug because they pre-ordered.
Janelle Maiocco: I was wondering if you were gonna say that. They're like, I pre-order, that's too bad you didn't get all the good stuff.
Michelle Smith: That's right. So definitely the organization makes it so seamless and then we can focus on what we're good at and what is necessary to continue to propel our business.
And that is making the relationship with the customers, telling them our story, and talking to them about our morals in running the ranch. Because that's why people keep coming back.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I love that. We always tell people it's neat to be interfacing with your customers at the market, and that's actually what you're doing.
And if you have people who order online ahead of time for pickup or the POS is easy, it's not as much about the transaction or about the orders, it's more just about the relationship, right. It's neat when those things do what they're supposed to do. So that you're doing the most important part, which is branding, which I wanna talk about next because you guys are awesome at branding.
[00:20:00] How do you think about that when it comes to your booths? You've already sort of hinted at it, but also how important is it, do you think, to your success at the Farmer's markets?
Michelle Smith: It's huge. I mean, this is just the number one. All of our canopies are red. We are not the only red canopy, but people look for that red canopy.
The second thing they look for is our super cool logo. And there is a lot of things floating around out there that just have our logo on it and not even our name. So we've been very intentional with our brand, and it is to the point where if you use the Google lens reverse image it will take you to our website. and I think that is true in everybody's mind. So as trucks with trailers are going up and down the highway between me and Julie, our trailers have our logo and our name on it. Everything in our booth has our logo on it. We've done t-shirts. We all wear t-shirts with our logo.
Everything is very patriotic. We stick to that theme and it's all uniform.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome. brand recognition, it does speak well of your marketing efforts and branding [00:21:00] efforts that your logo alone is recognizable, that there's a threshold of effort it takes to get to that point.
So well done. But yes, on everything everywhere. Good job. That's awesome. I was gonna ask you about attracting buyers 'cause tell us a little bit about when you have first time buyers coming to your booth, what are your tips on engaging them that maybe other Farmers can learn from you 'cause you want the sale, but you also want a lifetime customer.
Julie Green: I think for me, I have a lot of first time buyers. And I can just tell we have chalkboards that are sitting out there, that have all of our prices, all of our listings on them.
And I can just tell how they're looking. They kind of stand at a distance a little bit, you know, give 'em a second to look it out. But I always ask or let them know if you have any questions, please ask me. Or come inside the trailer. You can see the meat. Usually 99% of the time that engages them to step into my booth.
I'm friendly. I'm not just gonna sit back and look at my phone while you're staring at the board, you know, come in here, come talk to me. They usually start asking questions, well, are you local? Where's the meat raised? How is it raised? And usually I [00:22:00] can talk them into at least one cut of something. Something that's just gonna be, you know, a trier.
And like Michelle said, the little FOMO thing starts happening. We had some gorgeous lamb come in recently and so the lamb has been selling like hotcakes and I have another technique and I did this at a Christmas market. It was kind of like people were, going by and they were going to lunch, and so I, got out these, this is beef actually that I did this on, but I had these really big ribeyes that were just gorgeous.
And so I went in the trailer and nobody was at my booth and I brought them out and started weighing them and just pretended like I was writing orders down on a paper. And I sold all of those ribeyes in five minutes because the men walked by and they were like, woo. So I did that with lamb this weekend 'cause the lamb is so pretty.
And I was like, there was this one guy that was shopping there, he wanted to get something for Easter, but his wife didn't want him to spend the money and I said, well, this lamb is beautiful and it's farm raised. don't compare us to Costco. This is different. Like you're paying a little heftier [00:23:00] price than Costco, but you're gonna notice the difference and you're gonna be addicted after this and it's gonna make a statement.
And so I took him in the trailer and he's like, well, teach me about lamb. And I pulled out all the cuts that I had on top and we have a cutting board that another vendor made, which has all of the animals on it that we process. And then on those animals are the recommended cooking temperatures and he's like, well, so how do I cook lamb? And I was like, you just want it to this temperature that's on this cutting board right here. And he bought a $200 rack of lamb. He's like, my wife is going to kill me. But I'm like, that's all right. Just feed her some lamb. You're gonna be okay.
Michelle Smith: I think Julie said something really profound, and I have to remind some of the employees of this sometimes. People want to ask questions. People want to know that you're the expert, and we do raise these animals. Julie and I have both raised all of these different proteins at some point in our life. We've touched them. We've had baby lambs under our bed covers, trying to save 'em. We have had our hands on an animal [00:24:00] that maybe had failure to thrive. We've personally taken animals to the slaughterhouse. We know this process start to finish. And not every customer wants to hear the entire process, but they wanna know that you're the expert.
And that is what sets you apart from Costco. Who are you gonna go into at Costco and say, are you local? Where was this lamb raised? Some customers, what was its name? What did it look like? What kind of lamb is it? You know, where did this cow come from? People want to know that and they want to ask those questions.
They're not asking questions to interrogate you. They're asking questions because they view you as an expert. And so answer accordingly. Answer to the best of your knowledge. Taste all your meat, taste your products. Be able to say, you know what? I don't like sirloin steak, but my business partner really loves to cook it this way and once, she cooked it for me and I actually liked it. There's always some techniques. The bottom line is to interact with the customer and answer their questions. And again, just know they're looking to you for [00:25:00] answers.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that people are so curious and want to engage. How do you then, like with regard to the folks who your employees or volunteers or whomever is manning your booths, especially up north at those markets, do you train them specifically? are there sort of a general set of like, I've trained you, here's the dos, here's the don'ts.'cause you're not there.
Michelle Smith: Really the employees that work for us, they all started out as customers, so that's a huge help. I think sharing the products with your employees is huge. They need to be able to have firsthand knowledge and talk about what they're selling. and then as far as a training program, I closely mentor them.
They don't take off with our product and our ranch basically, on their own until I'm pretty confident that they can answer those questions. So with each one of the employees that work up here, they probably spent six months to a year working with me, being a helper with me. We are very, very cautious about who represents our company.
We've worked too hard [00:26:00] to create a brand and a reputation for anybody to take it lightly. And so we're really cautious about who represents us.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome. It’s important for people to realize you really do need to protect your brand, including whomever is talking about your product or representing you in particular markets.
So that is important. We have a similar conversation with a lot of farms. You do this too, which is when you're partnering with others brands, it's the same story, right? Whatever brand you're associating with, that's another brand you care about their quality and their brand too, because it's associated now with yours.
Um, do you think layout matters, how you set up your table or your booth? In terms of sales?
Michelle Smith: Absolutely. I think that it has to be inviting and it’s interesting. It's kind of a challenge with frozen meat because you can't display it.
Janelle Maiocco: Except for on the scale when you're trying to move the ribeyes.
Michelle Smith: Exactly. That's right. You do have to be creative. We have some byproducts that I think really draw customers to the table. so we have tallows that are made out of our beef suet.. We've got dehydrated thin strips of [00:27:00] beef.
So it's similar to beef jerky. We've got cooking tallow, cooking lard, you know, things that can set out on the table, that draw people in. And then we have billboards, like a sandwich chalkboard that sits right beside our table with a listing of all of the meat available and the pricing.
I know when we first started out, we would take ice chests and it works, but I would encourage you to get away from the ice chest sooner than later. From a food handling safety perspective, but also from a customer perception. It looks much more professional, safe, and what customers are used to, when meat is actually held in a freezer.
And, so we were able to accomplish that fairly early on with our Farmer market career. It was not near as pretty as what we do now, but it was a start. So to answer the question, yes, I think it matters how your table is set up. You've gotta have something that's inviting. It can't be cluttered.
And I get really nitpicky at our booths and I'm like, you know, employees are not allowed to have food and drinks up there. This is not a, [00:28:00] party table. Keep it professional. People are looking at you like the expert.
Julie Green: I have found even in the past couple of markets, we have added some Longhorn hides for sale.
And I was like, where am I gonna put these? Like, I don't have anything to hang these on to show them off. And they're pretty big. So I almost have like a letter U now, and so I have stuff in the middle, and then on each side it has some of the longhorn hides like laid out.
But it also creates that when people walk into your booth, it kind of hugs them, if that makes sense. And now they've stepped into your booth and they're with your product. And then see I have these crazy techniques that I do. I put a stuffed baby goat on my table and fake eggs.
Every time that draws people's kids, they wanna grab the fake eggs and they want to play with the baby goat. So the parents follow them to the table and also I have a name contest going on for my baby goat.
So while their kids are sitting there petting the goat and the parents are buying meat.
Janelle Maiocco: For [00:29:00] everybody's just listing one of my employees is literally wearing veteran Liberty Ranch t-shirt and logo today to work, so.
Julie Green: That's awesome.
Janelle Maiocco: That's so fun. I saw him walk by, I'm like, come in here.
I'm like waving at the people out in my office. That's awesome.
So yeah, I love the goat contest. Playing with egg. I have seen that U-shaped booth set up.
It's good to hear your feedback that that's been working well for them. There is a comfort to it. I think once they're in. So many good marketing tactics I love that you're like, no, this is our brand. Be professional. Don't sit there on your phone and drink your Coke. This is not what we're about here. So I appreciate that.
Julie Green: I feel like in our connect sessions that we do, that's probably the number one question we get is do you do Farmer's markets? How do you get into them? So it's definitely a common question.
Janelle Maiocco: So here's something I wanna emphasize too, which we work with a lot of farms, who, when they're first coming to us, sometimes they're at a Farmer's markets or a few, sometimes they're not and they wanna be, sometimes they're at Farmer's markets and they don't [00:30:00] wanna do that, which is also absolutely viable.
We have lots of arms who aren't at markets. We have all of the above. 'cause we can support their business, whatever it looks like. But we're very passionate at Barn2Door, that Farmers at Farmer's markets collect emails and however that may be because you always need to be building your customer list.
When you're at a Farmer market, collecting emails almost doubles the value of your time spent. At least that's how we believe it to be true. Because if you have their emails, then you can start emailing them and try to build them into recurring customers, which is really the goal of a business, which is recurring customers, recurring sales, et cetera. I'm jumping in and assuming you're doing that.
Michelle Smith: Yes, we do still collect emails. This was growth for Barn2Door and for us, I think, because at the beginning we were collecting emails on a signup sheet with pen and paper, probably a spiral notebook. And I don't remember exactly when this feature was added, but it's been a while now when the customer puts their email address in for a receipt on the point of sale system, there's an option to sign up [00:31:00] for the newsletter. And it's interesting because most people want to go ahead and sign up for the newsletter. If for some reason they don't want a receipt, I still ask them, that's okay.
Don't need to send you a receipt. But do you want to be on our email list? That's where you're gonna get firsthand knowledge of specials that are coming out and know where we're gonna be this coming weekend, things like that. And most of them say, yes.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. Why would they not?
Right? They've had that great experience. They're about to go home and taste your meat which is just like gonna double down on their experience of your brand, which is really cool. Yeah. Whatever way it is to collect emails, like notebooks are fine. QR codes. I know that we build out QR codes, for our Farmers too, to just have right there, which I think you folks use on your, on your business cards.
And then yes, on the POS, that Barn2Door, powers for Farmers, it collects emails during checkout. And you're right, that was, I feel like that was like two years ago, Michelle, but a great feature because we know how important it is for Farmers to be building those customer lists, always. I don't know, for me it's a bigger [00:32:00] ROI right there that you're turning a onetime customer into a longtime customer. And anytime you can do that, it's just gold. And then say one little mention on the pre-orders because, one thing that happens at booths, and maybe there's multiple ways besides just the pre-order, online ahead of time to pick up at your booth, but what are the couple of ways that you try to make sure that you're efficient? 'cause I suspect there's times when it's really busy. And then, you're wanting to sort of manage that customer experience.
Julie Green: I did have that happen even this past weekend. There was a line, there were some people there to pick up their things, but again, that U-shape kind of came in handy 'cause I was like, come here. And then the more people that were picking up their pre-order. They heard me talking about that lamb to that guy, and then I sold more lamb. And, I don't know. I feel like people are patient when they've pre-ordered and they know, they know you. Most of our pre-orders are from people that have ordered from us before.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes. I think pre-orders can certainly help make sure people are gonna show up and get items right. And I think it's especially nice for your loyal [00:33:00] customers, to make sure that they are getting exactly what they want and then they've already paid in most cases. Is that true too?
Julie Green: Yes, they're fully paid when they pre-order.
Michelle Smith: When I go to markets, I have one particular freezer that I keep all the pre-orders in, and they're generally going to be repeat customers so that I know them.
And if I do have a line when I go in to grab whatever the customer in front of me is ordering and I see my repeat customer, five people back in the line, I just grab their order and bring it out with me and just kind of do the multitask. And sometimes you might think, well, gosh, now you're taking people out of line.
But I would argue that it actually demonstrates to the people that are in line, I know my customers and why is that person getting special treatment. And a lot of times I'll just say, Hey, Shaylyn, here's your pre-order. See you next time. She grabs your order and goes, and everybody else in line's going, whoa, how do you do that?
So it leads to more conversation. It does show that we as ranchers, [00:34:00] have a relationship with our customers and that we do know you.
Janelle Maiocco: I think customers appreciate that you have loyal customers and that they get special treatment, if I'm being honest.
It's almost like a loyalty club or something. It's like, yep, you get special treatment because you ordered ahead of time and I know you, I love that. And then I suspect if they wanna buy more, which hopefully they do, even while they're in person, that they could, they would stand in line too. Like that wouldn't change that.
Michelle Smith: Right. And that does happen sometimes they'll say, thanks, I'll wait, I'm gonna grab some more things. But sometimes they're in a hurry and they just grab it, say thanks, and go. And, it's a neat feature. I'm glad we have that.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, that's awesome.
But it is neat too. I appreciate your point, Julie, that when it does get really busy, you certainly don't feel like you're losing sales. 'cause people are afraid if it gets too busy, they're gonna fall off the back end of the line or something like that. But if you have some pre-orders in the mix, that can help but go faster. And then to your point, it sounds like people are pretty patient and excited.
Julie Green: Yes. We get lots of hugs and just good to [00:35:00] see you and Yeah, it's really cool.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. I don't know if people talk much about that, but even if you're giving hugs to customers, it's a display of customer loyalty, which is enticing to customers who don't yet know you.
But they're like, wow, that's really cool. So that's even part of the brand package. That's neat. I love that. You're really just, not intentionally putting on display, but just, it is what it is. It's a wonderful outcome and display of your brand. I wanted to shift to, after the Farmer market, like packing up and getting organized after the fact. How do you do that? Because I know there's a whole range of Farmers, probably more so folks who are on notebooks.
It takes a little more to gauge what we do and don't have and that kind of thing. But what does it look like for you today in terms of like end of day, you want the back end of that to be pretty efficient and then check the box and move on to the next thing.
So are there any tips that you've learned along the way like I love how you've built out your trailers on the front end. That's just brilliant, right? Do you have something like that at the end of the day as well?
Michelle Smith: I think the number one thing is having a [00:36:00] spot to put everything. Like Julie said earlier, Jacob has retrofitted our box trailer. So a box trailer is literally just that, just four blank walls. Up in the nose of the trailer, he's built shelves. There's literally a spot with a plugin outlet, for the scale, and there's a spot to plug in the iPad and the point of sale, there's a spot to put the cash box. All the freezers there's a beef freezer, there's a chicken freezer. Everything has its place. The canopy has a bungee cord that tightens it up to the wall. So again, it doesn't matter who's working the trailer, if you put everything back in its place and everything is plugged in, in that wall power. When we do bring the trailer back to the ranch and you plug it into the shore power, so the entire trailer's plugged back in, everything's charging the freezers are on, everything's put away, and you're just able to, you know, head out to that Mexican restaurant and get your margarita.
Janelle Maiocco: There you go.
When do you figure out how much you made in a given day or, are [00:37:00] you having to think or worry about inventory or is that just an easy part of the process?
Julie Green: I mean, the POS system. We are kind of addicted to watching our sales like add up on the thing. 'cause it tells you exactly what you've done.
So we, we literally screenshot and we send it and we send it also to our employees because it's an incentive. How are you doing over there? Like, it makes it a game Kind of. Like, oh, well I'm gonna beat you on such and such, or, you know, who can sell the most of this today? Kind of fun. Just a little fun.
And um, and then as far as inventory goes, we actually, because we're in two separate locations, it makes inventory a little different than if you just had one farm. but we have been taught by Kevin and then Jacob helped us around making a central Texas item and a North Texas item.
And so when we're checking out on the POS system, it literally says. Central Texas only chicken breasts. And so I know to pull only from central Texas chicken breasts if I sell one and the same thing for North [00:38:00] Texas. And so it's pulling that inventory at the same time that you're checking somebody out at the same time somebody goes online to place an order.
It's really cool. Like it's really working. It's doing really well.
Janelle Maiocco: Love that. You guys are crushing it. It's amazing. Now the Farmer markets, is your entire business? Like, we have Farmers that's their whole business. They might do just the Farmer markets and they might also do some online sales.
Especially like in your case, you're doing pre-order for pickup at the market and that's, FYI, if you're listening and you don't know, that's a little bit how Barn2Door works is we make sure that farms can sell online and in person, and have the inventory work and everything work, beautifully.
And so we have some farms that that's all that they do and it's the primary part of their business. We also have Farmers who only use a little bit of Farmer market or none.
It's just interesting how different Farmers think about Farmer's markets. I have another Farmer who has a very substantial operation and often will use Farmer's markets when he's expanding he'll go to the Farmer's market first in a new neighborhood or community.
To then push his brand out, get the emails, [00:39:00] get the connections, do the networking. And he may or may not stay at that Farmer's market long term, and that's fine with him, but he uses it as a mechanism to basically put his brand in the middle of the community, if you will. And so how do you think about Farmer's markets?
Are they like a long-term part of your business? Do you wanna expand them? How do you think about that also in tandem with other ways and places people can buy your product?
Michelle Smith: I'm gonna answer for up here. I think that being part of a long-term Farmer's market is a good idea. There's a sense of community and, yes, we want to expand from that market and be able to just do the home delivery and have customers pick up.
But I think there's also something to be said for joining forces with a hundred other small entrepreneurs and staying at that Farmer's market and capturing the next generation of shoppers. So I think that's not viable to, you know, be long-term in five markets every weekend [00:40:00] over the course of the next 10 years.
But picking and choosing ones that you can make an impact and be a mentor to other entrepreneurs and help be a draw to that market, I think there's actually a lot of value in that. For our business specifically, we like to give customers as many options as possible to get our product. And not everybody can hit a Farmer's market on a weekend.
So we are in a few stores and those relationships have primarily come from being at Farmer's markets. Julie does a drive through Farmer's market co-op type thing on Wednesday evenings. So I think, you know, really thinking out of the box, giving the customers as many options as possible to find our product, whether that's home delivery, coming to the Farmer's market, hitting a drive through on Wednesday night. Giving them options.
Julie Green: That's a good point too, that drive through on Wednesday night, I don't even take meat for sale. All of that is pre-ordered from our website. That's all. Everybody's pre-ordered. The bags are our subscriptions. Probably 90% of them go through there. And [00:41:00] so I literally am just bagging up the orders. I'm charging the customer and they drive through and I load their car.
So I don't even take my trailer. I drive up there in my pickup truck and I have three ice chests in the back and you know, move it from the ice chest to their car and I'm there for four hours and, again, people come through, they're giving you hugs, they come in, they're smiling. That is the part of the day they look forward to.
And, that bloomed from being at a Farmer's market, though. That's how we met the person who runs it. So yeah, you have to get yourself out there a little bit. You can't expect it all just to come to you.
Janelle Maiocco: I love hearing sort of how you think of it from a business lens.That's very smart. And including like giving customers every opportunity to buy. We certainly talk a lot about that. Not every customer can come to the Farmer market on a Saturday or a Wednesday night or whenever it is. 'cause it's different in every community. But that doesn't mean they don't wanna buy from you, right. And so giving additional windows or fulfillment options can open up the gate [00:42:00] to more customers who want to buy from you, but can't do that one thing, that one opportunity or the Farmer market. And when you said Wednesday evenings, I was like, yeah, I work all day every day, I get my Farmer market food in the evenings. That's when I can be at home for delivery. You wanna catch all those buyers at whatever life stage they're at.
Julie Green: Yes. And now having fun with delivery too, we've hit another notch of people. There's some young moms that have newborns and they're not ready to take their babies out and I don't blame 'em, but they can get that meat delivered to their door.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, even on the workday, when I know somebody's delivering food during the day on a Wednesday or whatever it is, and I can track when it's showing up, I just know that's the day that I put my cooler out.
So you're right. I'm glad you mentioned delivery, that's another whole genre of buyers who might not go to the farm markets, but boy will they gladly pay $10 or $15 for a delivery to their doorstep and then they get home from work and they don't have to go to the grocery store. Like, yeah, I'll pay $10 not to go to the grocery store.
Julie Green: No kidding. That's cheaper than fuel right now, from wherever most [00:43:00] people are driving, that $15 is cheaper than driving around to go get all these things.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. So opening up the timeframes. And then the other part of it I really love is the building habits. And I feel like you mentioned subscriptions, 'cause that was the next thing I was gonna ask. Is your advice to Farmers out there, you know, over and above everything else. Like at the end of the day, you need recurring sales, ideally, and typically from recurring customers. That's the best way to do it, right?
Versus first time sales, every single time is to build them into recurring sales. And through the lens of a Farmer market, how do you think about that or accomplish the recurring sales through the activity of the Farmer market? 'cause you're wanting to take that initial buyer or those recurring buyers, and obviously turn that into something consistent for your business.
Julie Green: For me down here, I just, this past weekend, I had several people ask, well, how often does this particular Farmer's market happen? And I said, once a month, but take my card. Here are all the options on the way that you can get meat and I also, you know, the place that I [00:44:00] do the drive through market also has raw milk.
Michelle has her store now where she has other things that you can buy too. So that's an incentive to pull them in there. But also I tell them if you never wanna have to worry about remembering to come to a market you have an automatic subscription option that you can do all kinds of different things. It's something to fit every family and every size of family. And then you don't even have to think about it.
Janelle Maiocco: Love it. Very powerful. You know what my favorite part of that was when they asked at the Farmer market how often it was, and it was once a month that you didn't have to say, nope, that's your only choice, see you next month.
But instead you're like, here's three more ways to get it more regularly and easily. That is just gold in terms of ensuring that you're capturing all that sales and demand. Michelle, any final bits of advice, for Farmers out there, you know, pushing to have consistent sales and grow and considering Farmer markets that you wanna leave them with today?
Michelle Smith: Be intentional every day.
Wake up and go. How are you gonna promote your brand today? How are you gonna reach your customers every day?
Julie Green: Barn2Door [00:45:00] makes it super addicting. 'cause Michelle and I literally get on every day and I get on, I archive my orders that I've picked up, Michelle jumps on, we check our inventory.
It's like addicting. It is not a hassle. It's exciting for us to see it's just, we, we love you guys and cannot recommend all of the things that you guys bring out every month enough. We try to utilize everything to the max, and if we're not utilizing it to the max, then we get a lovely phone call from Kevin and he builds out things for us and we say, okay, just push the button.
And so your whole team is amazing. We love working with you guys.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, we love working with you too. It brings us so much joy to hear, your success. I know it's hard to build a business, and you guys are doing so much hard work. It is, it's so many decisions. It's so many things to figure out and. To stay organized and love your customers the way that you are. But, nothing makes us happier than to see you thriving and successful. And here you took time out to be on this podcast and help other Farmers. Like it's amazing. We're super appreciative.
So thank you. I know you've gotta get back to work. Thank you for all the rich advice I [00:46:00] wanna extend my thanks to Julie and Michelle for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more and follow Veteran's Liberty Ranch on their Instagram @veteranslibertyranch. Go check them out here 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 make more money, ditch the office work and look like a pro. We literally talk all day every day to Farmers. Aren't we lucky? Farmers working with Barn2Door can go to office hours or connect with, literally you can join, connect with Julie and Michelle and learn all the things all over again.
We exist to support Farmers like Julie, if you are an independent Farmer getting started or interested in selling direct. Or if you wanna simplify your business and scale, visit us at barn2door.com/learn-more we would love to chat with you. Thank you for tuning in today.
We look forward to joining you next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
Speaker: [00:47:00] 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 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.
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