Selling Half and Whole Hogs from the Farm
In this week’s episode, Janelle talks to Erica of Benoit Family Farmstead (MO) to discuss selling pork to her community. From cuts to bulk orders, she uncovers how she manages her inventory, builds FOMO for her products and keeps her fulfillments streamlined.
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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 own brand, and making sure their [00:01:00] customers can purchase from their farm, online and in person.
In today's conversations, we'll be getting into selling half and whole hogs, directly to your community. I'm happy to welcome back Erica of Benoit Family Farmstead in Missouri. Erica has leveraged Barn2Door for her business for four years, and is part of our Farm Advisor Network. Since becoming an advisor, she has helped inspire other farmers across the country, in part because of her success story where she and her husband left off-farm jobs and are now full-time farming.
Including her tips and best practices on how to grow your farm business, from diversifying product lines to building a loyal, local customer base. And yes, we did welcome her back. She has prior podcasts, so please go listen to those. It's full of great tips. Today we'll dive in specifically on pork sales.
Welcome, Erica.
Erica Benoit: Thank you.
Janelle Maiocco: We have to still give people a background 'cause we'll just pretend they didn't listen to all the prior podcasts. All right. So tell us a little bit about your farming journey. Let's just start there. A quick, quick little brief overview and then sort of hole up on the pork side of things.
Erica Benoit: Okay. [00:02:00] So, we bought our farm about 10 years ago now. Bought it from my grandma, moved here with two kids. We now have four kids. We started out just wanting to homestead. We, we had a garden in town, we knew we wanted to plant a garden and just kind of expand from there and knew how much better it tasted to have homegrown food.
I would've never guessed it would've turned into all this, but I'm glad it has. Just the more we grew, the more people wanted what we had, and it just. Just kept snowballing from there and we created this whole business. And yeah, we're both able to stay home full time with our kids. We homeschool now, so we've been given a lot more opportunities than we thought we would ever be given with this lifestyle.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing. And so just for folks listening, you are selling poultry, pork, eggs, dairy, right?
Erica Benoit: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: You wanna give a little refresh on what the product mix is, and what order you started them? 'cause you didn't start at all on [00:03:00] day one.
Erica Benoit: No. I wish we would've probably spread out a little bit further.
Knowing now, I would've started just a little bit slower, but we crammed everything in. We started out with like five chickens, like laying hens. We quickly got up to about 200 of those. Started out with just like a boar and a couple of sows started picking those and just kind of expanded from there.
Janelle Maiocco: Mm-hmm.
Erica Benoit: We had, I think, five cows and a bull that we started with. We're up to 16 now. Hogs, we have about nine sows now. Yeah, we just started out selling like five hogs, you know, keep a couple to ourselves and sold the rest, and the goal was to just cover our feed costs. So basically we had freed meat through it.
Janelle Maiocco: Nice.
I like that.
Erica Benoit: Yeah. Yeah. It just, the word started spreading and people were just coming to us and contacting us wanting pork.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Erica Benoit: Mm-hmm.
Janelle Maiocco: It's fun to hear that because we so often, in so many of our, of our podcasts and when we're talking to farms, even about what Barn2Door does and why we're so excited about helping [00:04:00] independent farmers.
Some of it is just, well, you're doing all the hard work really. Like we just wanna facilitate. But, a big part of it is we know how much demand there is. Like nine out of 10 people. I even think that's being conservative, right? But nine out of 10 people prefer local food. They want local food, and they're literally, in your case, coming to you.
It's a very sort of palpable example of like our homestead grew into a farm business because of our local community wanting to eat meat they trusted that was local from a farmer they trusted with no supply chain and complete transparency and full of nutrients. And of course, everybody's gonna demand that, right?
But the neat part of working with farms is the goal, the whole reason why Barn2Door is. Can we help you tap into that? Like, let's make sure you're actually really, really tapping into that demand, which is kind of fun and interesting to discuss. And you know, a lot of it comes to building your farm brand, which you've done an incredible job.
And then, making sure it's really easy for people to shop from you and to get your food, right? Like you [00:05:00] have to get in front of those buyers, and sort of make that happen. I don't know if you wanna add any comment to that. I'm just so excited to hear that you've full on, experienced that demand even coming to you.
Erica Benoit: Yes. Yeah. I'll also say like right before we signed up for Barn2Door, so like right after 2020, obviously it was easy to sell, sell locally, raised meats in 2020 because nobody could find anything else. And then 2021, it started getting harder and I contacted our local grocery store to try to get something sold in there.
And they just told me, nobody's gonna pay your prices. We can't sell what you're offering because nobody's gonna pay that in this area.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Erica Benoit: And yeah. And then the guy that was in charge of, that would've ordered from me. He's like, you have to go online. He said, everybody's going online.
If you wanna get your product sold, you have to go online. So, that's when we really looked deeper into Barn2Door and ended up signing up.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome. So, it was that online, I mean, at least in your case you experienced that like, okay, [00:06:00] online, 'cause that's how people buy. And you found out that that's true.
Erica Benoit: Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. All right. Let's talk about pork. I guess, I don't know if you sort of explained how or why you even got into pork farming. Like why pork, why pigs, why sows? And then bring us up to how many, you said you have nine sows now, or you started with nine?
Erica Benoit: We started with just two.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Erica Benoit: Yes, we have nine now.
Janelle Maiocco: Got it.
Erica Benoit: Um, So hogs is kind of my favorite thing because when I was growing up, we would raise a few hogs, we'd butcher 'em. I grew up watching my dad and all of his friends come together and butcher hogs in the garage. And so I, I knew a lot about that and I really enjoyed the process of that.
So, that was a good start for us to build on that. It was also a more sustainable item to start with. Like beef cost thousands and thousands of dollars in years to really be established, whereas hogs was a lot faster. Yeah, just didn't cost nearly as much to get started for us.
Janelle Maiocco: That's more practical, isn't it?
Erica Benoit: Yeah. Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: At least as a starter. As a [00:07:00] starter product potentially. That makes a ton of sense. And then when do you sell, like what's the, I guess that's sort of part of the nuts and bolts of it, right? How do you package it? When do you sell it?
Erica Benoit: So, we started out with just hole in halves. Back in like 20 20, 20 19, we would kind of keep like one or two hogs worth of cuts in the freezer, just to have something to sell. Like if somebody wanted to try the sausage or something, then we were able to sell that to 'em. And there was a handful of people that just wanted a little bit, but my focus was bulk. A lot of that was because that's what I understand, 'cause I like to buy bulk. I wanna stock my freezer, I wanna pull meat from the freezer. We're in a rural community, so pretty much everybody has a deep freezer, so everybody kind of understands that concept of you fill the freezer and you shop from the freezer.
So, it was a pretty easy, easy sell for people because so many people, you know, buy that way. They knew their parents bought that way. They just understood the concept a lot more than if we were in a bigger city and nobody had deep freezers. But I do subscriptions. I've [00:08:00] been dabbling in subscriptions just a little bit, just like one hog's worth a month and whatever doesn't go through the subscription, then I keep in the freezer to sell.
I haven't been trying to sell cuts because I don't really have the freezer space to hold a lot of cuts. But with our farm store we're building, then I'm really gonna start pushing cuts and expand on the subscription program. The people that get subscriptions, they absolutely love it.
I really like the cash flow of it where I know a certain date I'm getting this much money from my subscriptions, so that really helps, helps the cash flow of a farm kind of even out, and it's not just the as much high and lows as it has before.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, i, it's fun to hear you say that because I know you've had a lot of success with the halves and the wholes, and moving larger amounts, which is really great.
But you also have had so much success with your chicken subscriptions, including, you know, some of that fomo and knowing how to market that really well. So it's fun and interesting to see you also applying that over on the pork side and certainly [00:09:00] offering that. It's interesting because yes, there is a market of people who have deep freezers, but it's actually a smaller market.
If you're looking at the overall potential customers that most customers don't have deep freezers, right? And so, it's good to think about, well, if they don't have deep freezers, how do I package this to sell in a way that those people will also buy? And it sounds like you've thought that through.
Erica Benoit: Yeah, yeah. So I do a monthly subscription and I also do a quarterly subscription. So, I don't wanna be running around all the time. I've really tried to condense my deliveries as much as possible, and so instead of doing a smaller delivery of like five pounds a month, I just do 10 pounds every three months for quarterly.
So, I try to kind of bulk it up as much as possible so I'm not running everywhere and really like conserve my time too, the best I can for people. And you asked too about like the timeline of when we sell whole and halves. We do that all year round. We try to [00:10:00] try to feral year round. We are probably not the best at planning things ahead.
We have the bore in there and just whenever it happens, it happens. And whenever we have babies, that's when we plan everything else out. Ideally, we'd be a little bit better at that, but we're, we're not. And you can't really.
Janelle Maiocco: You can't, you can't do it all. You can't do it all.
Erica Benoit: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Or we'll take care of the part of the business.
Erica Benoit: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Ah, that's great. That's great.
Erica Benoit: We try to pre-sell 'em as much as possible, so as soon as we wean 'em, we'll get 'em up to about 50 or 60 pounds, and that's when I will make sure butcher dates are scheduled. I will get 'em listed on Barn2Door and really start hustling 'em as soon as I possibly can. For my aspect too, I wanna make sure they're sold before I go to the locker.
Janelle Maiocco: Amen.
Erica Benoit: On customers aspects. If they're getting 75, you know, over a hundred pounds of meat at a time, they need a plan ahead too. And so, by planning ahead, everybody's able to, you know, have a heads up [00:11:00] when there's that much meat coming in. At the same time, it also splits the cost up for people. So, you have to pay for the entire whole, you know, the whole price that goes to me upfront.
And then they pay for the processor when they pick it up. And so if somebody, you know, if they order two months ahead of time, then they're able to spread that cost out a little bit further for them, and it's a little bit more manageable for some families that are on tighter budgets too.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. So, you do a deposit in a final charge, or you actually charge a full amount for your halves and wholes? Like a flat rate?
Erica Benoit: Yes, A flat rate.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Erica Benoit: I was actually, you guys taught me how to do that. Um, I was really leery.
Janelle Maiocco: I mean, there's honestly, there's so many options for how to do it.
It's just fun to hear. And it sounds like that that's working really well.
Erica Benoit: Yes. Yeah. So before, before Barn2Door, we would collect a half payment deposit. Some people didn't have the money at the time to pay the remaining balance or something would happen. And it [00:12:00] was just a lot easier in the end to just charge the full amount.
And, you know, if somebody doesn't want to pay the full price, like get a half hog, I charge the exact same for like per pound.
Janelle Maiocco: Right.
Erica Benoit: For a half hog and a whole hog, you know, half hogs exactly half of a whole hog. That was something that I think you guys recommended to charge a little bit more for a half hog.
You know, not cut it in exactly in half. But I did find that there was people that they would try to like, get a friend to come together to buy the whole hog. So, they made sure they saved a little bit and it ended up being kind of more of a hassle. Yeah. And I can also, I can also encourage people to just get started with a half, so they can see that it doesn't cost me anymore to just start with a half.
And then people, some people order twice a year. They'll order, you know, kinda order in the spring for their summer cuts order in the fall for their winter cuts. And it works out pretty good for a lot of people.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I like that. It does create a natural way, again, to sort of spread out their payments, but ultimately [00:13:00] when you are buying in bulk, you do tend to get a little better rates than if you're selling cut by cut by cut.
Right? So I know a lot of people are very incentivized to do that and to make sure that they can, you know that they are literally making sure that they have that in the freezer as their option, right. Just it's some peace of mind to folks to not all of a sudden be out of, you know, farm food and have to rely on a big box grocer where who knows where that came from, right?
So.
Erica Benoit: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: There's a lot of peace of mind for folks making sure that they're sort of stocked up on, on quality. So I appreciate that. So, how much do you charge? This is Missouri, I don't know if you have any insights on your particular market or community or state.
It's so different from state to state all around the country. What folks can charge. But where did you finally land and how's that going for you?
Erica Benoit: So, we finally landed at $400 for a whole hog. We try to only get 'em up to about 250 pounds. And then they pay for the processing.
Janelle Maiocco: Mm-hmm.
Erica Benoit: Processing is around $250 for a whole hog.
Janelle Maiocco: Got it. That makes a ton of [00:14:00] sense. And I don't know if I asked you what breed, what type of hog you're raising.
Erica Benoit: So, they are berkshire Hereford crosses.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay. Okay. So the whole timeframe of getting them up to 250 pounds is how long?
Erica Benoit: About five months. Yep.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay. That's incredible.
Erica Benoit: Yes. Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Nothing wrong with that. Do you plan to expand?
Erica Benoit: Yes. So last year we only sold about 40 hogs. That was a time of us saving back guilts and just kind of transitioning a lot of things. So we sold everything we possibly had, but it was only 40.
This year I've already sold, I think at least 50 and taken 'em to the locker and.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Erica Benoit: So, we should have over a hundred this year that we'll be selling. Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome.
Erica Benoit: Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty exciting.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome. Okay, so you're doing a flat rate for half and whole, which is great. It's interesting, one other thing, some actually, honestly, many of the Farms that use Barn2Door software to sell and manage their half, wholes of hogs and arguably also, you know, whole goat and whole [00:15:00] lamb and quarter, half, whole cow, they will take a deposit, like Barn2Door says, Hey, we'll take like a $200 or $300 deposit.
So, it's a meaningful amount, right? But then you're already paid that before. And then of course, the beauty of that is, is you can, to your point, have everything reserved before it goes to the butcher. Like, you'll sleep better knowing everything's accounted for, and you're not having to sell after the fact and have become a freezer business, or cold storage business.
That it's already and therefore after the butcher it has a home to go to. But then the way that our system also works, this is actually, patented technology, which is why I'm mentioning it. But they can then, once they have the final hanging weight and they do wanna sell by weight, if you will, they can then auto charge their customers the remainder and it will subtract that original deposit and give that customer receipt.
And so, if those customers have a credit card on file, unlike we were talking about earlier, they know that they're gonna get paid and they don't have to keep bugging those customers. When they might, you [00:16:00] know, it's more security for farmers not to get shorted, which makes us happy is sort of the net net of it.
I love it though, 'cause we do talk through all the proteins. Like chickens is another good example. Some people sell those by weight and other people sell it for a flat price. Right. I'd say that's a good example of a lot of folks are like, Hey, if it's between this and this, it's just gonna be 20 bucks or 25 bucks or 30 bucks or whatever else. So, it's really great to hear the optionality, including what has worked in particular for you, to move those products to Wow already 50 and we're not even through May.
Erica Benoit: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that, like why I started doing bulk instead of going to cuts was just so my input cost wasn't so high.
Like I'm taking that processing fee that I would've had to pay originally. If I put it in the freezer, I'm passing that on the customer. So they're covering that and they're putting thousands of dollars worth of meat in their freezer instead of me having the responsibility of making sure all my [00:17:00] freezers are working and that inventory is moving quickly.
So, it puts a lot of my stress on onto the customer. And they're taking on all of that instead of me, and they're getting a better deal too. So overall it works out both for.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Erica Benoit: For me as the farmer and the consumer. Like, we're all pretty happy about it.
Janelle Maiocco: I have a bunch of questions. Let's talk about the half whole first. Okay. So when you're talking about like they're buying half or a whole hog, what do you do in terms of cut sheets? I know most folks buying, I mean, maybe folks, you know, who are around farms a ton, are very comfortable with cut sheets.
But when we interview customers, most of them are like, Hey, no, I just want the farmer to say, here's what's normal. Or the butcher to say, here's what normal, I don't wanna, I don't wanna make a hundred decisions, just cut them the way that's the most standard. Unless of course you run into a chef, which is a whole different beast, but in a good way.
Right? 'cause then they really know what they want. But most of the time we find farmers have the greatest success when they're like, here's two or three standard cut sheets, like cut [00:18:00] sheet A, B, and C to choose from. And then if they want custom or something like that, then many of our farmers actually would charge a little more because that accounts for the time required to service that.
What are your thoughts there?
Erica Benoit: I didn't know that was an option. The day I take 'em to the locker, everybody gets an email with the number of the locker and I tell them that they're the experts and to talk to the butchers about that.
Janelle Maiocco: If you can get away with it that way, that's great. Yeah.
Erica Benoit: I do have blog posts over how to fill out a cut sheet. I do have the cut sheet listed on the blog post. We use two different butchers. One butcher even I cannot understand their cut sheet. And so, I use the other butchers and their cut sheet's on there and you know, they're all the same.
They're all gonna, you know, you can only cut up a couple of ways, yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Exactly. Yeah. And that's why we often encourage folks to say, here's the two or three standard cut sheets. Whether they're handing that to the butcher directly or whether that just goes with the order saves time for the butcher, trying [00:19:00] to overexplain everything, but also it takes the guesswork out for the buyer.
Because again, like many times, folks aren't experts, unless they are an avid cook or chef and they have really specific ideas. But, often, you can create cut sheets that are more for the folks who like a lot more ground versus more roasts, and you can kind of optimize two or three different ones that if I'm somebody looking at three options, I'm like, oh, I relate to the, you know, standardized cut sheet B because I prefer more x, Y, Z, right? Like I prefer more ground or I prefer more roasts or whatnot. And you can, you can sort of go that route, which is neat. It takes, again, if you can remove the guesswork and the time required for both the farmer and the buyer. Amen. That's like the perfect scenario.
And it sounds like you've already figured that out too when you're like, here's the options. Read this blog if you want to. You've got this. And you're able to pass that on, which is just awesome. And that's essentially what happens when we're recommending, hey, just give them these three standard forms for them to use.
And [00:20:00] then also when I'm buying, I can read those and be very confident and comfortable in my choices when I'm clicking purchase and I don't have to talk to somebody first before I'm comfortable then purchasing that half or whole. And you do a good job on those.
Erica Benoit: Yeah, that makes sense. I also have like the basic inventory of if you call the locker and say, I just want the basic cuts, you got a little of everything.
And I have it listed on like how much bacon, how much sausage, like how much everything you should expect. That's really good marketing material too, 'cause a lot of people don't have any idea what's in a half hog, a whole hog, they can't even picture it. But if you have it all listed out, I have the weights that they can expect from it.
And that has actually helped me sell a lot of bulk.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes.
Erica Benoit: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: I've seen some of your posts, and you do a really good job just lining it up. 'cause again, you're taking the guesswork out for the buyer. And you're right. They don't know. This is too many years ago to count, but when I first started buying like a quarter, half, whole cows from a [00:21:00] farmer, I loved it because they would explain, Hey, if you choose a quarter or half or whole, it's X number of full grocery bags of frozen meat. So, I'm like, oh, it's like three full grocery bags full of frozen meat. And for me that was like, okay, I got it. Like, and I know that seems, it's so simplified, but it was so meaningful to me, the buyer.
Of like, do I have space? Here's the list of what's gonna be, but volume wise, really it's three or four or five, you know, whatever it was in that, however much I was buying. But it was really clear and it was like, oh, that's cool. Right? Right. And I, you know, I can plan for it and yeah, I've got my list and here's what it is.
And again, there's no guesswork. And it's just all right in front of them. It makes a huge difference for that purchase decision. Okay, so I know you do such a good job marketing your chicken subscriptions 'cause you kind of open up a window and close a window, for people to sign up and make sure that they get to have your subscriptions and then you essentially sell out, which is just awesome.
How do you do it with pork? Do [00:22:00] you do it the same with pork or do you do it differently? How does that work? How do you think about marketing pork?
Erica Benoit: So before, like when we first got started and we had very little to sell, I would let them know when the email was gonna go out, like a couple weeks in advance, Hey, this day at this time, expect your email.
And people would start ordering, like there was one time in 2020 that I sold 35 hogs in three hours. Just by doing that.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome.
Erica Benoit: There was a lot of factors and so that doesn't really happen anymore. But a lot of people know that, you know, it's gonna sell out. And I keep a tally on Facebook.
I have like a pinned to post that says there's half hog left, there's two hogs left or something. And that kind of creates some fomo where they see that number going down and so they're gonna order a lot faster. Since we're faring so many at a time, that there's, sometimes I have 50 hogs and the locker will only take up to 12 hogs at a time.
So, I have several different butcher dates. At one time I [00:23:00] had them all listed, like, I'm gonna do this huge sales launch. I'm gonna sell 50 hogs all at once. And I was, I was really gung ho about it. That did not happen. So, I learned from that to sell one butcher date at a time. So, I will sell in these two lockers.
And so, I'll kind of like every other one will be from one locker or another locker. So, I've learned to just focus on one locker date at a time. And when those sell out, then I'm working to the next one. And that has really helped get each of those filled up at a time. And that was a lot easier to market too.
Janelle Maiocco: And how often do you do that because you're like, you build it up for a few weeks ahead of time for the one date and like, and you lead up and then it's sold out. So, you can't do that too soon again right after that. Right? It's a couple weeks or months later. Like what is the cadence?
Erica Benoit: So, I mean, it just depends on the butcher dates and when piglets were born.
Yeah, so sometimes, like this last time I probably sold, sold about 30 at a time, like within like a month or two, there was probably 30 of 'em that went to the [00:24:00] locker. So, that was pretty, pretty close together. And then towards the end of that I would be like, this is the last butcher date.
So I kind of, it seems silly, like the marketing, you gotta really like fine tune the marketing. So, if it was like the end of the year, I would be like, these are the last hogs going this year, even though I had more going in January.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that because you have to create the fomo. You have to create literally the fear of missing out.
Love that December, January. That's a great catch from a marketing perspective. Well, and frankly, even if it's like, if it's even two months in between as a consumer, I'd be like, oh, I wanna make sure to get this time, 'cause what if I missed the newsletter announcements the next time and then I have to wait a whole nother few months.
Right? So, I think there is some sort of consumer anxiety you can plug into there, to make sure that they are getting, you know, the pastured pork from your farm and not missing out on that quality.
Erica Benoit: Right, yeah. Yeah. Just like create, find something. Like if it's close to Memorial Day, [00:25:00] oh, this is the last chance you'll be able to pick it up right before your barbecue weekend.
Find something that's gonna catch somebody's eye and really focus on that. Tax refund time, try to get 'em to, you know, you got money, Hey, let's invest this into food for your freezer and just grab something and just really go with it.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that, it sounds to me like you, you're almost telling people like, look at the calendar.
Erica Benoit: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Because you're trying to create FOMO according to like days and times and weeks and months and season and holiday and whatever it is. Find something, whether it's taxes, holiday, end of year, beginning of year, you know, resolutions, right? You know, get it before Easter, get it before the fourth, those sorts of things.
Anything that you can leverage. That's awesome. I love that advice.
Erica Benoit: Even like the end of the school year, I'm like, everybody's kids are gonna be starving. Make sure your freezer is packed. Make sure you have your bacon and your sausage. 'cause those kids are gonna wake up hungry. And you know, they're gonna, as soon as [00:26:00] kids get outta school, they eat so much during the summer.
So really focus on that and also like, listen to other moms, like how they talk, just kind of like their struggles like, kids are hungry in the summertime.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Erica Benoit: Oh, that's gonna resonate with moms who are, women are gonna be the most likely to buy a lot of foods anyways. So, really kind of pick up on those little key words that you hear 'em talking about.
Or even like when school starts, Hey, let's get your kids a good breakfast to get 'em started, the day right. Just kind of, I don't know, little things. I try to just grab any little thing I can find just talking to people.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. And you know, the other one is how many mouths you're gonna be feeding.
'Cause I think about, like, you're talking about school aged kids, but I also think about if, if anybody, any mom or dad out there has had a college student come home for a summer, you like, you start buying like four times as much food, it's so much food. So, it is definitely like if you have more mouths to feed, you will need to double down on what's in your fridge and freezer.
That is for sure.
Erica Benoit: Yeah. And [00:27:00] also like, I could grab onto that and be like, make sure your freezer's full. Your kids are gonna come visit you if, you know, give 'em a little bit whenever they come and kind of use that as an enticer to get your grown kids to come home and visit. And.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes, I'm all about food as the food, as the lure, right?
Absolutely. Yes. It's brilliant. I'd love it. You mentioned, so I know you do some fomo, I think you do email newsletters and social. Maybe talk a little more about social. 'cause you mentioned a countdown, which I thought was brilliant.
Erica Benoit: Oh, yes. Yeah.
So, whenever we start selling a new butcher date, I will have like my main post. So it'll be like hogs going to center locker July 10th, like all the information is right there.
I also try to make sure that I put all my prices up front. I feel like a lot of farmers kind of like are shy behind their prices. Like they don't really tell people how much they're going to charge for something. And as a consumer, I wanna know [00:28:00] exactly right up front whether or not I can afford this or, you know, they don't wanna click a bunch of buttons just to figure out your prices.
So, I make sure prices are all upfront. Everything they need to know to buy is gonna be on that one main post. So, at the very top, after we start selling them at the very top of that, I will just keep editing it. I'll make sure that post is pinned to the top of my page, and then I'll just edit it and I'll just do like the asterisk stars, like a couple of those.
Two hogs left, like asterisk stars, and then I'll just keep updating that so when somebody buys one, I edit that and get it changed. And then, so that's just constantly pinned to the top of my page for that.
Janelle Maiocco: Ah, got it. That makes a ton of sense. Lovely. So social, you leverage emails, you're sending those out pretty frequently if I recall.
Erica Benoit: Mhm. And I'll do that for my emails too. I will add like the button on top. I think the way my emails set up, there's like my logo on top, and then directly after that I will do a button and that button will say, only two hogs left [00:29:00] going to Central Locker, July 10th.
Janelle Maiocco: Lovely.
Erica Benoit: And then they click that button and it goes directly to that link.
Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: It's the most important thing. Put it at the top. In the middle with the button.
Erica Benoit: Yep.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I love that.
Erica Benoit: Yes. Nobody scrolls to the bottom. Nobody clicks any buttons that are at the bottom of the email.
Janelle Maiocco: I love it so much. So much golden advice. How do you track inventory? I guess I'm partly asking because I, I know we built, at Barn2Door, we had worked for a few years on what we affectionately call combined inventory, helping people really track whole animal sales, which is sort of separate from subscriptions. I think you might leverage that if I'm not incorrect.
Erica Benoit: Oh, I love the combined inventory.
Janelle Maiocco: So, you do love inventory. See?
Erica Benoit: I love your inventory. I hate my freezer inventory. That is way too hard to keep track of. Don't like it. But your inventory is amazing. It has helped me out so much when it comes to like whole and half hogs. Used to, I had to have two [00:30:00] separate links, now everything is all on one, so I don't have to worry about whenever I go to advertise for my pork that there's a link for whole hogs and a link for half hogs. Like now everything is just all on one, and then they can click back and forth on there between like a whole and half hog and then it, it tells them the cost, it tells them how much meat they're getting. Everything is all in one spot for 'em and easy to compare back and forth. So, that is my favorite. We started selling bulk beef this year and that has been amazing to keep all that straight. Yeah, I talked to other farmers where they don't have Barn2Door and I'm like, you need Barn2Door so bad, 'cause it's gonna help you so much with the bulk inventory, 'cause it can be hard and it can be, it can be really confusing.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, it's a lot.
I don't envy you managing a freezer, but at least I think part of what we're talking about is the ability to track what's sold or not accurately, right?
Including with a butcher date in mind. Which I think can be incredibly helpful. I can't help [00:31:00] you with your own freezer though, back there when you're grabbing for your own family.
Erica Benoit: Oh, but yeah, used to, I feel like I still have like PTSD from.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes.
Erica Benoit: From selling whole and half hogs like the old fashioned way.
Like now, even when I go to write down the names, I'm counting up, like making sure that I did sell as many as I thought I sold and I didn't oversell, and it's always perfect. So, I really appreciate that and that that helps me out so much.
Janelle Maiocco: I love it. No, that's good. Happy, anytime we can take away PTSD, although that takes a while to come off of, doesn't it?
Erica Benoit: It does. Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: I actually, I cracked up, I think I saw a newsletter from you that said like, we have, what was it? It was either cows or pigs. It was like, we have 17.5 something left. And I was like, yes. Because, when you use the inventory, for folks listening, Erica's referring to inventory management on the backend when you're selling.
So if people on the, if people are shopping and they're clicking between, let's do a cow quarter, half, whole, they can choose one. And on the backend, you're actually adding up, oh, I've now sold 1.75 cows and I've [00:32:00] now sold, you know, 43.5 cows and I have 0.5 cows left. And the cool part is even in that case, if you like almost sell out and you're down to, let's say you, you have less than a cow left, you literally have three quarters or a half and a quarter.
The way that Barn2Door, the inventory works for the store on the front and back end is, as soon as you go, less than one cow, it will only show your customers the option of quarters or halves. And if somebody buys half. The only thing it will show the quarter, but if somebody buys two quarters it will only show a quarter.
So, it literally is sort of smart in so much as it won't oversell, but it will also provide the buyer every option as long as there's inventory to cover that option currently. Right? So, it's just, it's a neat way for farms especially like yourself, Erica, who have to line up to specific butcher dates and just know like, okay, I've got 17 cows going in, or I have, you know, 35 hogs, or 35.5, [00:33:00] and we'll just keep the other half for ourselves.
That's good.
Erica Benoit: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. You need your own separate freezer. I'm sure you've done that already and maybe at this point that's a good idea.
Do you have any recommendations for folks? Questions that I haven't asked around pork sales? I guess we talked a lot about bulk. We didn't talk too much about subscriptions. Maybe we can take just a couple minutes here before we wrap up to make sure that if you have tips, recommendations, best practices around selling pork subscriptions, that if you were a farmer listening and curious about that, you would wanna know.
Erica Benoit: Yeah. So I, I called somebody else that uses Barn2Door and they did pork subscriptions. You guys recommended her to me and she was super sweet and like, talked me through how she did hers. And so, I was able to have like a background of how she planned hers, but I was able to plan mine a little bit differently.
Janelle Maiocco: Mm-hmm.
Erica Benoit: Whereas she had like one haul going to the locker each month specifically for subscriptions.
And so, each of her orders were different. Where I [00:34:00] decided to take, so instead of one every month, I would do like five that would last five months. And so I was able to have a lot more cuts.
I was able to use the cuts from, you know, if there's like tenderloins, well there's only so many tenderloins in a pork, but I was able to pull from other pork to fill that order and I had a lot more options, a lot more meat to work with than just one at a time. So, that worked a lot better for us.
I started writing it down. I did work with our butcher shop and I planned out an entire year's worth of what was going to go into each month for the pork. That was a lot of work, but I just kind of lined it all up so I was able to make sure that, you know, like every three months, a certain cut, leg, jowls that you don't get a lot of, but I was able to collect it from several hogs and then like every third month, that's what they get.
Or, you know, however that lined up where they weren't getting the same thing over and over again. I do have it set up too, where there's six pounds of the exact same thing every single month. So, they get a pound of bacon, two [00:35:00] pounds of sausage, two pounds of ground pork, and a ham steak.
Janelle Maiocco: Yep.
Erica Benoit: And that's like just the basics. And then everything else, the other four pounds gets switched out. And just kind of seasonally, like in the summertime we'll do more pork steaks or brats, the wintertime we'll have some roast just kind of switch it up and focus too on the seasons and what somebody's gonna be cooking around that time.
Janelle Maiocco: That makes sense. Yeah, that, that's really interesting. So, a bunch of hogs at once that you're then leveraging to put into boxes. How many subscriptions do you sell at a time and how does that math work for you in terms of how many you're butchering?
Erica Benoit: So I stopped, I only advertised it for probably a year.
And knowing we were gonna build the butcher shop, I tried to condense things down as much as possible. So, I'm only doing eight a month right now, and I just plan on one hog worth and then whatever's left over from that, you know, the subscriptions get filled first, and then everything else just goes as cuts into, you [00:36:00] know, where people can buy one package at a time or however they buy it.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Erica Benoit: When I planned it all out, I tried to make sure that we were using as much as possible from the hog, so that.
Janelle Maiocco: Lovely.
Erica Benoit: I didn't wanna have a bunch of random something that, you know, it doesn't get ate at all.
Like if I have 30 roasts, like nobody's gonna eat those. I need to keep everything more at a manageable level that is either gonna get sold or we would eat, or that's gonna go into the subscriptions. I have it on a blog post too. All of my monthly subscriptions, everything they're gonna get that month.
I just have that on the blog post.
Janelle Maiocco: Because you planned a whole year. You planned a whole year, right?
Erica Benoit: And that was really helpful because I always lose my paper that has all the, everything written down. So, when I fill orders I just go on my own blog post and that's what I tell the butchers from. Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: That's really funny.
I did a stint of food blogging years and years and years ago and I still go back and look at recipes that I don't know where else, [00:37:00] you know, like that's just what you use, 'cause you wrote it for yourself too, apparently. Yeah. I appreciate that.
Erica Benoit: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: It's kind of neat to do quote unquote, a small, I know you condensed things down, but for people just starting, I would think doing kind of a small run, right?
Like a smaller amount of subscriptions. I think that's how you started your chickens. Before it sort of blew up, which is like, start small so you can get the hang of it and learn all the hard stuff with a smaller amount. This was your wisdom from another podcast. I remember this, where it's like, learn on a smaller project because there might be ramifications.
But then, when you expand and scale and grow, you have learned those hard lessons. So you don't make as many mistakes with larger quantities essentially.
Erica Benoit: Yeah, that's how I got started with the pork subscriptions is I only took on probably five people. They knew that when you sign up, like this is a trial period for me, I'm learning.
I need your feedback from it. This is probably the cheapest that this will ever be, and, well, were learning with me and gave feedback and it [00:38:00] was just one year's worth. And I learned a lot from that. And that's when I learned that I have to plan this out a year in advance.
I need to be way more organized with it. Yeah. So that's, that was my learning period. I mean, you can even do that for five months or six months or something.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Erica Benoit: Like somebody could really condense it down. Yeah. And so the next year I upped my price $15 more. I think all but one person signed back up.
Janelle Maiocco: Amazing. I love two pieces of advice that you just said. One of which is, hey, you can do a shorter seasonal subscription to learn a little faster. You're still gonna learn a lot of lessons. We have farms that actually do month, three months, six months subscriptions. It is not uncommon.
You do that actually with your tickets, but like, it's a neat option or opportunity to be able to offer to customers, but also to learn quickly yourself. And I also love that you included, like you set expectations with your customers when you were learning. Like we're learning, we want your feedback.
You set expectations on prices before you even like got into it. So they wouldn't be disappointed later. They knew it ahead of time, [00:39:00] instead they were like, yeah, we knew we were getting a great deal. Versus, oh no, you're raising prices, which is just awesome marketing. So, lots of good advice and just to say, Hey, we're learning.
We wanna expand this program, we want your feedback. That's just rich advice. So hope I'm repeating it multiple times so that everybody really hears it. Listen, listen. All these good ideas. Okay. I'm about to sign off. Is there anything else that we didn't cover that's top of mind, I know we've already covered so, so much on pork sales.
Anything you wish you would've known?
Erica Benoit: Yeah. Oh geez.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh geez.
Erica Benoit: I wish I would've known Barn2Door a lot sooner.
Janelle Maiocco: I did not pay her to say that. If anybody's listening.
Erica Benoit: No.
Janelle Maiocco: Hey, it's good to be organized.
Erica Benoit: I still remember being, yeah, I was at a mom's group and we had like just started selling whole and halves and you guys called me and I'm like, yeah, I'm not big enough for that.
But, I think we would've grown a lot faster. I probably would've had a lot less stress on me if I would've just signed up a lot sooner. Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: I appreciate that. [00:40:00] I don't know, it's funny 'cause people like. What do you do? It's like, well, in some ways we just help people stay organized and save a lot of time.
Right? You're running a business. You're in charge of every single operation, like from sales and marketing to inventory and actually farming and you know, veterinarian on the side too. We don't help with that. But, you know, like to help you have your business dashboard to make hopefully everything organized easier, you know, finances, under control, sales, customers, marketing, and it just ideally keeps things organized so that you have brain space, right, and brain space and some time. Yeah.
Erica Benoit: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: I appreciate that.
Erica Benoit: I like how you guys call yourselves a tool, ' cause I feel like that really resonates with me.
That you guys are, you know, I'm the one running the tool. I'm still in charge of my business. I'm just using you like you're the shovel that I'm putting to work.
Janelle Maiocco: Yep.
Erica Benoit: And you just make it a lot easier. Maybe you're like a tractor because you're way easier than a shovel.
Janelle Maiocco: A shovel you have to put some umph.
Erica Benoit: Like a really nice tractor!
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, that's awesome. I [00:41:00] love it. Well, and I think it's important to note, you know, the important thing is it's all your brand. We always say to people like, we're under the hood. When you say, I'm putting things on Barn2Door, what you really mean is you're using our software to put it on your online store.
Right? It's all about your farm, your logo, your connection with your customers, and we just build underneath to make it all go smoothly for you, hopefully. So, we are so fortunate to work with you. I wanna extend my thanks to Erica for joining us on this week's podcast episode.
You can check out more from Erica by listening to all the former podcasts, which we hinted at. If you wanna find them on Instagram, it's @BenoitFamilyFarmstead. Benoit is B-E-N-O-I-T, @BenoitFamilyFarmstead. Here at Barn2Door, we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country.
We're delighted to offer services and tools, ha ha, shovels, tractors, all of the above, right? To help farmers access more customers, increase sales and save a ton of time for their business. Hopefully, just empowering farms to have all the controls to just run it well and, and scale and grow if they want.
If you're an [00:42:00] 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 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 backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next [00:43:00] time.