Veteran’s Liberty Ranch Hits 6 Figures in 1 Year with POS
In this week’s episode, Janelle speaks with Veteran’s Liberty Ranch (TX) to discuss their success using Barn2Door’s POS for in-person sales. Farmers Markets help Farmers build meaningful relationships with Buyers, while securing purchases. It is crucial to have a device that allows for all customers to buy your products. Selling, tipping, reserving and syncing your inventory is made easy with Barn2Door’s POS.
Learn more about Barn2Door's POS: https://www.barn2door.com/point-of-sale
Find more tips and tactics from Farmers across the country: https://www.barn2door.com/resources
Check out the new blog:
-
[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, the CEO of Barn2Door and your host for today's episode. At Barn2Door, we provide software for independent farmers to create and promote their brand, sell online and in person, and save time managing their business.
Many [00:01:00] listeners may recall that after years of product research and development, Barn2Door debuted a point of sale last year, almost exactly a year ago, today. Since its inaugural debut, we've been fortunate to see thousands of POS devices purchased and used, put to great use by farmers across the country, to fuel millions of dollars in in person sales.
We're over the moon. And we get to dive in on the Built for Farmers part of it today, which I'm really excited about. This brings me to today's conversation, a conversation with Michelle and Julie from Veteran's Liberty Ranch in Texas. Veteran's Liberty Ranch has been a customer of Barn2Door for almost two years now.
They have utilized a POS to gain over six figures in sales in this last year alone. And today I'm excited to talk with Michelle and Julie about Veteran's Liberty Ranch's use of Barn2Door, including the launch of POS to help support their in-person sales. Welcome Michelle and Julie.
Michelle Smith: Hi.
Julie Green: Hello.
Janelle Maiocco: I'm kind of extra excited because, I don't know if you know this, but we [00:02:00] just rebranded our podcast to the Independent Farmer Podcast, and I kind of think your farm name literally is probably one of the best names for the new brand of our podcast.
Julie Green: Oh, that's so cool. I love that. I'll let Michelle talk about her husband, but he's military. Both of our dads are veterans, so that's where the veterans come from.
And then Liberty, I'm located in Liberty Hill, Texas.
Janelle Maiocco: Fabulous.
Julie Green: So we kind of threw that into the mix.
Janelle Maiocco: So both of your fathers were in military.
Julie Green: Yes. Yes.
Michelle Smith: That is correct. We both come from military families, and my husband just retired about a year ago, after doing 36 years with military.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Michelle Smith: So, we definitely wanted to incorporate that into the name.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome.
Michelle Smith: And the napkin just provided enough space and we thought, how do we incorporate, both North Texas and Central Texas? So, we threw the veterans in there, Liberty. We love what Liberty stands for.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Michelle Smith: And [00:03:00] yes, it's play on words because she is located in Liberty Hill.
Janelle Maiocco: Now, the farm is located there too?
Michelle Smith: So our farm is actually, we have two locations.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Michelle Smith: So, me, Michelle, I am up in Decatur, Texas, which is kind of north. Julie is about three hours southwest of me in Liberty Hill. As far as grazing land...
Janelle Maiocco: Did you just say three hours?
Michelle Smith: It is, it's three hours.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Michelle Smith: Texas is big. We measure by hours, not miles. So, it actually just feels like just driving down the road to see her all the time.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing.
Michelle Smith: We've actually secured grazing properties all over Texas and even actually up into Oklahoma, because we do grass fed, we have to utilize a lot of pastures for rotation, so.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes.
Julie Green: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Very cool. We'll have to dive into that another time. It's really fun to get into rotational grazing, but I'm very excited to hear that's what you're doing. How many head of cattle are we talking?
Julie Green: We [00:04:00] don't tell our husbands, so...
Janelle Maiocco: You can't keep track?
Michelle Smith: We process about, well, for 2024, our projected process is 240 head for the year.
So, we do bring in other herds and whatnot. On the side, we also show cattle. So, at any one time, we probably have 60 to a hundred head, floating between the two of us.
Janelle Maiocco: Incredible. That's wonderful. Now, for all the listeners out there, is there anything else that you think they would care to know about your farm and your operations just so they know how they're able to relate to you?
Obviously, 240 head is a great place to start. And, you know, it's amazing to me because there are quite a few farms actually that have land within driving distance, if you will. That's not uncommon.
Michelle Smith: Right. I think something to be aware of, a dynamic that probably happens with a lot of farms, but I feel like [00:05:00] it's a little bit special with us, is we've got two working locations.
We actually just added a third female farmer into the mix. And so, we now have a third location. So, we have fluctuating inventory at each location and customers that are literally three to six hours away. So, finding a system that can handle the inventory, and purchasing of those products at each location was it a challenge at first.
Janelle Maiocco: I was going to say that. Yes.
Michelle Smith: But with Barn2Door, we've been able to make all that work, and be seamless to the customers. It's a little frantic on the back end sometimes, but as far as the customers see, it's seamless. It's one store.
Janelle Maiocco: That's wonderful. Well, that makes me happy.
Julie Green: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Good. Oh, and by the way, we have in common, my father was in the military as well.
I didn't move around. He was in the Navy, right? So, it was sort of before I knew any different, but he was in the Navy, so years and [00:06:00] years and years ago. So thanks to all of our dads for their service.
Julie Green: Yes, for sure.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, that's incredible. Wonderful. Okay. So, as you grew your ranching business or sort of started it, I should say, how were you initially selling products?
Julie Green: Well, we were all over the place. We literally used a piece of notebook paper and wrote orders down. We would write down the location... We lived off of our Spiral Notebook. It's kind of a joke. Like, we still write orders down, we're just one of those write people, but now that we have Barn2Door, I think I'm probably on there 25 times a day.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Julie Green: Just looking and updating and making sure that inventory is following correctly because between three locations, you know, it's a little hairy sometimes, but doing that and then actually, you know, kind of bracketing the orders in their area. But, Barn2Door makes [00:07:00] it amazing because we can go into the pack list for the end of each day and put the location and there's all our orders. It's come a long way from a spiral notebook, now we can print out the actual people, it has their phone number in case we have an issue or they forgot to come pick up, or you know something easy like that.
It's just like Michelle said, it makes it seamless.
Janelle Maiocco: Thank you. I appreciate that. That's a pretty common story, actually, right?
Julie Green: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: The tricky part with taking orders, because they come in from everywhere, whether it's phone or email or Facebook message, and this is a pretty common story before Barn2Door, it's like, then you're writing it down, but the bigger you get, the scarier it gets that you're missing orders, and things are falling through the cracks.
I had a great podcast recently with Alex of Chucktown Acres and one year he oversold turkeys and even his family didn't get one because he had promised somebody a turkey. I mean, it is, it just is what it is. But on the other hand, like, great, if you're farming, at least at Barn2Door, we'd rather you spend time on more important things than trying to remember where the orders are.
So that's where we get a lot of [00:08:00] joy, which is if people are ordering, they can just go online, order from you anytime, and like you said, you can just click a button and print it all out at once and you know you're not missing any, which is hopefully headache resolved, but also, ideally, hours of time saved.
Julie Green: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: So, what initially attracted you to working with Barn2Door? Was it the time savings or was it something different?
Julie Green: Michelle, I think you were the one that found Barn2Door because of a chicken farmer that you were next to. Wasn't it Sandy? She was utilizing Barn2Door at the time and then Michelle came home and she's like, Julie, you have to hear about Barn2Door, this is going to make our lives so much easier.
So, I think that's what triggered it, if I remember right.
Michelle Smith: I think you're right. I think Windview Chicken Farms, Sandy was already utilizing Barn2Door. And so, we jumped on and looked at it, and I'll be honest, we were still real small at that time, and we thought, wow, is this really worth the investment?
Is our business going to grow? In [00:09:00] hindsight, it's an investment that we couldn't afford not to make, because it literally, it did take us from the spiral notebooks and from the finance side, we were keeping track in an Excel spreadsheet, what our finances were, what our cost was.
But we really didn't have a clue. So again, in hindsight, it was a very small, minor investment, to get to the volume that we have. And at the end of the first year, we sat back and went, wow, did that just happen? Like, wow. And, you know, that's great. I think we can sustain this. We can do this again next year.
So the second year rolled around and our business more than doubled. And that wouldn't be possible without the inventory management, the point of sale, even something as simple as we have been able to expand our product line, because customers can go on our store and see what the product is, see the description, and they understand.
We're not having to answer [00:10:00] 50 times, this is what's the ingredients for marinated stir fry meat. It's on there. It's on the store. It's how customers are able to get the information. It's what they're used to. So, it has definitely facilitated our growth.
Janelle Maiocco: I appreciate that. Julie, were you going to say something before I jump back in?
Julie Green: I just remember like us actually literally screaming when we got our first order on Barn2Door.
Janelle Maiocco: Aww!
Julie Green: We just felt so professional because it's not only, it's not only the Barn2Door, like the place where you go order, our website is phenomenal. It's gorgeous. And we were just blown away by the design and how easy it was.
That was one thing that really overwhelmed us when we started is, we're not web designers. We know how to load cows and trailers and unpack steaks and we don't know anything about doing web design.
Janelle Maiocco: It's interesting, too, because at the end of the day, you are independent farmers, and that means you are owner operators of a business, right?
And so, while [00:11:00] you might be epic at ranching and organizing that, and to your point, all the steak cuts and loading and unloading, there's a thousand things we could go down that rabbit hole, but literally there's this whole business side that in order for things to work, you kind of have to do marketing, have customers, promote yourself so that you get sales.
Oh, and P. S. You have to have finances. You have to know your inventory, taxes matter. That's where we love to come in. We're like, well, good. Let's try to make that as easy as possible. You should not spend your time explaining to 50 customers each time repeating yourself about stir fry ingredients when they can just go online, read it, click and order.
Right? And at the end of the day, if you're trying to scale and run a business, this is how we look at ours, which is where are we... it's not wasting time, but it's like, where are you not scaling? Well, telling 50 different customers individually each time about stir fry meat, or the cuts of beef or what may be, what's your schedule, where are you going to deliver?
If you have to keep repeating the same thing over and over and [00:12:00] over again per customer, then you start to look at that and be like, how can we make that more efficient?
Julie Green: Yes. Yes. Efficiency is a good word for all of that, for sure.
Janelle Maiocco: That's good. That's exciting. Well, have you grown in the last two years?
I mean, I think you signed up for Barn Door about two years ago.
Julie Green: Oh, yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: And, and it sounds like it's enabled that.
Michelle Smith: 100%.
Julie Green: We would not be able, yes. We would not be able to do it without Barn2Door, and I don't think we would've gotten this big without it.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, I love hearing that.
Julie Green: Yeah.
Michelle Smith: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Go, go team.
Michelle Smith: Absolutely. 100% .
Janelle Maiocco: Go team, do it!
Michelle Smith: Yes. I wanna say the first year we absolutely grew, I mean, the first year, we were tracking and we were so busy just learning the ropes and trying to keep up with inventory. That's what actually became the issue in the first year is we were growing so rapidly.
It was like, well, we got to get more cows. Well, if you need more cows, you need more grass. You've got to get pastures. So, it was an [00:13:00] exciting time because it really allowed us to focus on growth, and physical growth. You know, gaining more pastures, gaining more heads of cattle and whatnot.
Janelle Maiocco: Mm hmm.
Michelle Smith: To the point that we really weren't even paying attention to all the reports and what was happening in Barn2Door.
So, a funny little side note at one point, we were still keeping track in Excel of what our sales were. And, I'm a little bit better at Excel than Julie, but I'll say she's 10 times better at Barn2Door than I am. But, I was keeping track in Excel of our sales, and I wasn't available at the moment.
So, she went to her husband and said, Michelle does this little thing and it tallies up all of our sales, and I want to know what we're at right now. And so her husband's like, Oh, well, you just click this button right here and it auto sums it. And, I got a frantic phone call from her, and she said, Do you know how much our sales are?
We have since learned that Barn2Door tracks all that for us, and we don't [00:14:00] need to do an Excel spreadsheet. But, let's just say our first year growth, we went from, I think, what, about 40, 000 in annual sales to six figures. So, we went from about 40 to 50, 000 up to six figures in our second year.
Julie Green: I think we capped out at like 490, 000 last year.
Michelle Smith: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Incredible. That is where you start adding zeros. Holy smokes, ladies.
Julie Green: Yes.
Michelle Smith: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: That's exciting.
Julie Green: Well, we like to have fun. And I know that we're also doing this podcast too, because of the POS system. And that is one huge thing that helped us grow, because before that, we really couldn't utilize farmers markets like we wanted to, and that is a big marketing thing.
Janelle Maiocco: So, what did you do before handling, did you do...
Julie Green: We hated it.
Janelle Maiocco: Online and in person sales, or what?
Julie Green: We would go to a farmer's market every now and then, and we would have them either pay Venmo or cash or check. At one [00:15:00] point in time we upgraded to something, it's called the Equid. It's like this really basic credit card thing that you can run.
But it just wasn't like, I don't know. It just wasn't working the way we wanted it to. You didn't have the whole app to show a list to look at prices really quick. And, I swear we're on that POS all the time we use it. We're not even in full market season yet. It starts March 2nd, this next weekend.
And from then on, it's like three to four markets a week...
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Julie Green: At the different locations. So it's about to explode again for this time of year, but yeah, it just, it really helped us excel in that. And then, I think it also develops a trust with our customers, because when you go in there professionally and you have a professional device that actually shows things and you're running it through, and we were excited cause we didn't even know, I mean, we've been using it for a long time, that it does Apple pay. We got excited about that [00:16:00] because we feel very like...
Janelle Maiocco: Good.
Julie Green: In today's world where everybody's using that kind of thing.
So, yeah...
Janelle Maiocco: That matters. It does matter because buyers like to buy a certain way and like it or not, we all have our habits of the favorite, do you swipe?
Do they like Apple Pay? I mean, everybody loves credit cards, you know, they all love subscriptions, right? Because that's like set it and forget it and it just keeps coming. So yeah, people are very used to easy digital payments. And I hear you on the professional side, we've heard a lot of farms say that about even just having a professional website and a brand, the buyer trust just goes up and that's a good thing for business.
Julie Green: Yes.
Michelle Smith: It definitely makes you more relevant. And I think the trust is huge. I know when we set up at our main market that it's starting next weekend, we actually have two point of sale systems set up on each end of the table. And we've got people running it. And it's quick, it's efficient, it's professional, and it's a game changer.
Janelle Maiocco: Love [00:17:00] it. I have an extra device or two sitting around here. You need me to send you an extra one?
Michelle Smith: Possibly.
Julie Green: Actually, actually, so we have a pickle that we're about to be in again, and we're going to have to order another device because we have two markets starting and they will both run on Saturdays, and at two different locations. So, we'll be getting another one to add to our little fleet of POS.
Janelle Maiocco: There you go.
Julie Green: Yeah, and it's so cool. Also, the one big deal about it is sometimes we like to go on vacation or leave and we can have other people run the POS system and use an app on their phone.
So, it's very simple. One of the things that I don't think it bothered Michelle at the beginning, but I was scared because I was like, well, if I give somebody my app, like we hadn't done it yet, so we didn't know. I was like, can they go in and see like all of our personal information or checking accounts or things like that?
And it's not, you can [00:18:00] hand it off to anybody to use. Super safe and we like to have competitions because on each POS and each thing, it will give you your sales of the day. And so we literally all send screenshots back and forth to keep the competition going and it, you know, it just, it's fun.
Janelle Maiocco: That is fun. We do competitions too. It's fun, isn't it? Absolutely. We do. Somebody the other day just won. We buy farm food from our farmers and we put them in cute little baskets and then we have competitions and people literally win food from farmers that we work with.
Michelle Smith: I love that.
Janelle Maiocco: It's super fun. Why not, right? Why not do that? Just, you know, every so often, just to have some fun with each other and sort of the work hard, play hard thing, I guess.
Julie Green: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: So, how did you before handle, before you said you were cash, check, Venmo, how would you even handle refunds or track your payments?
Julie Green: Oh, oh.
Michelle Smith: It was a nightmare.
Julie Green: It was a nightmare.
Michelle Smith: A lot of times we would Venmo somebody back. But then you have that question of, well, now there's fees [00:19:00] taken out. So does the customer pay that or do we pay that? Do we just eat it? So yeah, it was a nightmare and tracking did become an issue.
Janelle Maiocco: And probably inventory too.
Michelle Smith: Oh yes.
Julie Green: Oh yeah. Inventory was written on the spreadsheet. And that's another thing too, is we'd have it on the spreadsheet, but we couldn't offer as many items because there's no way we could keep up with it. So, we would have the basic things and cuts and it just, whenever we were able to get Barn2Door, all of that blossomed.
So, now we're able to do groups of things and types of things and, flavors of things and...
Janelle Maiocco: Expand your, expand your offering, which actually is a big deal when you're trying to grow and scale.
Julie Green: Oh yeah.
Because then, you can always take away. So if something's not working, or you just not seeing a whole lot of sales in that and we like to use the tactic of Seasons around here and so, Texas gets warm pretty quick.
It's already gonna be 90 degrees today. So, we're starting to see [00:20:00] that people are once again... so we take away hamburger patties in the winter time.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Julie Green: You can't have hamburger patties. But, we'll boost up our roast and stew meat and stuff like that. Well, now that it's February and it's 90 degrees outside, we're gonna announce, hey, we have hamburger patties back, we have sausage brats back.
So anything that, if it gets too overwhelming, we can always take it away. But yeah, we've noticed when we do take it away, and it comes back at a new thing, then it explodes again because it hasn't been there for a while.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome. Yeah, you have to learn all those sort of marketing tactics, don't you?
Julie Green: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Whatever helps with sales.
Julie Green: Yeah.
Michelle Smith: Right.
Janelle Maiocco: So, did you sell online before? Because what a lot of people might not realize about the POS, and this is one of the things that it took us a little extra long to really develop and work on it, is because we wanted the in person sales or the POS to talk to the online store, right?
Because we needed to sort of marry if somebody buys steak in person, it still subtracts it from [00:21:00] the inventory, or if somebody buys steak online, same thing. So, if somebody buys a steak simultaneously online and in person, two different people, it actually subtracts two. So, have you used that feature or capability to have that be all one merchant account, all one inventory?
Like, are people buying from you in both places?
Julie Green: Yes.
Michelle Smith: Absolutely. People are buying online, they're buying in person, I mean consistently. We get several orders every day, on a Saturday when we've got farmer markets running, we might have, I don't know, 60, 70 transactions between the farmers markets plus the online ordering.
Janelle Maiocco: Got it.
Michelle Smith: And so, that's all happening at once. So, without an online inventory system, it would be beyond a nightmare. It just absolutely would not be possible. There would be, you know, it would equate to bad customer service and not being able to fulfill orders. So yeah, absolutely.
Janelle Maiocco: Nobody wishes that [00:22:00] on anybody, yeah.
Michelle Smith: And so, the other really cool thing that happens is, say we have 20 ribeye steaks in inventory and we're at a farmer's market and we're selling out real quick. Well, that'll switch over to reserve now. So, our customers online can still order it and they can reserve now and we're able to fill that hopefully within the week.
But, we know what we need to fill. We know that when we go to our butcher, and we're taking our inventory out of the butcher's freezer that we go, okay, I've got to pick up all my steaks today because I've got people waiting. Or maybe this week it's ground. I had a huge push on ground, just regular ground beef.
So, okay, I'm going to pick up those boxes of beef right now and leave my steaks at the butcher for another few days. Very helpful.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, that's fun to hear. Good. Hamburger season. I can't believe the grills are all out in Texas. Other parts of the country are like under snow.
Julie Green: I don't think they ever go up.
Michelle Smith: Oh no, it's flip flop season [00:23:00] now.
Janelle Maiocco: That's good. That's good fun. Okay, so here's the other thing. And again, we kind of geek out about that we get to build for farmers. I mean, that's just like the cat's meow. I have applicants coming through all the time at Barn2Door and they're like, what's the best thing about Barn2Door?
I'm like successful farmers, like farmers crushing it. It's what keeps driving us. And so, we got to build POS for farmers, which was really cool because some of the capabilities that we built initially, right. We first built the whole online experience, right? Cause we're like, farmers need to get in front of people.
They need a brand, get them out there. You can still work through the in person stuff, but we'll get to that. Let's get them online first. And so, that's why we just more recently, added on and debuted the POS and that kind of seamless experience. But, we were able then to take things from the online platform experience that we had built for that, with Barn2Door, and pull them through to the POS experience.
And a couple of those things are the ability for you to sell by [00:24:00] weight and still track inventory.
Julie Green: Yes. Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: And I don't know if you guys do this, but another one is the ability to sell wholesale versus retail and flip back and forth. I don't know if you guys use that, but that's...
Julie Green: We have.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay, and those are probably two of the bigger ones, so it's fun to hear that you do use those.
Michelle Smith: Yes.
Julie Green: Yes.
Michelle Smith: There's another feature on the Point of Sale that I really, really like. And this seems like such a small item. And it was not a capability at the very beginning with Barn2Door. Point of sale came out, one of the things that we offer is military discount. We're a military family, and we want to thank all of our veterans. So, one of the things that we asked for is, is there a way to put a discount? Can we just like have a 10 percent discount button on point of sale? That was an ask on our behalf and Barn2Door delivered, quickly. And I am telling you that is huge. It is huge.
When you've got a line at a farmer's market and you're trying to manually calculate 10%, should [00:25:00] be easy, but it's not. We're farmers, we're not mathematicians.
Janelle Maiocco: That's what technology is for.
Michelle Smith: That's right.
Janelle Maiocco: Technology is awesome at doing math. And they don't need napkins. They don't need napkins to do it. Right.
Michelle Smith: That's right. So just, being able to offer that discount and have that quick and easy, efficient, it's professional. And I love being able to offer that to our customers. So, that's on the point of sale side. And then, of course, on the online shopping experience we're able to offer a special code to our veterans, so that every time they shop, they get their 10 percent off.
Again, I just I love that and that was one little thing that we ran into at the beginning of the point of sale experience, and it was resolved so quickly with Barn2Door.
Julie Green: Yeah, it was almost like the next week.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, good. I love that. Doesn't always work out to be the next week.
Julie Green: It was fast.
Janelle Maiocco: I mean, technology is very much like, we're going to get it out the door, in its best initial form possible to do the basics.
And [00:26:00] then, we're going to keep working on it.
Michelle Smith: Right.
Janelle Maiocco: And that's called a roadmap. And I know you know that, but you essentially have a roadmap for different features. And so like with the POS, literally we're like, okay, what's the next thing?
Like, you mentioned Apple Pay. That was another thing that wasn't right away, but we added it in. So we added in, like you said, the discount promo code line, so you could enter in a percent or dollar off. And then, another one we added was wallets. So, the Apple, Google Pay is a big one. And then recently, I don't know if you guys saw, but there's a tip feature, there's a custom tip feature...
Julie Green: Yes!
Janelle Maiocco: And you can change the verbiage, you can say, Hey, you know, covers fees, or you can say tip or donation. You can actually change what it says.
Julie Green: Oh, that's fancy.
Michelle Smith: The wheels are spinning already. That's wonderful.
I love that.
Janelle Maiocco: So, I think you just have to go into the main little dashboard place and you can just change the verbiage that shows up to all your customers.
Maybe you can do a test at your different POS devices. Like, okay, which one do they like the best?
Michelle Smith: Right.
Julie Green: Yes, [00:27:00] yes.
Janelle Maiocco: I'll be very curious. Yeah, so I'm so glad. Yeah, and we still have somebody working on the next thing too, now. Maybe I should tell you what it is.
Julie Green: Yes. I'm excited.
Janelle Maiocco: We're going to, we're not going to stop.
We're going to keep getting better, but soon we're going to have somebody working on email capture at checkout.
Julie Green: Okay.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. So, that's the next thing we're working on. So, keep an eye out for that because obviously we all want you to have lots of emails.
Michelle Smith: Right.
Julie Green: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Tons of emails. The more emails, the better.
Michelle Smith: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: That's good.
Julie Green: That'll be awesome.
Janelle Maiocco: And how has your experience been with the sell by weight, in person? Right? You're saying you're not the calculator, so hopefully the little magic POS device does it for you.
Michelle Smith: It does.
Julie Green: It makes it, it makes it so easy. One thing I come across at the Liberty Hill market is people want to see, it just helps them see the total of the weight and the thing on before they ever check out. So, it's like we still put the meat on the scale. They're [00:28:00] still looking at the scale, but when you put it in the app and you show them. It was 2. 17 pounds. Your ribeye is going to be $45 and they can say, Oh, well maybe I'll take a smaller one.
It helps them think about that sale and feel good, I think about what they're getting when they can actually see it on the thing. So, I love being able to weigh and then they can pick and choose. It's sort of like taking a hands on, like you're in the grocery store shopping for your meat and you can see the weight, but you're doing it from a farmer.
So. Yeah, I like it.
Janelle Maiocco: Probably more trust building. I like that.
Julie Green: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: That's good. So, here's what people probably don't realize because you can, people can buy from you, and you can sell by weight both online and in person. It's a little different, isn't it, in each place, but you're able to do it in both.
Because, I think, isn't it that you're flipping then to when you're in person, it's just like you're calculating on the spot, but online, you can't calculate on the spot. So, it's a little [00:29:00] different, but you're still selling by weight.
Michelle Smith: Correct. Absolutely. So, when they're buying online, they're putting a deposit down on what our average weight is going to be.
But, that's written in the description already. So, they know that this is just a deposit. And then when we pull the order, then we're putting in the final weight.
Janelle Maiocco: You can do some adjustments or whatnot, which is important when you're selling filet.
Michelle Smith: Exactly.
Janelle Maiocco: And Ribeye. You're like, I'll take every ounce.
Julie Green: Yes, and we even try to personalize it even more whenever they go in to place an order and Barn2Door automatically has their name and phone number in there. If something is not within the weight range, like say we guesstimated an average and that steak just came back gigantic. Well, we don't want to automatically go in there and charge this person's card for something they weren't expecting, or it could go the other way.
And maybe they're feeding eight to 10 people, but our cuts came in too small. So, we will actually take their phone [00:30:00] number and we will personally text or email, that's on there, too, each one, if that comes up and say, Hey, this is what it's going to weigh. Would you like more or would you like me to take some out or do you want to change?
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, that's awesome.
Julie Green: Yeah. Michelle and I have made so many friends by texting about meat.
Janelle Maiocco: Talk about customer service.
Julie Green: Yeah, but...
Janelle Maiocco: I love it.
Julie Green: It works.
Janelle Maiocco: There's something beautiful about you're not taking an order, you're just completing an order at that point, right?
Julie Green: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: More of a customer, like that's a good use of your time.
Michelle Smith: Yes, absolutely.
Julie Green: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Right? Yeah. Versus they can self serve or order all day long. And then, that little handholding, it's just like icing on the cake, I guess. There's probably some other really better analogy that includes cows, but yeah, you tell me.
You tell me. I love it. That's good. All right. So what are your goals? What are your plans for 2024?
Michelle Smith: Well, the number one goal for 2024 is we're [00:31:00] adding more markets. We set some goals at the beginning of the year and we've already hit some of them. But, we wanted to update our mobile meat storage.
We do not have a brick and mortar. Last year had two trailers, one of them was quite small and rickety. As of today, we have three very nice cargo trailers that have been transformed with freezers. They have logos on them.
Janelle Maiocco: Nice.
Michelle Smith: One of our goals was to have an actual fleet of mobile meat trailers, so we've done that.
Another goal is...
Janelle Maiocco: Put a QR code.
Michelle Smith: Oh, yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: On the side of your meat trailers.
Julie Green: That's a really good idea.
Janelle Maiocco: I'm not kidding. Give them like three ways, do your phone number or you might probably don't need the phone ringing off, though. Give the QR code, so they get either to your website, or they can be automatically added to your email list.
Like either, or.
Michelle Smith: Oh, yeah. I love that.
Janelle Maiocco: Because then you're just gonna, you're like a walking, it's like a billboard. You're just gaining customers. So, yeah. Yeah. Website, [00:32:00] QR code. Do the thing. Sorry, I got sidetracked. I got so excited.
Michelle Smith: No, no.
Janelle Maiocco: Sharing, sharing best practices here.
Michelle Smith: Always. The ideas are always flowing.
Julie Green: I love that.
Michelle Smith: I love it. The second goal was to process 240 head of cattle for the year. And the third thing is to blow it out of the water. We're going for a million and more in sales.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, yeah.
That's amazing. I love it.
Michelle Smith: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, man, you better tell me what I need to build for you next.
Michelle Smith: That's right. We'll work on our wish list.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, work on your wish list.
Julie Green: We do. We tell Kevin all the time. Kevin is amazing, by the way. Don't lose Kevin. He's awesome.
Janelle Maiocco: He even just got a promotion. We know he's awesome.
Julie Green: That's good! He can't leave us.
Janelle Maiocco: No, no, no, no, no. He's just, you know, overseeing and training more people to make sure they're as awesome as he is.
I mean, that's just what you do.
Julie Green: That's right.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Michelle Smith: Well, one of our big, [00:33:00] our big goals with Barn2Door to work with it is, because we have so many locations, is being able to separate that on inventory. Like somebody could say, I want to bracket it down and I want to shop at the Decatur location, where all those markets pop up.
Janelle Maiocco: Exactly.
Julie Green: You know, that kind of thing. And that would help us with inventory a little bit.
Janelle Maiocco: Do you have, do you pre sell for pickup at markets, online?
Michelle Smith: We do.
Janelle Maiocco: You do the online? Yeah, I was curious. I feel like that's a more common trend than maybe even we had anticipated, which is really fun.
Michelle Smith: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Now, why do you do that and why do you, I assume, like it?
Julie Green: We even do subscriptions picking up at markets, like we give them that opportunity.
Michelle Smith: I think the reason I like it is it's easier to plan what I'm packing. Now, with the addition of the bigger meat trailers, we do take more inventory to the markets with us. But, we have one freezer dedicated just [00:34:00] to these are customer pickups.
So, I already know in my mind, this is sold, this is organized, the name is on it. So, it helps with flow, it helps with customer relationships. Because, chances are good if somebody...
Janelle Maiocco: You're expected to know their name?
Michelle Smith: Yes, you really are. If somebody walks up and they order from me every week or every other week, I go, Hi Lisa!
Well, not only does Lisa appreciate that, but the customers standing in line go, Wow. How did the farmer just walk out with a bag of meat, hand it to her? Lisa walked off, goes to another booth to do her shopping. So, they see that. It's an opportunity for me to then turn around and say, yeah, all you have to do is go on our website, pre order your items, it's paid for. You just pick it up.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing.
Michelle Smith: And so, it builds from there.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing.
Michelle Smith: It goes back to professional, it's relevant and it's how people shop.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing. I don't know what it's like in Texas, but we have some farms that have done a really good job, well, first of all, if it's [00:35:00] rainy or bad weather, you really want to make sure people are showing up at the farmer market and pre sales. Pre sales like literally help with that because they've already bought it. They are showing up, right? So, there's something about guaranteed sales, going into a farmer market that feels good because you don't always know what the market's going to do.
Julie Green: Yeah, that's a very good point. We have a lot of friends that we market with that have their own booths and stuff. And I think that anytime that we advertise, Hey, pre order and pick up here, it's helping the market, in an entirety. And we want the market to keep going. We want the market to be thriving because it helps us.
And so, I think it helps everybody around. And then, also we sell a lot of stuff very quickly. So, it has become a thing that people are like, I better reserve that and pick that up.
Janelle Maiocco: FOMO! We love FOMO! That's great! Good for you. And I hope you're collecting emails with the markets. Please tell me you are.
Michelle Smith: Yes, we are.
Julie Green: We are. Our MailChimp has grown quite a bit.
Janelle Maiocco: [00:36:00] It can make a real difference. We've heard so many good stories of farmers just like emailing weekly, essentially. Most of them have gotten to the point where they just email weekly and it's like automatic sales and people love reminders. It's so interesting.
Julie Green: We were so not on board with MailChimp at first.
Janelle Maiocco: That's pretty normal, trust me. Then they're like, wait a minute.
Julie Green: Yeah, we were like, is this really gonna work? Well, Michelle does it now and I love it when she does it, and we do generate sales. And even if it doesn't click off of MailChimp, like, you know how you can see the sales that come from there.
Even if they don't click off of there, we know where it came from because a lot of times we will put a promo code in there that you can only see off of MailChimp or different things like that. So, it is working for sure. Hang with it.
Janelle Maiocco: You really are divide and conquer. I love it.
Michelle Smith: Yes, we are.
Janelle Maiocco: Got it, dialed in.
Well, that's a great way to grow. I'm telling you. Okay, okay. So, because I know we have to wrap up because I'm getting the eyeballs from other people. [00:37:00] So, for any farmer/ rancher listening, do you have any last words of wisdom on what it takes to build your business and loyal base of customers?
Michelle Smith: Well, I think, you know, it's interesting because Julie and I just talked about this earlier this week.
And Julie, what did you send me? What was that meme that you sent me?
Julie Green: Oh, let me look. Hang on, I'll look it up.
Michelle Smith: Okay. While you're looking that up. So, Julie's going to look up something that she sent me, but I think as far as growing your business, it has to be intentional. It has to be daily.
It's a living, breathing entity. And so, every morning when you wake up as a farmer, you go out and you check on your herd, that's great. The next step is you come back in and you check on your business, and you have to make sure that it's thriving just like your actual herd is. It's got to be intentional daily.
And then, Julie's going to share what...
Julie Green: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: That's powerful, thank you.
Julie Green: The quote that I sent yesterday, and it's funny that that just came up today, but,[00:38:00] is 'working hard for something we don't care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.'
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Julie Green: So, if you have the passion and the drive, and the want to succeed, then you will. I swear, Michelle and I have more fun than we do work. It is hard work. There are bad days and there are days that we lose calves and there are days that we have animals attack. Michelle just lost a turkey the other day and she was...
Janelle Maiocco: I'm sorry.
Julie Green: You know, in tears over that. I think, though, if you push through that, things happen and you will get there.
You just have to hang in and keep on going and build those relationships up, like Michelle said.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, amen. Such great words of wisdom. I love it. I totally get it, actually. I'm super passionate here, but you're dealing with business and humans and lots of everything, right?
But, it's so worth it. It's so worth it. But, that doesn't mean it's going to be [00:39:00] easy.
Julie Green: Right.
Michelle Smith: That's correct.
Janelle Maiocco: I love it. Good. I want to extend my thanks to Michelle and Julie for joining us on this week's episode of the Independent Farmer Podcast.
You can learn more about Veteran's Liberty Ranch at www.VeteransLibertyRanch.Com. Check them out. Also, keep an eye out for their fleet of vans.
Michelle Smith: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: You can also follow them on Instagram at the handle @VeteransLibertyRanch. Please go check them out, because they are exploding and how fun to watch.
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 access more customers, increase their sales, and save time for their business. If you're an independent farmer who's just getting started or transitioning to selling direct, or if you've been with us a while and want to 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.
[00:40:00] 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.
For free farm resources, or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barn2door.com/resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.