Farmer Spotlight: Hayton Farms Berries

Angelica Hayton is the 5th generation on Hayton Farms and owner of Hayton Farms Berries, a well-known presence in and around Seattle farmers markets. When covid disrupted sales and re-wrote market expectations for managers and customers alike, Angelica jumped online. Here’s how she successfully transitioned to pre-purchasing, direct home delivery and online brand efforts in a summer. 

“I'm the fifth generation to farm in our family, so I grew up on the same farm where I'm working now. When I was a kid, my dad grew strawberries for processing and my sisters and I started selling at a roadside stand at the end of our driveway. When I was in high school, one of our neighbors said, “Hey, you guys should try out Pike Place, Market on the weekend.” We started going down there, and the year after that the same neighbor suggested University District Market, where we got our start. We realized the markets were really good business—we made more going direct-to-retail than wholesale.

After college I knew that farming is what I wanted to do. I took over the berries and markets side, and began transitioning us to Certified Organic. That’s what I wanted, but also what everyone in Seattle at the farmers markets was asking for organic products too. I was always looking for new varieties, and we’re working to extend our season now—we go from mid-May to the end of October with fresh fruit. While we used to do one type of raspberry, now we have 6 varieties to fill the gaps. 

We added more specialty items, as well. I’m really excited about these pink lemonade blueberries. I planted them in 2016 but had to strip off the blooms the last few years—they’re pretty sensitive. There was a small crop this year and I finally got to try them. They’re really sweet and a little less acidic—just different. I posted on Instagram and Facebook about it but we hardly had any, so it was a little tease for people.” 

Before covid hit most of my sales were based at the farmers markets. People would always call and ask, ‘You’re always out of strawberries. Can I pre-order and pre-pay?’ and I’d have to tell them no. There was no way for me to keep pre-orders organized going to 60 markets a week. Then, when covid hit and the markets shut down, farmers at the markets needed a way to pre-purchase and pre-pay online.

I remember telling my dad and partner, “I feel like we need to do something or we’re going to fall behind. Some people are going to adapt to this and some people aren’t.”

Barn2Door was the perfect fit—it was the whole package deal. I was able to have things organized for markets, take payment and figure out delivery. You took care of everything. 

Once you’re set up online with the store and Barn2Door it’s a good opportunity to try new things. It felt important to post more this year, but in general people are on social media so much that it’s a great way to share more about the Farm and tell them what’s happening behind the scenes. People feel good knowing where their food is coming from, so whether customers were coming to the Farm stand or markets they could still see and connect with the Farm. 

There were some people who still didn’t want to leave their home, and that’s where home delivery came in and it was awesome. My Barn2Door Onboarding Manager showed me some routing apps right on the phone. We started deliveries with North Seattle one day a week, and then expanded to the east side with Bellevue and Kirkland. 

The people that wanted those home deliveries, had I not offered it, were not going to buy from us. They weren’t going to come out to a farmers market and buy our half flat. They would've just not bought from us. Like I said, we had a handful of really good markets that never even opened for us this year. So, not only was delivery another outlet twice a week for us to move fruit, it filled in sales that we’d normally have counted on and lost. 

We also offered these mixed pack subscriptions that people could pay for five weeks and receive a flat every week. We started it late in the season and I think for next year after seeing how well it worked I want to add on maybe two more days of deliveries in some other zip codes and promote subscriptions earlier. 

It’s funny, these things that I didn’t immediately want to do ended bringing in a lot of business that we just wouldn't have had. It seemed at first like pre-purchasing, deliveries, subscriptions would be really hard, but that’s why I would recommend people to Barn2Door. I didn’t have to figure it out on my own. There were weekly video meetings and the Barn2Door team helped me get comfortable with the progression at my own pace. I would recommend people not wait until they need it in the busy season. A slow season, maybe fall or winter is a good time for Farms to get started so they have time to learn the nuances before they get busy. Then their store will be ready to go when their busy season starts!” 

Barn2Door is thrilled to support Angelica and Hayton Farms Berries.

If you’d like to hear more from Angelica, you can watch her DIRECT Farm Series: Brand session, and listen to her DIRECT Farm Podcast episode. If you’re curious how Barn2Door could support your Farm, you can watch how it works in 5 min.