Farmer Spotlight: Evans Family Farm
More with Evans Family Farm:
THE FARMER
Evans Family Farm began in southern California, with a garden and some chickens. Now, the North Carolina-based family Farm is experimenting with direct home delivery for their pasture-raised poultry, pork, grassfed beef and lamb. Jessica Evans recollected their cross-country move and farming journey.
Jessica and Matt Evans lived with their two children in southern California. A family garden soon expanded to include chickens, and then dairy goats. Finally, the Evans decided to start a Farm “for real”, moving the family (sans chickens) to North Carolina. Matt’s parents joined the migration, and they started Evans Family Farm in 2016 on 10 acres in Mount Ulla, NC, with 30 laying hens, broiler chickens, and a few lambs and pigs.
“I think farming as a start-up enterprise has the biggest learning curve,” Jessica reflected. The first-generation Farmer worked as an educator, teaching high school spanish in California, before the move. Jessica reflected how her teaching career readily folds into her farming career: “...I’m always learning new things and enjoy teaching others in farm tours and workshops. That, and to be successful you need to do marketing, including educating your customers to answer the question, ‘why are eggs $5 a dozen?’”
The Farm is certainly a family enterprise. Matt’s parents live on the property; his father helps daily with the animals. Matt’s mother has “made it clear she’s not a Farmer,” but spends plenty of time with her grandchildren (ages 7 and 9) on the Farm. The eldest Evans daughter recently took out a micro-loan from her parents to raise and sell meat rabbits, adding another high-quality product to their offerings.
“Our customer base is probably the mid-30’s to mid-60’s, with moderate income who value local food and are willing to invest in it.” The Evans sell at farmers markets seasonally, and continue to test new markets. “It was always our vision to sell direct,” Jessica said, “When you’re going to be a direct-market Farm, you have to enjoy marketing.”
Luckily, Jessica does enjoy marketing, among her many other duties as Farmer and mother. “I enjoy it all. I like growing and planting, being hands-on in the operation— I’ve fallen into the role of Farm manager, overseeing the vision, all the marketing, timing and storage. And at the end of the day I am still a mom— I still have to do laundry. Not coming from a farming background, you have to learn how all-encompassing it is. It dictates a lot of your life.”
HOW BARN2DOOR HELPED
“We’d gotten to a point with our growth, that I had no spare time. I can only do so much—there’s only so many hours in the day! We know that people are shopping online everyday, and the idea of convenience is changing. It used to be convenient to have a farmers market. Now, we live in an Amazon Prime culture. Convenience means opening your door to food on your doorstep.”
Evans Family Farm has been a Barn2Door customer since March 2019. “We liked what Barn2Door had to offer. We were selling retail and a bit wholesale, and knew it was something we needed to roll out. Our customers like the platform, they like the convenience. We played with selling flat rate instead of taking deposits and selling by final weight, but there’s been no push back on it whatsoever. I like that the software’s really intuitive and flexible. As new features roll out, it’s easy to play around.”
DIRECT DELIVERY
The Farm briefly offered shipping this past year, but found “it was just not economical right now. The customers that did order for shipping were within a drivable radius, so we thought ‘Maybe home delivery is our best bet.’” Earlier this month, Evans Family Farm debuted door-to-door-delivery to local customers within a comfortable driving distance. Jessica planned her retail delivery routes to mirror their wholesale delivery loop. “We started advertising it at the beginning of January 2020-- we needed to chew on the logistics, and wanted to be consistent from the start.”
We spoke to Jessica after her first delivery day; Jessica reported that it went well. “I had a binder with orders and customer information. I used the [Barn2Door] Pick List to pull everything from storage, and packed the cooler in reverse delivery order. I asked my customers to leave a cooler outside if they wouldn’t be home, and they all did.” The deliveries only added an hour and a half to Jessica’s usual wholesale route. “We charge $9 per delivery, enough to cover gas and time and wear and tear. We still made $20 an hour driving.”
Jessica is eager to see where direct delivery takes the Farm in 2020. “We’re offering delivery weekly. I send out automated order reminders [a Barn2Door feature], and just pushed out an email about our Superbowl Bundles. There’s good potential for growth. Sometimes we offer add-on products from other Farms— more bang for the customer’s buck. For example, we have honey add-ons, and we’ll have produce boxes in spring.”
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Check out Evan’s Family Farm here, to learn more about the products and practices, and shop their delicious proteins! If you’re interested in Barn2Door for your own Farm, you can schedule a conversation with us here.