Direct Brand Conference Recap
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, you will meet part of the team that helped make the Direct Brand Conference happen. Kyler and Jo recap some of their favorite moments from the Direct Brand Conference, and share the big takeaways for those that might have missed it.
-
Kyler: 0:25
Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast. I'm Kyler.
Jo: 0:28
I'm Jo.
Kyler: 0:29
And we recently wrapped up the Direct Brand Conference. If you're new here to the podcast, the Direct Farm Conference is a quarterly event that Barn2Door hosts for free to help farms better grow and manage their direct farm business. We cover each of the four levers for farm success, Quality, Brand, Price, and Convenience. And this past conference we focused specifically on Brand.
Jo: 0:48
You weren't able to attend, you can watch the sessions at directfarmconference.com. And today we're going to recap a few of our favorite moments for the Brand conference.
Kyler: 0:57
And just to kick things off, we're going to talk a little bit about our keynote speaker Saul Spady. Saul Spady is the third generation of a family owned business here in Seattle. Dick's Drive In. And also the creative director of the marketing agency, creative empowerment. And he helps businesses like Dick's tell their stories.
Jo: 1:17
Yeah. I think one thing that makes Dick's Drive In unique is just their connection to community too. It's not just the fact that their logo is kind of on everything that they have in terms of their restaurant and their offerings and their bags and everything. But everyone knows what Dick's does in the community. And I think that's what really makes people come back to them week after week and month over month.
Kyler: 1:37
We're going to hear a little bit from 5 steps to building an iconic local brand. with Saul Spady.
James, Barn2Door: 1:42
So, what has been the secret for Dick's when it comes to competing in a commodity market to distinguish your brand?
Saul, Dicks Drive-In: 1:50
So it's weird, there's two things. And I would say some of the family would joke, and this was kind of the old school first-generation founder level, is you do the same thing and you never change. Right? We didn't take credit cards until 10 years ago. I would say as the younger side of it, who is really focused on trying to push out there and, and reach new customers, it's about telling your story really well, and being willing to push it out there. And so I would say if you're going to take the magic of Dick's Drive-In's brand, it's two things, it's this operational commitment to our values, and then it's this really creative commitment to tell our stories. And I want to jump to those values because they're, they're my grandfather's values. So it's one, you have to make a profit.
James, Barn2Door: 2:32
Yeah.
Saul, Dicks Drive-In: 2:32
Number two, and my grandfather was really committed to this, he's the first in his family to go to college, he went on the GI Bill, you have to take care of your employees. And I think if you support employees, you support them all the way out the door the door.
James, Barn2Door: 2:44
It's about their career growth and development, not just about a job.
Saul, Dicks Drive-In: 2:47
They're a huge advocate of the brand. As old as your farm is, think about everybody who's worked for your farm and maybe they've gone off to start farms. That's really powerful. Those are stories that are worth telling. If you're a Farmer who's helped other Farmers get started, tell that story, tell the, the coaching tree you have. So it's make a profit, take care of your employees, and the last one is really powerful, it's give back to your community.
James, Barn2Door: 3:08
Yeah.
Saul, Dicks Drive-In: 3:09
And he would always say, if you do all three of those, your business will never die.
Kyler: 3:13
So our next talk was Terra Firma Farm. Jo do you want to give us a little rundown on Terra firma farm?
Jo: 3:20
Absolutely. So Farmer Brie of Terra Firma. I am a little bit of a soft spot for. I might be her biggest fan. When I started with Barn2Door, I was with the design team and I actually had the pleasure of working with Brie and making her website. and our email templates. So I've kind of got to see her grow with the company here for the past year or so and it's been an absolute pleasure so to see her speak at, Direct was just great to really talk about how she's built her brand with Terra Firma Farm Creamery, which is located in Connecticut. And her talk really harps on that fact that not only is your branding your brand, but who you are and what you represent is also who your brand is.
Kyler: 3:55
So we'll let her talk a little bit about that in, Connecting, with community and growing a farm brand.
Brie, Terra Firma Farm Creamery: 3:59
So we went completely online and started our home delivery a little over a year ago now. There was a lot of requests from customers when COVID hit. Can you please deliver? Would you do curbside pickup? And we weren't set up for that in the beginning. So finding a platform that worked was really important. And it was a huge struggle in the beginning. So we started with one day a week, we were going to do home deliveries in one day a week were going to do curbside pickups. We had a horrible platform online. We had to individually go through every order and put it where it was supposed to go. And on, you know, what day it was going to get delivered. And then we would take all of these paper receipts, and then try and make a route for them. And it was a complete disaster. There was orders that were getting missed. And that was not what we wanted the customers to see. So we did some research and we found Barn2Door, and that's when we switched over to using them. So Barn2Door has been probably the best business decision I have made in the last 17 years of my life. Adding in Barn2Door has not only saved me time and saved me money and helped me grow. I think it makes it super easy for our customers to learn about Terra Firma, feel connected to Terra Firma, and then place their order. And so, it's been a great way for us to stay in touch with our customers and to kind of change from being a face-to-face conversation, to being an online presence. And I think that. That's really important because you still want to carry over who you are when you go online. And so Barn2Door's made it easy for us to share the story of Terra Firma and to share the updates that we have going on and to keep our, you know, our beautiful logo and our beautiful brand and our beautiful philosophies all the way across the board.
Jo: 5:58
So for our next talk, we're going to talk about Unconventional Acres.
Kyler: 6:01
Yeah. Ben and Mel have Unconventional Acres are in Wisconsin. And I think that their story is very interesting because they not only got to farming unconventionally, but they farm on a really unconventional piece of property. They do a great job of telling their unconventional story on social media, specifically. On Instagram, they have over 60,000 followers.
Jo: 6:26
Yeah, it's super engaging. I know both of us follow them and have been for months. But they're just super fun to see. They really just showcase the good and the bad of the farming in their life and just show every aspect of what they're doing.
Kyler: 6:38
Yeah, I know. I'm really excited to see all of their updates what they're working on updates on like how the cows are doing.
Jo: 6:45
Super cute cows yeah.
Kyler: 6:47
So they are going to talk a little bit about how Farmers can build a winning social media strategy. Take a listen.
Ben, Unconventional Acres: 6:54
One key to helping utilize social media to your advantage and to kind of build your customers and build your story is mostly just to be honest and show everything. People are just more interested in that aspect of it and learning more about how your day to day goes.
Mel, Unconventional Acres: 7:10
Yeah, so it's not just about the highlights, it's about the struggles as well.
Ben, Unconventional Acres: 7:14
And I think that's useful too, because other people might have a solution for you. And truthfully more people respond to the stories that, that are kind of crazy and, they want to see kind of that inside of what your life really is like and how you create the products that you're trying to market. One thing to think about when you're, when you scroll through Instagram or any of the social medias is, is what, what do you focus on? What interests you, you know, what is too long, what's too short.
Mel, Unconventional Acres: 7:41
Yeah. 'cause, if you're not going to enjoy that kind of content and it's yours the average person probably won't enjoy it either. They're going to know if you're having fun, they're going to know if you're enjoying it. They're going to be able to see those things. So, just making the most of your time and your content and make the most of your time and what you do and
Ben, Unconventional Acres: 7:59
not going out of your way to make something up that isn't what you normally do. Something to one person may be educational to another. It might be education, entertainment, or it might be, that might be the reason they click on your website to, purchase something from you. So
Mel, Unconventional Acres: 8:14
Or it could be all three
Ben, Unconventional Acres: 8:15
or it could be all three as well.
Kyler: 8:18
And for the last session that we want to highlight is a tactic session. So tactic sessions kind of nicely pair with our keynote talks and our farm talks as well, just to kind of tie it all together. And give farmers, attendees, real applicable tips and tricks that they could take back to their own farms. For this one, it's a subscriptions tactics specifically hosted by Richard and Mackenzie. Jo, do you wanna give us a little bit of a intro to Richard and Mackenzie?
Jo: 8:47
Absolutely. So Richard is a Farm Account Manager here at Barn2Door. And McKenzie is a Sales Manager. They're both extremely knowledgeable about all things, farm business. They talk to farmers day in and day out, and they were an absolute pleasure to watch their talk.
Kyler: 9:01
And here's a little clip from Richard and McKenzie's talk building brand loyalty with subscriptions.
Mackenzie: 9:07
If you're going to Farmer's markets, maybe every Saturday, isn't always realistic for everybody to come meet you at the Farmer's market to pick up. So starting to offer different kinds of fulfillment options. You know, delivery is a really great thing. Do you want to talk a little bit about delivery?
Richard: 9:20
Yeah, actually, I'm glad you asked because that's one thing I wanted to spend a little time on. Convenience is king, and when people subscribe to anything online nowadays, there's almost an expectation that it's going to be delivered to their home. If not a very convenient drop location and to speak to the Farmer's markets, you know, they're not always in season, right? And sometimes they get closed due to inclement weather and other sorts of factors that could jeopardize a fulfillment that you've already set up. And so those door to door deliveries is going to be huge when you match it with your subscriptions, but you also want to make sure that you're tailoring your subscriptions to different households. You know, there's different types of customers and people are looking for different things in their subscriptions.
Mackenzie: 9:59
I mean, a really good example of this is about a third of Americans live alone, a third of Americans live in about a household of two, and then another third of Americans live in a household of about four more. So offering different kinds of subscription boxes that are in consumable sizes for those households sizes is a really good idea like for myself, I live alone, but I know Richard, you and your wife have a house together.
Richard: 10:24
Yep. And we grill, well, she encourages me to grill as much as possible, so we love our subscription, but it's, it's a little bit of a bigger subscription then I think, you know, a normal household of two.
Kyler: 10:36
So, those were just a couple of our talks from the day, and we have tons more talks on our website. You can go to DirectFarmConference.com/video-archive to watch any of the speakers that presented at Direct Brand Conference or go to the show notes below.
Jo: 10:54
And before we wrap up today, we just want to say a huge, thank you to all of our speakers at the conference and to all the attendees that were there with us live.
Kyler: 11:01
And for any additional free resources for your farm, you can go to Barn2Door.com/resources. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next time.