Scale Your Ranch Business & Own Your Supply Chain
In a webinar in partnership AgriWebb, Barn2Door and Friesla teamed up to share how Farmers and Ranchers can own their supply chain, take control of operations, and successfully sell direct. Learn about the opportunities that exist for Ranchers to sell their products direct-to-market and how AgriWebb, Freisla, and Barn2Door can help take your business to the next level.
Learn more about AgriWebb and Friesla:
agriwebb.com
friesla.com
barn2door.com/resources
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00]
Rory Loughran: This episode of the Direct Farm Podcast is a replay of a webinar Barn2Door participated in, in partnership with AgriWebb and Freisla. The presentation focused on the opportunities that exist for Ranchers to sell their products direct to market and how AgriWebb, Freisla, and Barn2Door can help them do that.
Hope you enjoy it.
Campbell Mauchan: Evening, everyone. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. We've got a fantastic panel of presenters and hopefully we can get a good discussion going with all of you here that are joining us this evening.
We certainly don't want to keep [00:01:00] you for your entire evening. We will try and bring you some pretty hard hitting presentations and certainly get to some Q&A.
we'll get to a couple of really quick introductions, make sure that you're all familiar with who we are and I've got the honors of getting things kicked off. So I guess I'll introduce myself and then maybe Bob and James can follow.
My name's Campbell Mauchen. I take care of the integrations and partnerships team here at a AgriWebb. I've been with AgriWebb for just over six and a half years. So I was one of the early team members when the business was founded and have worked in Australia and the United Kingdom and happy to back in North America these days leading our team and hence being on this webinar and presenting to you and being able to pull together amazing partners like Freisla and Barn2Door.
Bob, do you wanna give us a quick introduction to yourself?
Bob Lodder: Sure, thanks Campbell. And it's great to be here and looking forward to this presentation and this discussion together with other great people. Yeah. And really our aim is to help Farmers and Ranchers [00:02:00] restore local meat processing.
That's the aim of what we're doing and I'm sure that's music to the years of Farmers and Ranchers. And I look forward to sharing what we're doing and hopefully we can add some value to this discussion and give you something to think about for a way to solve some of the problems that you're facing every day.
Campbell Mauchan: Absolutely. We're excited to have you. Thanks again.
James?
James Maiocco: Yeah super, thanks Campbell so much for the opportunity to be here and welcome everyone today. Yeah, I'm James and I am the Chief Operating Officer over at Barn2Door. I've been with the company about four years now. The company we serve thousands of Farms across all 50 states in the US. Very focused on go to market. Specifically on building branding, building a direct to market, both to consumer retail and wholesale markets, but where you own the customers, you own the margin, you own the upside of your business.
Big part of this is, as we all know, is a lot of constraints in the market. And, big part too, is that people want to buy from [00:03:00] you. They want to buy local, but they need to know how it needs to be easy and convenient. So look forward to diving in further as we go along in this webinar. Again, Campbell, thanks so much for the opportunity to be here.
Campbell Mauchan: Not at all guys. Perfect. So without any further ado, so I guess to kick things off, wanted to kind of look at how we kinda move from data through processing to actually marketing and sell animals.
And so I wanted to talk a little bit from that perspective and hopefully bring some reasonable insights from the AgriWebb side of things. So this first session we've entitled using data to add value. And what I want to just start off with is: it's not data. Data is not what we're looking for.
What we're looking for is information. I've been in far too many rooms in the early days of my time in AgriWebb, speaking to a room full of Ranchers and starting to talk about data and seeing eyes roll back in people's heads or boredom set in almost immediately. And so what I want you to think about is [00:04:00] hopefully using data to get to information, to get to insights that can help you push your businesses forward. And I guess on that note: earlier this year and how this webinar's kind of come about, earlier this year, we ran a survey through our 12 and a half thousand ranchers that, that use AgriWebb every day.
And it was called The State of the Global Farmer. And we really asked Ranchers, like you all on the call, what their thoughts were, what was keeping them awake at night, what they were really excited about. And we came up with a lot of data, right? I'll keep using that word. But I think what we were really excited about was this opportunity to, again, take that data and really see some trends, some insights and come up with valuable information.
And that's what we put into the final report, which you can get at Agriwebb.com, I highly recommend a read. For me at least, one of the things that was surprising was more [00:05:00] US Ranchers are cutting out the middleman.
And really what it came down to was that almost 40% of US survey respondents said that they were selling some or all of their cattle direct to consumer. And that's it to me at least, and to most of the team here at AgriWebb was a surprising statistic. And so we started to do two things: we looked at well, what data points, what pieces of information would be really helpful for our users to empower them on this journey and really, how can we better assist our ranching customers to get that data, to turn it into those insights again, that helps them bring their product to market?
So first step was we ran an initial webinar. The idea was let's get some pretty forward thinking, some pretty incredible AgriWebb users into a room and get their thoughts as to how they're running that side of their business, right?
How they're bringing cattle direct [00:06:00] or beef direct to consumers. And so we came out with really five pretty interesting questions or what we thought were interesting questions, but ultimately boiled down to do I have the time, how am I gonna market my product? How do I need to, or do I need to change the management of my herd? Have I found the right processor and how am I gonna get my product to customers? And we started to really look and my colleague said, " we know we're good at it, but we certainly aren't able to answer all of those questions."
And that's where we got to today. That's why I'm so excited to have everybody on the call today and the idea was well, here at AgriWebb we can help with the data side. What information can be really helpful to help with this direct consumer push. We found Bob and his team at Freisla and I'm really excited to have him speak to you guys today about his micro processing and the ability to actually bring democratized version of processing and butchering to Ranchers just [00:07:00] like your.
And then as James said, you know, found the Barn2Door team and the amazing work that they were doing for thousands of Ranchers and figured we can piece all that together. Surely, we can really start to empower users as to how they can own their own supply chain. And that's really where we got to today.
So I will drone on, I know it's the data side, but hopefully we can show you how information and how data can really make a difference on your ranch. And then I'll turn it over to these guys.
So when we think about data and information and how it can add value, especially in a direct to consumer model, we think about it in its corny, by the three P's: Providence, Planning, and Product.
And hopefully I can really speak to each one of these and provide some examples that we've worked with our Ranchers, empowering them with their data and their information to, to add value to their business. But if you take away one thing it's the three P's: Providence, Planning, and Product.
And so first, right off the bat, we've got Providence. [00:08:00] And I've had this said to me at numerous times where, Ranchers are always putting their name behind a product, right? Whether you're selling those as stockers, taking them directly to slaughter. Wherever you're selling your product, your name's behind it.
People will know exactly who produced that animal. But when you start to take a product to directly to consumer to market, you start to really put your name behind it. As I said, we know those names that I mentioned earlier. And for us, this is hopefully, you know, where again, one of our customers puts it a lot better, and she said, when they started to bring their product directly to consumer, they knew they were going to, and it definitely played out this way, that they were gonna get more and more questions, right?
Is this what you say it is? Is this antibiotic free? And they really felt that this was something that they needed to be able to answer. And that's where data and information hopefully makes that a lot easier to do, right? When you've got that traceable [00:09:00] transparent information that you can lean on when those questions are answered. It's there, it's accessible, and hopefully it's there to really empower you to speak about your business.
We like to think about it as the insurance policy. When that question's asked, that data, that information is immediately available for you to lean on. And I guess the more exciting side of the first P in Providence is being able to differentiate your product.
And again, one of our customers said it far better than I could, but, she does a lot of the marketing and she really loves talking to people about her beef. "It lights my fire" as she said. And that for us is hopefully the more exciting bit, where you can start to gather that robust information and speak to those specifics and really make sure that you are highlighting why you're producing that premium product, right?
It's not a commodity you're selling that directly to a consumer and why should they pay a premium? Why should they be really excited? Why should they buy into your brand of beef? And [00:10:00] data and information starts to be really powerful in that sense. And a good example and something that, that I was thinking about earlier, and what I've talked to customers about is whether you're highlighting, you know, your superior genetics, you know, in say a Wagu or an Purebred Aberdeen Angus.
Whether it's on the production side, whether it's on the sustainability side, whatever you are looking to highlight, however you're gonna set your product apart, consumers love information that they can relay, right? We all know this it's social capital. When you come across an interesting piece of information you can't wait to tell someone and there's no better social capital than a really interesting statistic or data point. So for example, data can help you tell that story, right?
Information can help you tell that story. It's not just that they're grass fed beef, they're grass fed beef that spent this number of days in these different pastures. And you can just start to provide a real colorful description of that product and really helps you to [00:11:00] differentiate it.
So again, hopefully information can serve as that insurance policy, and then hopefully it really helps you to paint that picture as to why you're producing a premium product. You're all spectacular Ranchers. You're here learning on this webinar or hopefully learning, but you've invested the time, you know, you are those premium producers.
Let information and let help data improve that. Second P is Planning and this may be the kind of the most important of all them, especially when you're looking at, should I, you know, undertake a direct to consumer model. And the three things that we like to think about are: input management, slaughter planning, and time management, and really making sure that you have the robust data. You have the really powerful insights and information to help you make those decisions. And so when we think about input management, if you're taking cattle all the way to slaughter all the way to consumer, you're likely gonna need more grass. You're probably going to need [00:12:00] additional feed.
There are going to be those upticks in ranch inputs and a really powerful tool, some really robust information is going to help you make those decisions just a little bit better. When it comes to slaughter planning, it's not just, you know, when they hit a thousand pounds. You're trying to use that information to balance customer demand, slaughter availability, and how your cattle are coming up the growth curve, right? Are they putting on weight the way you thought they would and data and information can, when it's pulled together nicely, can really help to make that decision a lot easier.
And lastly, time management. These things take time, setting up your own businesses find a lot easier with Barn2Door and finding processing times is a lot easier with Freisla, but these things all still take time and need to be undertaken.
And how can you use a really robust product, whether it's AgriWebb or another product on the market, or whether it's a really robust process for gathering and capturing this [00:13:00] information, you're gonna wanna save that time to really focus on investing into your business. And so whether you're looking at pulling together information that looks at the insights on your animals, so you can make a better decision, so you can plan better ahead.
You're gonna want the most robust information, the most robust data that you can get while getting it in a position that doesn't cost you a ton of time. So whether that focuses on the animals and trying to predict those slaughter weights, whether that's on the input side of things and trying to understand, "do I have enough grass to make it to the end of the season?" Data and information can play a huge role in making this process a lot easier for you and your Farm.
And last, and certainly not least, a Product and as per usual, our users and our customers have said it best, right? Your product is your new lifeblood. It's what people are judging and your ability now to utilize information that's captured at the ranch about your [00:14:00] animals, as well as feedback from customers around, you know, "that particular cut of beef was spectacular. This one was a little tough."
Being able to blend that together really allows you to find a way to bring your best product to market. And it's about making those decisions that are going to allow you to bring a premium product to market pulling that information, pulling that data set together, and really being able to provide your customers and your consumers with the best product that you possibly can.
So I hate those webinars that sound as if I've got all the answers, but don't, you know, give you anything actionable. So hopefully this is something that you can at least start to think about, and if it makes sense for you, fantastic, and you think about the three P's.
But where do you start? When speaking to our ranchers and, you know, far smarter people than me within our team, it seems to me like the best place to start would be, you know, what's really important to you, right? Are you gonna mark [00:15:00] your product as grass fed, antibiotic free, sustainable, carbon neutral, whatever.
That's going to be, find that place to start, find that piece of information, that data point, and then look at a really robust process or a tool that can help you to aggregate that information. So that your supply chain and your operation, put yourself at the center of your digital ecosystem, make sure that you're capturing as much data as possible, and really use that to expand upon everything that you're looking to do in terms of bringing your product to market.
But ideally what we're doing is now bringing some pretty incredible speakers like Bob to you. So I'll turn it over to Bob and he can give you a rundown on some pretty exciting work that, that he and the free team are doing. Take it away.
Bob Lodder: Great. Well, thanks Campbell. All right, we'll just jump right into our presentation and I also will share with you a bit of a walkthrough, through one of our systems, but before we get there, just kind of talk some [00:16:00] background. So our company name is Freisla and our mission is restoring local meat processing.
And it's like preaching to the choir, but the Farm to table is alive and well, and you guys are basically wanting to get your product that you take a lot of care and love doing, you want to get that product directly to the consumers. We'll walk through the process a little bit with you.
Okay, and maybe just to give you a little bit of a timeline as to how we ended up with a modular system. This concept really started in 2002 when the first mobile harvest unit was approved by the USDA for use in all through the country and that happened here in Washington state.
And then shortly after that a local company called Trivan Truck Body was approached and made a unit and then another one and so on. I got involved with that company [00:17:00] in 2010 and from then till I founded Freisla in 2018. We gained a lot of experience as to what people were looking for in the industry.
And so it was in 2020 shortly after COVID hit we really got our concept and our product into the marketplace. So we're going to focus mostly on the modular system during this presentation. So there's a harvest module, a carcass cooler module, cut and rat module, and that finished goods freezer. And each one of those serves a particular function, but the way they're fabricated, prefabricated at at our manufacturing plant here in Washington, they're shipped on a low boy trailer, brought to the location and joined altogether in this format, this is a typical format for us. This is an L-shape format. The concept that we've developed is basically [00:18:00] how can we make it so that this is easy to install on your location, but also very expandable. So basically we've designed it in such a way that you can add modules to the system very easily.
So if you need additional capacity we can add that capacity very quickly. So very expandable and very dynamic to set up to move if needed. For instance, if your property becomes very valuable and you would like to move that to another location, very easy to do. You just cannot do that with a brick and mortar facility. So they can be relocated, rearranged, or added onto as your operation grows. More cost effective to operate less power, water, and other resources. The reason being is that it's purpose built exactly for what you're doing in it.
So you're not cooling a large area that does not need cooling, you're not using more water than needed, which is very typical in these large [00:19:00] plants. You can also depreciate this as equipment. It's basically a piece of equipment, so you can appreciate it over a seven year period, which definitely is an advantage to you tax wise and we deliver this with a full management software system, as well as provide all the training and the regulatory assistance. So it's very much a turnkey system.
So as far as the site work, that is something that our technical team will work with you and your contractors. Basically you need a concrete pad or something like that to place the units on, and then we'll work through all the mechanical things that you have to do.
But basically you can know that Freisla is basically a turnkey solution for you and your questions will be answered. If we can't answer a question directly, we will definitely find out. So again, thank you very much.
Campbell Mauchan: Thanks [00:20:00] so much, Bob. It was, like I said, when I first was introduced to you guys, I literally had no idea that something like Freisla existed and speaking to James and other kind of industry members, I think the really exciting bit is, it's been the missing link, right? The ability to find, you know, even smaller scale processing is something that's just not been available to this point. So we have had a couple questions come through, but I think in inch to time we'll get to.
We'll get to James, we'll hear from James cuz again, what an amazing way to complete that cycle. Going from, you know, on ranch data capture to be able to processing and then, you know, actually bringing that product to market.
So I'm really excited to have James join us from Barn2Door. So we'll let him introduce the Barn2Door team and their story and we'll get to all your questions. So keep coming, James.
James Maiocco: Perfect. Thanks guys. Just a little bit about Barn2Door: we've been around for about six or seven years now. We service thousands of farms across all 50 states across America. And the company's designed explicitly to help Farmers grow and manage their business and more [00:21:00] importantly, increase sales and save time.
So I think ,all of you guys know like, look the expectations of buyers today when purchasing from your Farm are very high. You are being measured, not against other farms you're being measured against the experience people have when they purchase from Amazon. It has to be simple, it has to be easy.
Product just needs to be easy to purchase, and they need to know how it's going to arrive, whether through pickup, fulfillment, or shipping. The good news for you is that people want to buy local. 94% of people want to buy your local product. As you guys all know, many products that you're competing against are greenwashed and you're competing against a lot of commodity conventional products.
The key here is that you need to make sure that your product is not only easy to purchase, but you've built a great brand, cuz brands are super powerful and very important. What we know from serving thousands of Farms that the tactics at the most successful Farms, quality is obviously job one.
You have to have a high quality product. Obviously you have to be able to process it. You need to be able to cut that product into again, a great product that is [00:22:00] consumable and is, again, transparent, hopefully around your practices. But then ultimately you have to build brand affinity. We know that Farms that build brand affinity do better and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second.
The other aspect too, is you have to price and package your product in a way that's consumable for people to purchase from you. And I know that sounds easy, but believe it or not, most farmers make mistakes when it comes to pricing and packaging.
And I'll share some data with you about what we've uncovered. Cuz we have millions of transactions that go through Barn2Door. And so we can see where the highest conversion rates are. And then third, it has to be co. We all know that buyers are increasingly lazy. And so if your product is not easy and convenient to purchase and to pick up or to ship or to have delivered on their doorstep, you will not win.
They'll simply default back to whatever's most convenient for them. From the Farms we have worked with, what I can tell you is that Farms that are with Barn2Door after 12 months have averaged over 52% growth. So 152% over the prior year in terms of sales, and Farms have been with us [00:23:00] for more than three years are actually over 422% of growth.
So it's really great to see just the demand that Farms have been able to capitalize as the pandemic has underscored a lot of broken pieces in our logistics and supply chain. So let's start with brand. Why is brand so important? Brand is super important because brands evoke trust. The best example I love to give to Farmers is a micro brewery, right?
Every one of your customers that you have today could probably name five local micro breweries that they probably drink. I'm in Nashville right now, so I could name five beers here in Nashville that I would drink in a minute over versus a Budweiser or a Coors.
Why is that? Cause I know it's gonna be a higher quality product, I know it's locally produced, and it's a local business that I wanna support. Best part about it's gonna taste better. And guess what? I'm also probably paying twice as much money for that product than I am for a Budweiser. Now a local micro brewer doesn't have the budget that Anheuser-Busch or Coors has. They don't do Super Bowl ads, they don't have billions of dollars, they don't need to. What they do is they really build a [00:24:00] consistent brand experience and they know their customers and they market locally. They really focus on having a consistent brand experience across all the channels, not just your website and not just your social media, but your website, social media, and your email, your newsletters, all of that needs to be very easy and consistent, and people need to be able to purchase from you with one click out of any one of those channels.
Every one of these is a double digit channel in terms of your customer base. Okay. The other thing we know is that people have an expectation of when they're making a purchase. It needs to be very simple in terms of they need the information at their fingertips. So obviously in all your cases, you may be selling just direct to consumer, but for Farmers, you guys also need to be able to have different pricing for your wholesale buyers.
So if you're selling to grocers or you're selling at restaurants, even though chefs or what have you, when they click through to purchase, they need to have a different pricing, different packaging, et cetera, of course we support all that. Farmers that, whether they're selling direct to consumer or direct to restaurants or other wholesale avenues, they have pricing and packaging that is specific to [00:25:00] them.
Fulfillment options often look different too. If you are selling into restaurants or grocers, very good likelihood that you're probably delivering directly to them. Your consumers might be just doing pickup or some local pickups in the vicinity, maybe at a local church or school, or what have you.
And what's great news for Farmers today is that if you go back three years ago, pre pandemic, only 1 out of 20 Americans had ordered food online for pickup or delivery. Today, fast forward, the pandemic accelerated this now. 3 out of 5 Americans purchase every month, which is amazing just to see change in the market, because once consumers got used to the convenience of that through the pandemic, they weren't gonna give it up, cuz it was just easier.
And so if you're gonna do that, you had to be able to give again, you have to have order cutoffs. You need to be able to have simplicity of being able to manage that. And again, flexible payment altered is for people. They don't wanna just pay cash and check they you're probably gonna wanna offer the ability for them to pay with credit card. Your sales will go up.
So for Farmers, the big thing here is, again, making that experience [00:26:00] streamline. At Barn2Door we provide their tools to, again, help farmers save time and save money by again, automating a much of this process. So whether they're ordering for direct to consumer or for your wholesale accounts, you're gonna have a pick and pack list that will break down what you have to assemble, where it goes to all your labels are automated and it can be printed out. If you do deliveries, we also integrate directly with Routific, which again, can automate your routing and route management.
You'll save about 35%+ just on fuel cost alone. And believe it or not, it's a lower carbon footprint. When Farms run delivery, it's actually better for the environment. So if you have a hundred customers, it's better for the environment for you to run a deliveries to a hundred customers than for a hundred customers to drive to your pickup location. So that saves about a 40% reduction in carbon footprint just by doing deliveries. It's kinda interesting.
Streamlining your operations. We oftentimes get asked this by Livestock Farmers specifically. So first off is: can you support variable weights? Answer is absolutely. We have a lot of Farms and Ranches who sell purely quarter, half, and whole. [00:27:00] Particularly in rural areas and certainly you can take a deposit $200, $400, $800 for the animal. We tokenize the payment and then when the animal's harvested at a later date, obviously through Freisla processing location on site or at your food hub, you can actually have at that point, whatever the final price is or whatever the final weight is, you can put that final amount it is an automatically deducted deposit and charge the card on file. Or you can invoice 'em for the final amount. So they pay cash or check for that final amount. So you're not having to pay any credit card fees. The most successful Ranches we work with that are, again, not just multimillion. We have some eight figure Farms as well that do north of 10 million a year.
The most successful Farms we work with align their harvest date with their fulfillment dates. I don't know if any Farmer or Rancher who wants to be in the freezer business. None. You wanna be in the business of making money and moving your product a hundred percent of your product. So the big thing there is, again, is to price and package your product, where if you are doing quarter, half, and a whole, that those animals are processed, [00:28:00] and then they're moved either the same day or the next day in terms of fulfillment. The same thing would be true with respect to setting up subscriptions.
This has been a highly successful aspect of Barn2Door. There's no additional charge for subscriptions. We don't charge a percentage of any fees of your subscriptions. We want every farmer having subscriptions. Why? Because all of your customers eat every day, every week, three times a day, they're gonna eat and they have no choice, otherwise they're six feet underground, right?
People are gonna continue to place orders for your product. 90% of what people eat week over week, month over month is the same. So why make them have to come place an order every week or every month? Why make a restaurant place an order? Right now, many of you probably familiar with the concept of a standing order for restaurants.
So yes, we support that, but we also want you getting your consumers into subscriptions. And I'll show you some data in a second, why that's so successful, but you wanna build recurring cash flow for your business with subscriptions, and it's easier for buyers, right? So you align your harvest dates with your subscription [00:29:00] orders, stay out of the freezer business, and build as much cash flow as you can.
And of course you want things just to flow through into QuickBooks from a money management standpoint. And yes, we support like Avalara for taxes and all that other good stuff. In addition to saving time, you also are gonna be looking to increase sales. The way you increase sales is you have to drive awareness around your brand, but you also have to then tell people about it, right?
It's one thing to have a beautiful brand. It's one thing to have a great presence on social media and on your website. But the reality is email marketing today works incredibly well. And if any of you are questioning my thoughts on that, actually just go look at your own inbox. I guarantee you're getting multiple emails from Tractor Supply, Cabellas, Bass Fishing Outlet. You're probably getting those, not just once a month, you get those every single week. And so the thing is, you wanna drive a consistent email marketing campaigns. We are the largest partner for MailChimp. We are their number one partner in the United States.
We have thousands of accounts with them. We set up hundreds of accounts every single month, and what's great about it, is you can [00:30:00] actually automate campaigns, again, you're not having to manually send emails, but you can actually create what are called automated customer journeys, where you can then send emails to people based on their relationship with your Farm.
So if it's a first time buyer, they scan a QR code, what have you, they'll get an automated, "Hey, welcome to, you know, I don't know, DD Ranch. We're really excited about working with you. Let us tell you about our dreams for our family Ranch. We're really excited to feed you and your family. Here's what we do. Here's our practices. Place your order today." Fully automated, right? Looks like it's personalized and that can set up into set of drip campaigns. At the same time, you can do very different campaigns for your loyal buyers versus perhaps lapsed buyers.
So we automate setting those up. We build out the templates, so your Farm can make more money. The best part about it is we have all the data to prove it. In fact, we know when Farmers put these pieces in place, their average order value increases over 30%. The fun part about it too is that, given our size with MailChimp, we have a really deep data integration, so we can precisely tell you [00:31:00] how much money comes from every email that is sent.
So very powerful, it's not guesswork. You're actually seeing the results of your marketing activities. And again, much of this can be automated. Social media too is obviously a very big area where we drive a lot of engagement. We can help provide prompts and sample examples of how to market effectively.
And then of course the big part of the value Barn2Door, isn't just the software, but the service that comes around. It's that one-on-one coaching that comes from Account Managers who work with Farms like you, and can tell you the tactics that our teams have implemented with others.
Now there's no two Farms that are exactly the same. So again, it's gonna be working with you precisely on what your goals are. But every Farmer gets access to workshops, a bunch of DIY resources, and I'll talk about the connect program in a second, but then we also provide additional support with one-on-one coaching, marketing toolkits, academies for ongoing learning, et cetera.
So one thing that makes Barn2Door incredibly unique, is that unlike any other e-commerce platform on the planet, it's because we service exclusively Farmers and we [00:32:00] have thousands of those. What we do is we invite four Farmers every quarter to be a part of our Farm Advisory Network, so we have 16 farmers at any given time.
So we're rotating four each quarter, right as we retire them, what year over year. And what's nice about it is we always have a collection of Farms that are Proteins Farmers, Produce Farmers, Dairy Farmers, what have you. But the most important part is that all these Farms are doing six figures or seven figures online with Barn2Door today.
And they're very successful. They're very good at what they do, but they're available to all of our Barn2Door members. Every single week they can get on the phone. They can have a mono a mono conversation. So you're not just getting the software and service support from the Barn2Door team, but you're also getting to talk to other Farms and Ranches like yourself all across the country, who can tell you what they did, what worked, the tips and tactics.
Cuz again, no two Farms are gonna be the same, right? You're gonna wanna talk to others and see what works for you. But what's great about it is we're gonna have this resource available for you at all times.
Now we have a very simplified pricing plan at Barn2Door. [00:33:00] I won't cover it here. What I'll just tell you point blank though, is that we don't take any percentage of your sales at all, and we don't mark up your products at all.
We just simply charge a one time setup fee and then a flat monthly fee. That's it. So the key here is that the way we are profitable long term is by scaling and serving thousands and thousands of Farms, right? We're not trying to be profitable off the back of any one Farm, right? So for us, it's much more about scale and then building the pieces in place to help you be successful.
We won't turn a profit on a Farm that we sign up for two years and that's okay. Cuz we know once we get a Farm set up and going with Barn2Door, then we help them be successful. They're gonna be a customer with us for the long haul. Now, like I said, there are a couple other things we do in addition to those core capabilities.
A lot of Farms need help with marketing and if you're here today, perhaps you're thinking about building a direct to market business. One of the most important things you can do is start building your brand today. When restaurants open, as an example, [00:34:00] oftentimes what you don't wanna do is make a big capital investment, try to go build a restaurant, and then open up one night and then pray that people show up. Restaurants do just the opposite. Six months before the restaurant's gonna be open, they build out their website, they build their social media, they start driving FOMO, start bringing people into the story that, "Hey, we're going to be opening our restaurant. Let us tell you about what's going on."
Draw people into the emotional experience of supporting this local business. And then they start pre-selling seats to that restaurant. So that day the restaurant opens it's sold out. And so that's a big deal. So you wanna be thinking about the same way. If you're thinking about moving from a cow calf operation, or if you're thinking about making a capital investment and building your own processor, start building that brand now. Start building brand affinity, start inviting people to come in and support you cuz people want to buy local. They want to buy from you. There's no shortage of market demand. All of you have a market awareness problem. So we try to provide a lot of assets to help you drive an increase [00:35:00] engagement and awareness on social media, with email marketing as well.
And then the other big part of this is just ongoing education. As you scale and as you have success, we provide ongoing academy classes that are affected with like 201, 301, 401 classes. These are all taught by Farmers, by the way. Every one of these are taught by Farmers who are rock stars in their own areas. For instance, our social media classes are taught by Farmers who have 60,000 followers on Instagram.
These people know exactly what they're doing, right? Now they didn't get there just by happen, chance, or luck. They got there by building out a social media strategy. And so we teach those classes or, again, this is a drop in the bucket. We know of other, marketing solutions and marketing organizations who sell their classes for $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, like a lot of money. But that's how they try to make their monies on professional services.
We're not that business. We're not trying to, again, make the money on professional services. What we're trying to do is trying to subsidize all these additional add on value so that [00:36:00] we can build a long term relationship with you with underlying software. Okay.
So anyways, all these classes are taught by Farmers like you, they just happen to be domain experts in their own areas. The financial classes taught by QuickBooks ProAdvisors who are Farmers who service other Farms, managing their accounting bookkeepings, are gonna tell you how they do it, what have you, right? So I won't go through all this in detail. But the net of it, I just want you to know that at Barn2Door, we really pride to ourselves on Farmers who are successful in enabling Farmers, again, help bring those best practices and tactics forward to help you be successful in building your business.
Campbell Mauchan: Awesome. No, thank you so much, James. That's incredibly informative and like I said, I've read through a fair few case studies on the Barn2Door site and it looks like, Ranchers and Farmers are getting a spectacular service. And it's good to know that both Barn2Door and AgriWebb have saved the marriage or two, I know a few audits that have gone a little bit smoother with that current in place. So I'm glad we're not alone on that one.
We've got about 5, 10 minutes left and there's a couple questions coming in through here, so I wanna make sure we get to them. First [00:37:00] one for you, Bob, do you work directly with the USDA? How does that work with the freeze list setup? I think the question's just wanting to expand on that side of things.
Bob Lodder: Yes, we do. Yeah. We have the ability to speak directly with the USDA. We will help you with the first step, which is applying for a grant of inspection and then have in-house expertise to write your HACCP plan and help you with training and implementation and then follow up support.
So it's a very important part of it. It's something that scares a lot of people, because you're allowing the government to come in on your property. But it's not really that intimidating once the inside track and, you know, have the right people involved.
So yeah, that's what we . Do.
Campbell Mauchan: Amazing, amazing. Next one I might tackle, but what are some specific data points that I should be recording? I think honestly, that, that comes down to what your goals are, right? It's going back to a couple things that James said, if you're looking at is it halves, wholes, and quarters? Is [00:38:00] it boxes? Whatever your goal is, whatever that product is that you're trying to market, look at what your customers might want to know. Is it what they've been fed with, treated with, breed, things of that nature? Really look at what your customers might wanna know and capture that information so you can tell that story. I don't know if anyone wants to add anything to that, but that would be where I would start.
James Maiocco: Yeah. I would echo that big time. It's super important to be transparent about your practices. And if you have any certifications, share them, market them. If you're an AGW Grass Fed Certified Farm or a GAP Certified Farm, and there's just several certifications are out there. All those labels add trust to your brand. The other one would be like any affiliations you have that might be associated with you as a person.
And so for instance, like if you're a veteran and you're a member of, you know, Farmers Veteran Coalition or Homegrown By Heroes. Again, people are empathetic to causes that they care about. So that's a really great, again, another avenue not just about your product, but who they're [00:39:00] supporting cause they wanna invest in you.
Yep.
Campbell Mauchan: Yep. Great point couldn't agree more.
One question, I think James, hopefully you can tackle this. I think you mentioned in terms of marketing in the courses, and this is probably where this is coming from, does Barn2Door assist in helping reach new customers or is it around empowering you with tools and training and things like that?
James Maiocco: We're gonna teach you how to fish, right? You own the customer at the end of the day. Again, people have this perception that they have to spend a ton of money on marketing. You don't. Most of our Farmers to date, don't actually, quote unquote, spending money on Facebook boosting or any of that stuff. Honestly, it's just grassroots, bottoms up marketing.
For every Farm that signs up, we create like little simple marketing assets. They have QR codes that they compose at their kid's school, back at their church. Some of our most successful Farms, what they do, they go in and offer to do education classes to primary school kids to learn about farming, learn about where your food comes from, right?
There's a hot topic with young teachers. And then with, and then by doing that, what they end up doing is they end up then giving a flyer about their Farm to every kid who's in that class. What do you think that kid does? They [00:40:00] take that flyer home, tell, "mom, dad, guess what I just learned about how, you know, cows are raised with regenerative farming is", right? And guess what?
They get subscribers every time. Costs them absolutely nothing and yet they're getting exactly a local farm, a local buyer, they'll invite kids. In fact, they'll invite the kids as part of that flyer. It's " Hey, I'm gonna have an on farm event for kids. I'd love to have you come out, visit the cattle, you get a chance to pet some animals", whatever.
Just really creative, simple things that cost nothing that will distinguish your brand from a commodity product.
Campbell Mauchan: Yep. Yep. No, I think it's amazing. I love the guerilla marketing tactics from the Farmers. We've always said Farmers are the most innovative people on the planet. Just don't tell them that. And as you say, distinguish it from a commodity, build that story, build that brand and hopefully you can use a little bit of data to power that on the backside of things. One more that's just come through here and I guess maybe this is for everyone, but what's the biggest benefit that Ranchers see by selling direct to consumer? I know maybe, James, if you wanna continue on that and then Bob and we can go from there. We can wrap up.
James Maiocco: [00:41:00] Two big things. Number one is higher price point. No question about it. Just like the micro brewery, you're going to be able to sell to much higher price point. People are willing to pay for it. In fact, we have a lot of Farms that if you are not pricing it high enough that someone complains to you, you're probably not pricing it high enough, right? You should have people walking away because believe it or not, people are willing to pay for your product. The second thing is more resiliency, right?
Like the more you have a direct relationship, the more that you can have control over your processing, the more that you can control that supply chain and take out the middle man. As I think, Campbell's hitting on at the very beginning of his presentation, the more margin you're putting in your pocket long term, and that's gonna give not only peace and satisfaction, but you're also gonna be giving your buyers peace and satisfaction. Cuz food security is one of the number one concern of families right now. All of us have walked into a grocery store, in fact, we have a whole marketing thing going around food security that we gave out to the Farmers asking, "Hey, ask your customers: are you concerned? Have you seen empty store shelves in the last few months? [00:42:00] Get started with us. I'll make sure your family's fed", right? "Subscribe to this Farm." Like just, people are concerned, so that's a big deal. You're gonna make a lot more money and your community's gonna love you long term.
Campbell Mauchan: Love that. Bob?
Bob Lodder: Yeah, I would just put it simply like what you alluded to Campbell earlier, it's a missing link. You need all the links in the chain in order to be strong. And this allows Farmers and Ranchers to take back control. And they can control how fast they want to grow and who they will sell to.
It's a beautiful system when it all works together.
Campbell Mauchan: That's it. I won't add anything on that, I think that's a fantastic point to end on and hopefully what we wanted to create today of, you know, this may not be the perfect option for your business, but if it is, hopefully this is giving you a little bit to think about, a little bit more information on this might not be as hard as you might think, and hopefully there's some pretty smart people out there. James and Bob, and included that are willing and wake up every day and hopefully help you [00:43:00] achieve those goals that you've got for your Ranch.
So thank you guys so much. Bob and James, really appreciate you guys taking the time and thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you guys.
Bob Lodder: Thanks to you, Campbell.
Campbell Mauchan: Yeah, not at all. Anytime. Have a great night guys. Thank you.
Bob Lodder: Take care.
Rory Loughran: I want to extend my thanks to AgriWebb for involving us in this webinar. Here at Barn2Door we're humbled to support thousands of Farms across the country who implement sustainable agricultural practices and support their local communities.
For more information on AgriWebb and Freisla, you can find links to their websites in the episode description. To learn more about Barn2Door, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your Farm, go to barn2door.com/resources.
Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week.
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