Today I'm talking with Brecca at REKO- Local Food Community. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brecca at REKO Local Food Community. Good afternoon, Brecca. It's one o'clock in the afternoon. I don't know where I was. Hello. Nice to be with you. You too. How are you?

00:26
I'm doing so well, thanks. We're trying to stay warm over here in my neck of the woods, but from listening to some of your previous podcasts, we're not that cold. So we hit two degrees this morning, and I was thinking I was not having a good day, but then I heard negative 25, and I was like, I'm OK. I'm OK. Well, it's really funny, because they're predicting rain for this afternoon here. It's like 35 degrees today. Oh my goodness, yeah. No fun.

00:52
It would be really, really nice if the weather would reflect what month we're actually in. Wouldn't it? That's true. My husband and I were talking in last year in January is when we got all our snow. So we didn't have snow all winter last year till January came and that's when we got pelted. And this year's been similar. We haven't been pelted with snow, but the temperatures are super cold. So I'm like, I'm ready to kind of start breaking into spring, not have the winter.

01:23
It's not that far away. We are rolling into February here soon. So there's hope. And I feel like all I do is talk about the weather at the beginning of every podcast episode. But like I've said, it's how I express my care for who I'm talking to. So well, when you're talking homesteading weather, that's what we're all thinking about. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So tell me about yourself and about RICO and what does REKO stand for? It's R-E-K-O. Yeah. So

01:50
REKO is actually a Swedish acronym that was put out by a Finnish farmer, and it just means fair consumption. So REKO itself here in Idaho started in 2020 around COVID craziness. So we had farmers markets that were threatening not to open because they couldn't meet the demands of city authorities and health authorities.

02:19
We had restaurants that were closed down. And for all of our small producers here in Idaho, those were two of the biggest cells for their farms and their homesteads was restaurants and farmers markets. And so we had Tia Groves with...

02:40
They no longer run it, but they sold mushrooms at the time. And she actually started Rico here locally as a collaboration of producers to create a way to continue to sell our goods because we were still producing them, but we just lost all of our avenues of selling them during 2020.

03:01
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Did I see that it doesn't cost money to be part of it on your website or did I misread that? So actually, so there's two different parts of Rico. There's Rico the app, which is a great resource that has been produced by a couple of tech guys out of Utah and we just teamed up with them.

03:27
to be able to use the app, but the app is created with the producer in mind. So it is absolutely free for the producer. There's no cost. It is a storefront. So it's a great way to have a website that you can use that storefront of REKO through the app or if they're on a computer it goes through a website and

03:54
Sorry, my computer just notified me it's low. So anyways, but either way we can go, the producers aren't paying for it. There is a small fee that's asked from the customer at checkout and that's how the app is paid for. So we have a lot of producers here that have really taken advantage of that and created websites with that.

04:22
with REKO built in as the purchasing power for their website. So it saves our producers money on fees. It saves our producers money on having a storefront that's online, right? Because I know for our particular business, we have our own website and we set it up with WooCommerce years before REKO app was ever available. And we pay a lot of money for that every year. So

04:50
It is REKO. The app is definitely set up with producers in mind and it is a free tool for producers when that is When we talk about the farmers when we talk about the farmers market here in Idaho We have created a collaboration of vendors that have come together as REKO Treasure Valley And we actually created a farmers market out of it. So it's an online farmers market

05:17
We do charge, if you were to participate in all eight locations, it is $30 a month. So it's still very affordable. That $30 a month that we all pitch in goes to advertising the farmers market. So that's literally the only thing it pays for, but it's been a great resource for us as producers to come together and have, to help all of us, right? When the tide rises, we all rise. So.

05:46
Yes, I believe that completely. Okay, so are you a producer too? Do you grow things and sell things? I, we do. My husband and I own and operate HIPWA ranch, which we, probably 80% of our business is beef and then just over the years, we have listened to our customers and started producing chicken and pork and we raise farm fresh eggs as well. Nice.

06:14
How's your flock doing? Because there's been all this bird flu stuff. Is your chicken flock doing OK? Yeah. You know, our flock is totally happy and healthy. They're not enjoying the cold at the moment, so they have cut production due to the cold. But as far as health, everybody's looking really healthy and good. Good. I just saw another story come through my newsfeed this morning that another big chicken producing or egg producing place has gone down due to.

06:43
Due to bird flu, I'm like, we're not gonna have any eggs here soon, because we had chickens, but we got rid of them, so we don't want to feed them through the winter. That was a very stupid idea. We should not have gotten rid of our chickens. I'm really regretting our choices right now.

06:59
Yeah, nope, that's a little bit of a painful one with the current economic situation of eggs for sure. Yes, and it was a choice between feeding them all winter with the price of feed being high and maybe getting a couple eggs a week or just getting rid of them. We only had 12 and starting over in the spring. And I was like, sure, go ahead, get rid of them. That's fine.

07:24
And then all this birth food stuff really kicked in shortly after we called our chickens. And I was like, we're dumb. My husband was laughing. I'm like, you know, that's one thing about homesteading and doing that stuff on your own is you live and learn, right? We make decisions and we learn like, oh, maybe that wasn't the best decision. We do it different the next time. So when you know more, you do better. So yes, yes. That's cool.

07:48
We're going to do a new experiment this spring. We're going to get actual chicks this year, baby chickens. Oh yeah. We've had, we've bought laying hens up until now. And my husband was like, I'd really like to try getting a couple of day old chicks and, and doing it from there through. And I was like, are you sure? He was like, he's like, it'll be fun. And I'm like, okay, if there's a fun element, I'm in. It'll be fun or a nightmare, but

08:18
12 would be high fun. I bet that would be fun. I just want to hold one of the baby chickens because I've held baby ducks and I know how soft they are, but I've never held a chick. So it'll be my opportunity to try that next. Awesome. Okay. So how many people are involved with this Rico thing that you guys have set up for your area? We fluctuate by seasons, but as far as producers, we'll have anywhere from 10 to 20 producers.

08:47
throughout the year that participate in Ricoh. And then as far as customers, that's a hard number for me to gauge because I don't have access to that information. But I can tell you that, I mean, I know we probably have several hundred throughout the valley that shop with Ricoh Treasure Valley specifically. And so we are trying to grow that. We're trying to reduce the friction with the Ricoh app.

09:17
Because we figure as local producers, that's nine-tenths of the problem, right, is reducing friction. So consumers need to know where the farms are first, and how to purchase. And then once they figure that out, then it's a convenience factor of making it easy to purchase. And Ricoh does all of those things. It puts everybody in one spot so people can come and they can shop from all 10 to 20 producers.

09:45
and pay one checkout fee and then they show up to one location for a 15 minute pickup window. So our producers that do produce or those sensitive things that don't last forever, they love this model because they're only picking what's been pre-ordered. So all of our orders come in pre-ordered and end up...

10:12
going out to specific locations for a 15 minute pickup window. So we hit three different locations on one day and four different locations on another day. And then our last drop is on Thursdays and that's out in Mountain Home, which is about 45 minutes from most of our other drops. That's wonderful. The friction word that you keep using, I keep reading a lot about friction with people trying to buy things.

10:42
To me, friction is what happens when I run my finger over sandpaper or drag my...