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My Digital Farmer Podcast
285 Boost Your Farm's Revenue with Value-Added Products: Insights from Kendall Ballantine
01:02:21
Are you creating value-added products and selling them in your farm business? After hearing this episode, you may decide to get started! "Value-added" refers to any agricultural products that have been processed or enhanced in a way that increases...
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- [00:00]
Corinna Bench
Are you looking to sell products with a high profit margin? Then value added products is where it's at. And in today's episode, I have a guest who's going to walk us through exactly how to get started with value added products on our farm. This is going to be a good one. Let's get started. Hey there. This is Corinna Bench and welcome to.
- [00:25]
Kendall Ballantyne
The My Digital Farmer Podcast. In today's market, it's not enough to.
- [00:31]
Corinna Bench
Just grow your product. You've got to know how to sell it, too. Welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast.
- [00:38]
Kendall Ballantyne
Where we reveal online marketing strategies and.
- [00:41]
Corinna Bench
Tips to help farmers like you get better and more confident at marketing, learn how to find more customers, increase your.
- [00:48]
Kendall Ballantyne
Sales, and build a strong brand for your farm.
- [00:52]
Corinna Bench
Let's start the show. Hello, welcome to episode 280. Welcome back to 85 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast. I am your host, Corinna Bench, one of the farmers at Shared Legacy Farms out in Elmore, Ohio. I'm also the founder of My Digital Farmer, which is all about trying to help other farmers like you get more confident in your marketing and sales strategy so that you can grow a profitable business online. Welcome to the show. How's everyone doing today? Big shout out to all of my regular listeners. And if you're new to the podcast, I'm really glad you're here today. Make sure you subscribe to the show and go check out my first 10 episodes, especially if you're new to the marketing space because I designed them to be an onboarding into the marketing lingo. I also encourage you to get onto my email list because when you do, I'm basically going to give you a crash course in marketing. I'm going to drop an email in your inbox about every five days for like three months and it's going to walk you through the marketing jungle. It's really good. It gets high reviews, so you can subscribe to that by going to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe Today's episode is sponsored by my friends at Localline. Switch to local Line and grow your farm to new heights this season. Local Line is the most comprehensive sales software built for farmers and food hubs. Its features include e commerce, automated inventory management, subscriptions, a website builder, point of sale, and more, helping you increase your sales and streamline your processes. So whether you're a CSA farmer or you sell meat, you run a food hub. Or maybe you sell wholesale or offer a herd share. Local Line has the tools and features that you need to succeed.
- [02:42]
Kendall Ballantyne
We're a big fan.
- [02:44]
Corinna Bench
Are you looking to switch to a sales software that does it? All subscriptions start as low as $49 a month with no setup fees or sales percentages. That's huge for me. Plus, if you join Local Line today, your onboarding manager will migrate your storefront at no cost so you can be up and running in no time, even in the middle of the season. As a bonus, if you are a podcast listener, Local Line is also offering a free premium feature for one year with your subscription when you use my coupon code MDF2024. So go to mydigitalfarmer.com localline and then enter the coupon code MDF2024. Make the switch today. And now back to the show. Hello everyone. I'm back. This episode is dropping on my birthday. Isn't that exciting? The day before Halloween, all of you in North America tomorrow you're going to be trick or treating. Happy Halloween everyone. Hope you're having an amazing fall. We have wrapped up our CSA and we are starting to close down the farm here over the next few weeks. We're saying Goodbye to our H2A crew. They're flying back to Mexico here in three or four days and ah, taking a breather. It feels really nice. Today I have a really great guest on the show. She's been on the show before. It's Kendall Ballantyne, who is the CEO of Marketing for farmers, but she also has an amazing farm business and she's a little bit of an expert in value added products and she and I have been friends for several years. She was actually on the show before and she talked all about how to crush it with Instagram stories. I'll make sure I link up that episode in the show notes if you want to go back and listen to it. But I reached out to her and asked her if she would come onto the show and talk about her amazing value added products gig that she has going on at Central Park Farms. She is crushing it. Like, crushing it. And if you want to learn how to do value added, she is the woman to learn it from. This next hour is going to be like a mini training. So if you've ever wondered, how do I get started with value added? She's going to walk you through all of these steps and she's going to share her story, how she did it, and I think you might even be inspired, as I have been, to take her template and try to use that to get you started on your own farm business. Now there are going to be a ton of resources available to you in the show notes today, which you can get@mydigitalfarmer.com 285 so be sure to check that out. If you don't know who Kendall is, I'm going to read her bio here in a second. But she is also, in addition to being a farmer at Central Park Farms, she is also a really good teacher and influencer in the farm marketing space. So she has a lot of farmers that follow her and learn from her, kind of like me and are getting better and better at how to build their marketing machine. So if you want to follow another influencer and get better at farm marketing, she's another person you should know about and you should be following her. So I'll make sure all of her links are linked up in the show notes. Again, that's@mydigitalfarmer.com 285 but she's definitely someone you want to get on her email list. Okay, so let me introduce you to Kendyl. Let me read you her bio. Kendall is a proud farmer and the business owner behind Central Park Farms in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. She grew the annual revenue of her small scale farm to table business well into the six figures all through the power of digital marketing and without spending a dime on ads. Now Central Park Farms employs a small team and is a growing direct to consumer producer of beef, pork and chicken. Value added products now make up about 25% of her farm's annual revenue, having won Farmers Market Vendor of the year from the BC association of Farmers Markets and the under 40 entrepreneur of the Year award from the Greater Langley Chamber of Commerce. Her passion is in helping other farmers and food producers gain the tools to grow their businesses for long term sustainability. So without further ado, please join me as we welcome Kendall Ballantyne to the show.
- [07:21]
Kendall Ballantyne
Well Kendall, welcome back to the show.
- [07:25]
C
Thank you so much for having me again.
- [07:27]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah, it's been a while since you've been on and I want you to introduce yourself to my audience just in case there's a small chance people don't know who you are. So give us a little bit of your background, what you do, how you help farmers.
- [07:42]
C
So my name is Kendall Ballentine. Primarily, first and foremost I am a farmer. I own a business called Central Park Farms that is in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. So about 45 minutes outside of Vancouver. We specialize in grass fed beef, pasture raised pork, free range chicken and we do a line of prepared foods that is chef crafted and a line of raw dog Food. So that is our main business. And then I also own a company called Marketing for Farmers where I help other farmers gain the tools to grow their businesses online. So that's kind of me in a nutshell. We've been doing the farming thing for about 10 years now. We initially started out as a farmers market vendor. We were doing a lot of events and agritourism. Now we sell in a retail store off of our farm. And the vast majority of what we do is also through a subscription model and we do home delivery of from our E commerce store of all of our products.
- [08:35]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah. So there are so many places we could go with you. But I specifically asked you to come onto the show to talk about value added products because you're a little bit of an expert in that area. At least in my opinion, much more so than I am. So if you don't mind, I really want to kind of focus most of our conversation on that today. And I'm sure we'll bring in some of the other elements of your business as you do that. But let's I guess start out by defining what value added products even are because I have a lot of beginners that listen to the show and they may not even know what that means. And then why are they important for a direct to consumer farm business?
- [09:20]
C
Yeah, so I love that we're talking about that because Value Add products has literally changed the trajectory of my business. So when we first started out, we are now a staff half of nine. My husband's full time in the business, my mom is full time in the business. But it started out as just a business that I opened 10 years ago. And I got to the point where I knew I needed help. I was so busy, but I wanted to bring in some additional revenue because I needed that money to be able to hire somebody else to come and join me. But like so many farms, when you are at capacity, like how do you generate more revenue if you are already doing as much as you can? So value add is the concept of looking at what are you already producing and how can you change that or modify that product that you're already producing to make more revenue from it. So for us it's a line of frozen prepared foods, but for a vegetable producer, maybe it is pickled carrots and salsa that's jarred or jams or things like that. You're already growing the vegetables. Now how can you take what you're already growing and increase the margins on it by making a change and being able to sell that additional product. To your customer. Customers, yes.
- [10:28]
Kendall Ballantyne
So well stated. So you shared a few examples of what a value added product could be, but can you maybe give a few more that. I know you've, you work with a lot of farmers in your farm business collective, but could you give some examples of other or maybe more common value added products that you see really bringing in the revenue that are consistent that people, a lot of people love that are very popular?
- [10:53]
C
Well, for meat producers and where we started was bone broth. Like that was just something you end up with all the bones left over from doing the butchery. And a lot of times you can't sell them as easily or you're selling them almost for like a, such a low price that then you can turn it into a value add product. Take for example how we started. We ended up doing chicken bone broth and it's because we ended up with so many chicken frames when we were breaking down our whole birds. And yes, I can sell them to people who want to make bone broth, but we had so many of them that we were trying to sell. And so instead of selling them at two bucks a pound, I would take them, get our chef to turn them into bone broth, and then I'd sell a package of it for 1495. We'd be increasing our margin on that singular product by almost 80% and actually could move them instead of having a product that we were struggling and almost at the point where like we needed to give them away towards the end because it's like otherwise I've got to pay disposal on them and it seems so wasteful. Now I've increased my margin by 80% turning it into bone broth. So you can be kind of as, as entry level as that. Or I see, you know, flower farmers that are growing specific flowers that can be used for dried tea blends and they are creating this line of dried teas or maybe they're doing tinctures, but with what they're growing. Or they could be a vegetable farmer that's doing canned goods or dehydrated apples, making apple chips. I stop at a farm on my way to the ranch all the time and I buy their pickled carrots. They do pickled carrots, they do corn salsa, they do apple chips. And I end up stopping for those items and then they get me with their fresh vegetables while I'm in the farm store. But I'm stopping because I want the apple chips for my husband and then I end up buying their primary production products. But it was the value add that got me in there.
- [12:42]
Kendall Ballantyne
I think sometimes it works the other way around too, though, where you go in for the vegetables and then while you're in the store, you see the value add and you're like, oh. And you add that on. So it just becomes another thing to put in your product ladder to attract a certain kind of person. Yeah, do. Does anything. What comes to mind for you, like for a vegetable grower, what are some common value added that you know, work well?
- [13:06]
C
So there's different things. Like you could do scape salt. So if you're growing garlic and you get the scapes, you can do the dehydrated scapes and make it into a scape salt. You can do things like, you know, the pickles. You can do different chutneys, which are great. There's lots of different options that you can take that become a product that you can also sell in the off season. Like when we talk about preserves, those are things that if you're struggling to find a product that'll bring you through winter, maybe that allows you to do a winter farmers market or a Christmas market. And maybe you're using that chutney that you made as something that someone can buy for a stocking stuffer that now gets you in front of them and you can start promoting your CSA that's not going to be available to the spring. So, like, we can sometimes use it as a product that is helping us from a marketing capacity, and sometimes we can use it as a product that's just a revenue driver. But it's that nice balance of having some more things to offer to our community.
- [14:04]
Kendall Ballantyne
I didn't even think of that. So I love that you brought that up, that it becomes a marketing. A marketing tool in some cases. Another excuse to reach out and email your list or bring up your farm or something that we do. Even just the gifting element, it opens up a whole nother audience of buyers.
- [14:24]
C
And that's what prepared foods became for me because I was. I actually was selling at a market that, you know, a girlfriend of mine was involved in the PR for this new market. And everybody was talking about it. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go to this market. And then I realized really quickly that their target audience was not my ideal customer. They were all really young. They didn't necessarily know how to cook a whole roaster chicken. It was just a demographic that didn't fit with, like, my selling frozen meat and having to put in a lot of effort to cook it. But I was like, man, If I can get some frozen dinners in front of this crowd, I'll be able to sell those. Because they're coming home, they're really busy, they're young, they want to throw in a frozen chicken pot pie. Makes it easy. It actually opened up. Not only did it add benefit to my current customer base, but it helped me get an entirely different ideal customer and customer base. People who want to eat healthy, they want to eat local, they want to attend a farmer's market and buy their stuff, but they just don't have maybe the same cooking skills. Maybe they don't have the same time freedom to be able to spend time in the kitchen, but they get to kind of check those boxes for themselves because we have that prepared foods line.
- [15:29]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah. So where do you even start? Like, where does the idea even come from? So I guess I'm trying to imagine if I were a farmer, and I was like, okay, I want to get into value added. Like, where do you look to even begin to identify what you could turn into value add? Right. Like, how does this start?
- [15:48]
C
So for me, it was because we were actually supplying product to a chef, to a local chef, and he was using it in his kitchen. And then he sold some frozen meals because he really hates waste in his kitchen. So if he had a little extra of something, he'd turn it into some frozen dinners that he would sell out of the restaurant. Like, he'd have. He had a little glass front in his restaurant, and I kept buying them back because I needed those kinds of meals. I was like, I'm working too hard on the farm to then turn around and feed my family McDonald's. Like, I'm creating all this delicious food for everyone else, and then I'm eating food that doesn't align with what makes my body feel good. So I kept going to Adrian, and I'm like, can you just drop me off some of those meals when you come and pick up your next, you know, batch of chickens that you need? And I started eating them. I was loving them. And then all of a sudden, I was getting so busy on the farm, and I just couldn't imagine producing the revenue. Like, I knew I needed the help, but I couldn't produce. The cost of increasing my herd was too much. I was too new into farming to be able to figure out how to produce more. I was too tired to produce more. And I thought, well, these meals are making it really convenient for me, and if I love them as much as I do, my customers probably would feel the same. So I reached out to Adrian. And I said, chef, like, can you make broth for me? We have so many chicken backs. So it started with just broth, Then it turned into broth and chicken pot pies, and that was it. That was all we were offering. And they were selling like crazy. It was helping us move more product, and we were making a much healthier margin on those products than if I was just selling whole roaster chickens. So it was really something from a marketing standpoint that I leaned into heavily. Like, I. I pushed chicken pot pies more than whole roaster chickens because I knew I could make a better margin on it. And because a chef was doing it for me, there was no additional output of effort for me. I got to market my product anyways. I got to sell my product anyways, so why not lean into marketing the product that's giving me the biggest return with no additional work on my end? Which was why partnering with a chef to do our line really took a lot of the risk away. I didn't have to go find a commercial kitchen. I didn't have to try to develop my own recipes. It was really something that allowed me to test the system without a big output of expense for me and risk, because if it didn't work, it doesn't work. And I go along with continuing to sell, and, you know, I eat some chicken pot pies and all the world is fine. So there really wasn't an output of financials or time effort for me. It was really nice to be able to partner with Adrian for that.
- [18:25]
Kendall Ballantyne
As I'm listening to you tell this story, I'm noticing a couple of other elements. Like, first of all, the fact that you had a problem to solve for yourself, you were motivated to handle. Well, let's talk about the bones. You had all these bones.
- [18:44]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [18:45]
Kendall Ballantyne
And you couldn't move the bones. So there was this problem of, what do I do with these bones? And so all of a sudden, your mind starts working in the background, like, what are the options? What are the options? Right. And then you have the other problem of, I'm too busy, I can't make my own meals. And you realize. You connect the dots and realize, I know there's a lot of other people who have that same problem. I have these bones. I can maybe test this idea out on the market and see if it works. And you had this. I guess the other thing I want to say that I noticed is that you had a trial period. Right. You. You saw that it was working for you, but you. There was really no risk in you testing it out on your customer, you got a positive feedback loop from it and you're like, wow, now what else can I add to the value added ladder?
- [19:31]
C
Right?
- [19:32]
Kendall Ballantyne
Like, what else would would this customer buy if they're buying pot pies? Have you added other things since then?
- [19:39]
C
Oh, we have probably 40 to 45 prepared foods options now. We actually started an entire subscription model for prepared food called Chef's Club. So it automatically charges every month the customer gets a collection of prepared meals delivered. It's really great. We marketed a lot to adults who maybe have senior parents that are still living at their home. And we sell in different sizes. So we do an individual, we do a regular. But if you've got aging parents, what a beautiful gift to give to them. Is these products delivered to their home so that they can cook in a safe manner, in a healthy manner. They can take care of themselves while they're still in their home. We get lots of university students who pick up our products because. Or their parents pick up the products because they can throw our chicken wings that are pre done in an air fryer in their dorm room. So like we really, wow. When a new mom, we push it for like when a new mom gives birth, like, why not gift them these beautiful prepared foods that are healthy and nourishing and then she just gets to throw it in the oven and doesn't have to try to make food from scratch. Like we, we really market and think about how can this, I mean, also busy soccer mom. Like, there's so many different people that can benefit from this product and it allows us to really develop that out. We used to only do products that had our meat in them. Now we do mashed potato side dishes. We do all sorts of things at Christmas. We do everything but the turkey. So we do everything but the ham, everything but the prime rib. And then we do all the side dishes. So Adrian will do everything. It's all by pre order at Christmas. So we have zero risk in things not selling. We pre sell the product. Then Adrian knows exactly how many things mashed potatoes and how many things a gravy to make. He does the desserts, we do a fresh salad. And then the day before people come and then they just cook their Central park farms meat. And then they have all their side dishes that are basically take and bake for their Christmas and holiday meal.
- [21:36]
Kendall Ballantyne
So this is benefiting Adrian big time too, for sure.
- [21:40]
C
Adrian was operating as a restaurant and he didn't want to be doing the restaurant and have those crazy hours anymore. Now he does prepared foods. He is. He sold his restaurant off. He works out of a commissary kitchen now. He works during the day. It's really beneficial for him. We do a ton of work together. We've got a great partnership. He's done prepared foods for other businesses as well. But we kind of. We're his biggest partner and he. We have exclusive recipes with him. But it's, you know, he works for a local fish farm that he does, like, some, you know, crab cakes and stuff like that for them. But we do a ton of prepared foods with him. And it's just a wonderful relationship that developed from, you know, two products at the very beginning, probably nine years ago now. And now he just, you know, we've got a shared spreadsheet on our computer, and we every Monday do inventory into there. And then he looks at what's getting low, and he sends us a text message that says, hey, I need 50 pounds of this, 100 pounds of this. I'll be there on Thursday. He drops off his product, he picks up the meat. And it's become an extension of our farm. Like, it's. We're both independent businesses. We both cross market and cross promote each other. But we. He is an extent. He has the codes to the freezers. He's an extension of our business.
- [22:56]
Kendall Ballantyne
Wow. Okay. I had all these questions prepared for this. Now I'm like, this is going in a direction I never thought. This is super cool. What a novel. This is reminding me of the Schwann man a little bit. Do you have. Do you even know.
- [23:10]
C
So funny. Jess and I just. From Moose Valley Ranch, and I were just talking about that because she's like, you need to get one of those trucks and do your deliveries like that. We had that conversation probably two weeks ago.
- [23:21]
Kendall Ballantyne
Oh, that's so funny. I remember when I first had my kids, I was like leaning on the Schwann man a lot in that season of my life because I just could not find time to cook. It was crazy. So you have. You have then such a huge potential customer base because. And different avatars. So you've got people that are. Who are going to come and buy your cuts of meat, who are really into cooking their own stuff, grilling, whatever. But then you've got this whole other group who frankly isn't into that and just needs the quality of the ingredient, but they just really appreciate someone cooking for them. And they can just heat it and eat it. Heat it and eat it.
- [24:03]
C
Yes, 100%. And then the nice thing is, because we've ventured into some of these side dish options too. There is no limit to what we can produce there because it doesn't have my product in it. So I don't have to be able like the, the potatoes and the scones and all that. It doesn't have meat in it. So it I can sell. No, like there's no limit to what I can do. Adrian can hire more staff, but I don't have to increase my cattle herd size to be able to sell that, which is such a beautiful thing for us. And it's the reason that we've been able to grow our farming end of things in a sustainable way where we didn't have to push too far. It wasn't holding us back. Like when we got to kind of the point where we can't comfortably produce more than what we had. Awesome. Let's add some potatoes, let's add some gravy. And the people who are buying our cuts of meat. I can't tell you how convenient it is to have frozen mashed potatoes inside your freezer, even if you're a from scratch cooker. Because Adrian makes things without like, it doesn't have preservatives, it doesn't have anything in it. But those nights where you're like, dang, I don't have enough produce in the fridge. You can still cook from scratch, but you can grab a gravy out of the freezer and you can grab mashed potatoes out of the freezer and just fills that like that. One thing you're missing out of your menu that you didn't need to go to the grocery store for.
- [25:20]
Corinna Bench
Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School. This is my monthly membership where farmers can come in and build marketing assets one at a time. Special 30 day build projects that I've created for you. There are currently over 14 different projects inside of Farm Marketing School, including your website homepage, building a promo calendar, building a promotional email challenge testimonial and reviews.
- [25:47]
Kendall Ballantyne
How to build a better offer. Your email nurture sequence, your lead magnet.
- [25:51]
Corinna Bench
There's a sales funnel audit, There's a.
- [25:52]
Kendall Ballantyne
Ton of good stuff in there and.
- [25:53]
Corinna Bench
I'm adding new material every couple of months. Plus you get a monthly zoom meetup with the whole group in the middle of the month and we'll be doing some book studies off in the fall. I'm really there just to try and empower you and help you get your marketing assets built. So the way this works is you subscribe from month to month. You can cancel whenever you want. You Go in, you take the assessment. There's also a crash course in marketing that you can watch to just learn the lingo and the vocabulary and the framework and then you get started building your first marketing asset. Every project includes a hour long tutorial, a resource folder that gives you lots of templates and examples to help make the process of actually building your own version really fast, and also a project planner to help you time it out and make sure you get everything done. If you want to learn more about how to join Farm Marketing School and try it out, you can go to mydigitalfarmer.com f this is my new kind of flagship offer my community that I'm going to really be pouring myself into over the next 6 to 12 months. Really excited about it. So I'd love to interact with you. Join@mydigitalfarmer.com FMS and now back to the show.
- [27:10]
Kendall Ballantyne
What are the patterns that you see in terms of how the customer moves through your brand?
- [27:16]
Corinna Bench
Now?
- [27:16]
Kendall Ballantyne
Do you find that they start out with a certain product and then they begin to buy this product too and then they come back and now they're in your subscription or like kind of. What's the. I'm also just thinking numbers too. You don't have to share specifics, but I'm imagining I'm an open book. I'm imagining that the customer value, like the, that the average amount that they spend over the course of a year continues to go higher and higher the longer they're with you. So like what does that typical trajectory look like?
- [27:45]
C
So a lot of times initially when we were meat only, we were bringing in kind of like a middle aged woman was my ideal customer. She was coming in, she knows how to cook for her family, she cares about it. When we added prepared foods, she would dabble into the prepared foods. But then what we saw is all of a sudden her adult kids were coming in with her to the farm store. So she was like, you gotta come because these. And then they were buying all the prepared foods or suddenly their senior parents were coming to the farm with them. And it was almost like that ideal customer that I had that knew how to cook became our selling for her family to buy from us on those other products which maybe, you know, the 22 year old hasn't maybe heard of us because that's not who's following me on Instagram, that's not who subscribed to my newsletter. But it was through that ideal customer that I had for meat that she was starting to say, well don't worry about. You can go here and you can get your prepared foods done. Like pick up some already pre cooked this. And then we were starting to get those customers coming through. And once we can get somebody in the door, we're really good at being able to give customers who maybe aren't as comfortable with the idea of cooking meat, we can give them tips like, here's a really great product to start out with. Why don't you grab some sausages, here's a meat thermometer. Like this is how you cook it. Like we're good. Once we can get you in the door, once we can get you on Instagram, once we can get you into the farm store, we can teach you and give you some confidence in how to cook the meat. But if you can't get in the, if you don't come in the door because you have that feeling that you don't know how to do it, so you get discouraged. And so why, why look for farm that sells meat if you don't feel super confident in the kitchen, you're just going to buy whatever meat it is that you're going to try at the grocery store. So prepared foods really helped us bring in a new demographic and give them the confidence that they can try other things.
- [29:34]
Kendall Ballantyne
Do you have a product that you're trying to get everyone to land on? Like all roads lead to.
- [29:40]
C
So. So for prepared foods, our number one seller is our chicken pot pies. Like that is the product that, that everybody comes back to, everybody tries. We find that with prepared foods. We've done a lot of different testing because we do standalone like we do our ones that are never going to leave. Chicken pot pie is a never going to leave. Those ones are always on our menu. And then we play around with seasonal offerings. So Adrian sources direct from local farms. So when asparagus season is in and he's buying asparagus and he's using that in his other stuff where he's making asparagus, pickled asparagus for in a salad, he'll take the ends of the asparagus and he'll turn it into asparagus soup. So keep in mind for my vegetable producers, you can do a prepared foods line that has soups and things like that. So he takes the ends of the asparagus and so that there's no kitchen waste, he turns it into asparagus soup. Well, I might only get 20 bags of that. And so it's a limited edition. We make sure we keep our packaging. People think that you have to have all this fancy branding and packaging and labels. We don't. We print our labels out of a brother printer that sticks into the back of the computer. They are not pretty, they are not fancy, but it allows us to be really adaptable to what's in season, what we can do in a small batch. And a lot of times those 20 bags of asparagus soup become something that's like limited edition. And there's a little bit of scarcity there that you're grabbing it while it's in season. And I can say to them, well, I got it from this farm. Like, the asparagus came from this local farm. And it gives us a little cross promotion because that farm shares that the asparagus soup that we're selling is their asparagus. And it creates this nice little marketing ecosystem. But ultimately, we find our comfort food items, like our pot pies, our lasagnas, our shepherd's pies, they always sell the best. Gotcha.
- [31:31]
Kendall Ballantyne
And you have a subscription, then you said too. How does that work? Is that something that you ultimately want them to land on, or do most of them not choose that option?
- [31:40]
C
To be honest, most people choose to just buy individual items. We did the chef's club because it was something that Adrian and Shannon really wanted to have. Shannon is his wife, and they together make up salt and thyme. So Adrian and Shannon really wanted. Because we have a very successful meat subscription option, they really wanted us to try doing a prepared foods subscription. And it works great, and we've got lots of families in it, but there is no customization that happens inside of that program. So a lot of times that is one thing with prepared foods is that there's a little bit like, if you don't like fennel, you might not like my pasta sauce. And so there's a bit more where people have certain tastes for prepared foods versus if you're just buying whole roaster chickens. For me, you think the chicken's good, and there's not usually a lot of complaints. Yeah, you don't get complaints per se, but people get favorite products, and then there's products they could do without, just like when you go and eat at a restaurant. So I do find there's a bit more of a hurdle for something like a chef's club where it is, you know, you get one of the pies, you get two of this, you get three side dishes, two desserts, and a flavor of scones. If you don't like blueberries and you get blueberry scones, there's no Alteration for that. So it's definitely easier to sell people on the individual items.
- [33:00]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah.
- [33:02]
C
The reason that the subscription works is for gifting. That's what we find. The subscription works best if you're buying the subscription for somebody else.
- [33:09]
Kendall Ballantyne
Okay, so back to just product development. You said you have how many different.
- [33:14]
Corinna Bench
Frozen products was it?
- [33:16]
C
80? We're probably up to, like, 45 to 50, depending on the season.
- [33:21]
Kendall Ballantyne
Right.
- [33:22]
C
But we have, like, in our farm store, we have multiple glass front freezers that are, you know, merchandise as individual products.
- [33:28]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah. And so you're probably tracking the results of these sales so that the next year you can plan on. Whoa.
- [33:34]
C
This.
- [33:35]
Kendall Ballantyne
This did really well. We need to make sure we have that again.
- [33:38]
C
Yes.
- [33:39]
Kendall Ballantyne
Let's not do this one again. Nobody bought it.
- [33:41]
C
Hungarian pepper stew did not sell well for us. Like, there are sometimes where. And. And I think, too, because we have to remember that some of these side dishes and some of these items, if you ate it at Adrian's restaurant, you would love it, because Adrian knows how to plate it, and he knows what to pair with it, and he knows how to cook the pork tenderloin in the Hungarian pepper stew. And it's delicious. But when somebody doesn't understand, like, there is sometimes a learning curve for some of the products. So really we find comfort foods, and so we sometimes we try those products, and we're like, I'll send Adrian a note in our spreadsheet where it says, hungarian pepper stew. I'm like, I loved it, but please, never again. So, you know, we have. We have developed a relationship with Adrian through the years that we give him a lot more flexibility, ability than I would recommend most farms give, at least in the beginning. Because I understood Adrian's restaurant. I knew Adrian well. We give him freedom of, like, make what you think makes sense. Let's try it. Don't give me 75 of them right off the bat, but sometimes he'll bring me something, and I'm like, that just isn't. Like, I. I can't sell Hungarian pepper stew the way that I can sell bacon Mac and cheese. So sometimes he'll bring me a product. But. But through trial and error, we have found a lot of really good products, too.
- [35:01]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah. Keyword there being trial and error. That you have to really embrace that. That's part of this product development process. Right?
- [35:08]
C
It is.
- [35:09]
Kendall Ballantyne
And you're going to have some losers.
- [35:11]
C
Yeah.
- [35:11]
Kendall Ballantyne
Just as you.
- [35:12]
C
And it happens.
- [35:13]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah.
- [35:13]
C
And it doesn't mean that the product's not good. It can just be that it's A product name.
- [35:18]
Kendall Ballantyne
I was going to say not named.
- [35:20]
C
Right or not named right or, or. I have failed at a marketing end of things of experience explaining how to use a certain product or what to pair with it. And that is the problem. When you have as many products as we have, it's hard to talk about every one of the products. When I only did. We started out with the broth and the chicken pot pie, and then we added shepherd's pie and lasagna. When I only had those four items, I could talk about them all day long. People really got it. But when all of a sudden you've got, you know, cream of mushroom soup and a Hungarian pepper stew and stuff, I mean, there's only so many times I can, like, can talk about each individual item to be able to give people the pairing instructions if it's not really common.
- [35:59]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah, yeah. And there's. There is probably that element of you can have too many products, right. The product overwhelm and you have to kind of walk that line. Do you. Do you find that there's a. A magic number in terms of how much they want to spend? Do they come in with like, I'm going to spend 150 bucks or whatever the number is, and that's sort of how it lands.
- [36:18]
C
Or when somebody comes into our farm store, our average customer sale is $123. Now, that is a combination between customers who come and just buy eggs from us. So our numbers end up being pretty skewed. Overall, prepared food make foods makes up. Last year, it made up 23% of our sales. So it's not the lion's share of what we do. However, we are also a very. Like, we sell a lot. So 23% is a lot of revenue dollars that come into our business. And the way we price prepared foods is that I get the full retail value of the meat that's in it, plus a margin. So I'm not doing a wholesale. Despite the fact that when I sold to Adrian when he was doing his restaurant, I sold to him in wholesale. When it comes to prepared foods, Adrian tells me exactly how much meat goes into each one. I calculate based on the retail value of the meat going into it, and then I add a margin. I want to see at least. At least 35%. In most cases, I'm more in the 42 to 50% markup on top of my retail value. So I'm already making the money on the meat. But I don't want to lose my retail value on the meat because I can Sell ground beef. I'll sell out of ground beef in a retail environment. So I don't want to shortchange myself when I put it into prepared food. So just having Adrian pick up those products for me and make them, I'm increasing my margins by at minimum, I think my lowest right now is 38%.
- [37:50]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah, I can see why you would. Why you would want to actually try to sell more value added then, like if you have the choice between both, you're trying to move the customer to the value added products. For sure. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about common mistakes that you see farmers making when they're introducing a value added product.
- [38:11]
C
I think sometimes there's not enough trial at the beginning, and I think that sometimes farmers will go all in on the concept before they've made sure that there's a market demand for it. I certainly think we can create market demand, but I think going into it and just deciding you're going to do this and you're like, hey, I'm going to start doing preserves and you're going to lean way in and buy all the equipment and you're going to rent the commissary kitchen and all of those things. Perhaps reaching out to somebody who's already operating inside of that space and hiring them as a contractor to create some of it and try it for one season. And then if you're like, this is selling, great, awesome. Now invest. We had a similar situation when we started doing raw dog food, which is also a value add product that we do. We bought small equipment. Did it mean it was the most efficient? Absolutely not. But we didn't know if the. If it was going to sell. We didn't know how well it would do. So Jay and I were in there with like a tabletop commercial grinder grinding meat. Yeah, it took longer, but we could test it without the same upfront financial commitment. Instead of buying a $15,000 grinder mixer like we have now and a $15,000 stuffer, we were just making it work with what we could afford at the time, testing it out, making sure there was a model in there. And then we said, okay, this is working. We can sell this product. Now, if we make X, Y and Z changes, we can increase efficiency or we can step up production and it will pay itself back in this amount of time. This is going to work for us as a long term.
- [39:45]
Kendall Ballantyne
That's a good one. Any other mistakes that you see in prepared foods?
- [39:49]
C
Often packaging. So prepared foods. I think that there's a lot of Trial and error. If you've never done prepared foods before, trying some products that are not going to travel well. Like, you have to consider how you sell your products to figure out what's going to fit. I'll never sell anything that comes in glass because we do delivery. You're never going to see me with a, with a jarred preserve because when I package, I put frozen meat and prepared foods together. I need to know those things are going to survive each other in transport because I don't want quality control issues when it gets to the other end that these items are broken. So I look at things like how's the packaging going to hold up in the freezer? How is the packaging going to hold up when it's put in with a bunch of other stuff? With how we do deliveries, how is, how are these products going to work with what we're already selling? Is it so different from what we're already selling that we're going to have to get an entirely new customer base for it? If you're a flower farmer who sells florals, just a wedding florists and suddenly you're going to do dried tea. Those are different customers. Yeah, those. Yeah. Your florist might buy some of your tea, but it's not going to be enough to sustain that entire avenue of your business. So trying to find things that are not totally far off of each other, particularly if you're somebody who doesn't love marketing and if you don't love getting customers in the first place, trying to keep something as close as possible. Like I said, those middle aged women that were buying meat from me became sellers for me because they were telling everyone about these products. If they weren't even close to the same customer, then I would have to be marketing, putting my marketing efforts into something wildly different.
- [41:30]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah, what about like exploring networking partnerships with other farms and businesses and being like, I will sell you my prepared foods and will you sell them to your customers? Is that something that you see other people doing?
- [41:42]
C
Absolutely. We have a farm actually up here in the Kootenays that wants to carry our prepared foods products in her retail store. I'm not 100% sure I can get a margin right now that makes that make sense for us. We're pretty at capacity. It's one of those things I can continue to sell the products. But then we talked about earlier, like I can't produce anymore. So I looked at prepared foods. I also have to be cognizant that Adrian will only be able to produce a certain amount and yes, he brings in staff and yes, he, you know, does those kinds of things. But there is a level where a limiting factor out. Yeah, like there's a level where he taps out. So if I can sell everything that we're producing at retail value, I'm going to do that. But certainly I can cut my margins down and make room for that other farm to be able to sell our prepared foods. And that's absolutely something that can happen. Do make sure you're very aware of what the rules are around prepared foods in your area, because there are some things that, for example, in our area, if we were doing sourdough bread, you can do sourdough bread from your home, but you cannot sell it to somebody to sell in a retail store. So I might have a really great sourdough recipe and I can make it and sell it from my farm, but the second I go try to sell it to somebody else to resale, that's not allowed. So it's important to know what your regulations are. We do everything inside of a commissary kitchen, so we can do that. But sometimes that extra step can mean we need label it, labels that are different. If I go sell prepared foods into a grocery store, for example, I need to have all the nutritional breakdown and the how much protein, how much sugar, how much sodium, that would have to be on my label. And currently it doesn't need to be.
- [43:21]
Kendall Ballantyne
Now, where do you go and figure that stuff out? Like, if you wanted to know what would go on the label in your area, if it's allowed, where does. Where do you find that out?
- [43:30]
C
I went to my local health authority. So I went to my local health authority. I already have to have health authority approval to sell from my farm for meat products we have had in the past, unfortunately, we had a farmer report us for selling prepared foods to the local health authority. And they came to our farm store with their cameras and their clipboards, and they were ready to, like, bust us on it. And I was like, we're licensed to do this. So because I can't cook meat in my home kitchen, that other farm, ultimately, I think it felt like a maybe a competition thing for them. They thought we were cooking all these lasagnas and everything in our home and selling them, which we weren't. We had health authority approval through Adrian. The health authority came, they ruled in our favor. So going through the health authority and making sure that you're doing what you're supposed to do for us, that means we had to submit Adrian's floor plans to his kitchen, his food safety, his food safety plan. We have our own food safety plan, which is just Adrian's food safety plan because it's the same product. So we have all of that, and I have it in a binder in our farm store underneath the sales desk, so that if anybody comes and questions whether our prepared foods are produced in an area that they're supposed to. So when the health authority came, I took my binder out, and I was like, this is the letter from Chef Adrian that he does our prepared foods. Here's the floor plan with his, you know, food stamp on it. This is, you know, the recipes, everything. And so they came in. They're like, we have a feeling that this was perhaps done in a way just to kind of, you know, it was another farmer reporting us. So it was. It was an unfortunate. It was an unfortunate take. But you can't be doing it in your kitchen in our area. So certainly looking into your health authority regulations and your state and provincial packaging requirements, if there are labeling things, if you are selling, say, in a grocery store.
- [45:22]
Kendall Ballantyne
Right. So are there any other legal or regulatory challenges that you have to be aware of when you're doing value add?
- [45:29]
C
We. Our insurance company is aware that we do value add from a liability standpoint. Certainly there's, you know, it's prepared at Adrian's, but we have to safe handle it at our farm and sell it. So it's important to me, despite the fact that chances are it would not fall onto our insurance, it would probably fall onto Adrian's insurance. There's no way of saying whether if it was mishandled at Adrian's, because when it gets to me, it's already cooked. So the chance that the issue happens on my end is pretty slim. We keep all of our product frozen. It arrives frozen. We have freezer records with temperature records monitored every day. So the chances are slim. However, it's important as a business to have insurance. So our insurance does cover the fact that we sell raw dog food, that we sell prepared foods on top of the meat that we produce, just so that we're covered from a liability standpoint. So it's always important when you add anything new to your business, just to talk to your insurance agent.
- [46:22]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah, I. I'm just sitting here thinking. You're talking about Adrian a lot. And it seems like Adrian is a key cog in this machine.
- [46:30]
C
Yes.
- [46:30]
Kendall Ballantyne
And if I were a farmer, I would be like, how do I find an Adrian? Right.
- [46:36]
C
I would always recommend reaching out to somebody who does catering. Catering is the Good thing. So Adrian used to do event catering. And the reason I say catering is they cook all the same items in mass production to be able to do events. So there is a learning curve to doing prepared foods. Like I kind of alluded to earlier, sometimes I'll see a prepared foods, and sometimes Adrian will see them. Like, somebody will pop up. It's becoming more popular for farms to do these frozen meals. And in our area, it's becoming a lot more popular. When I first started doing them, there really wasn't very many farms, if any, that were doing this. And now we'll see it, and sometimes we'll see it, and Adrian will say, oh, did you see so and so's doing prepared foods? Not in a negative way, but he's like, man, they're doing this. That's really not going to hold up. So sometimes it's a trial that, you know, maybe the pasta dish is delicious, but once you reheat it, those tortellinis don't hold their shape anymore or something. Doesn't work well in the reheating. So Adrian does have to test that. We also test different cooking. Like, Adrian will reheat it in a toaster oven. He'll do it in a convection oven, and he'll do it in his oven at his house just to get your temperatures right. Like, it sounds like a lot of work, but Adrian just wants to make sure that if we have a product and we want to make sure if we have a product to go out to somebody. Not everybody's kitchen oven is the same. So can I make that chicken pot pie in a toaster oven? Can I make it in, you know, my convection oven? And do the times change? Because that way we can say, well, this needs to be cooked for 35 to 45 minutes. And a lot of times catering companies have the seasonal flexibility. Like, maybe you're doing your prepared foods in January. Adrian loves prepared foods in January because he's out of wedding season, he's out of Christmas. Like, we pretty much cannot count on Adrian making prepared foods for us in December because he's catering for a lot of different Christmas parties. So he'll lean in and top load us in November to get our needs for December. So we can't even think.
- [48:38]
Kendall Ballantyne
I didn't even think about that. So you don't have to be frozen foods all year long. You can decide when you want your season to be even.
- [48:46]
C
Yeah, you don't have to have them all the time. Prepared foods sell way better in the fall and winter. Way better for Once school goes back in, prepared foods ramp up to the point that when I'm marketing prepared foods through the summer, I have to be cognizant. I prepare, I sell them more as, like, these products are really great to take camping. Like, I have to think about the difference when September rolls around. I'm like, if you're a football mama, this is the best way you can pop this in the oven. You can be getting home cooked dinner on the table for your family while you're helping your kid with his homework work. That's September's marketing in August marketing. I'm like, these chicken wings are pre cooked. All you've got to do is open up the bag, throw them in a frying pan. You can do that over a fire in a campsite. Yeah, I change my marketing.
- [49:31]
Kendall Ballantyne
Let's talk about. Let's end with this discussion about marketing. That was. That's my next question. Are you looking ahead?
- [49:38]
C
I might have looked ahead at the question.
- [49:42]
Kendall Ballantyne
So why don't you share some. Some different ways the farmers can effectively market this? You, you already hinted at one. You gave very specific. You give specific scenarios and suggestions for how and when somebody might want to use these. But what are some other things you've noticed?
- [49:57]
C
I mean, everything from showing them how we're using them so they can see. Like, everybody watches my social media and they're like, kendall, I don't know how you do it. You're so busy all the time. And then in the evening, I'm taking that chicken pot pie out and I'm throwing it in and I'm showing that I'm helping Jagger with his homework, because that's just content I would share anyways. I'm helping my kid with his homework. And then I can show that chicken pot pie came out of the freezer, put it on the side of my plate, put a little fresh green salad on the side, and I had dinner done with zero effort. And I can show that to people and put a little link in my Instagram stories to go order them. And every time I do, I get an order for it. I've also had success with. We actually send out, like, almost like a promo influencer kit with prepared foods. If there's somebody in our local community who has a big following who has a baby, I'll. I'll send them a message. I'm like, hey, I would love to send you a box of our prepared foods. I know you just had a little one. It'll help take something off your plate. Every one of them shares when it comes in, they're like, oh my gosh, look what I got. Like, thank you so much, Central Park Farms. And then all of a sudden we get a bunch of people coming from that account. And I focus on ones that are hyper local and I put the emphasis on ones where I know their following is actually local. I don't look at somebody who's got 500,000 followers because I deliver within a one and a half hour radius of our farm. So I don't need that. I need the mom influencer who focuses on local events, who has a local following, and I'll do it that way. We've partnered with, you know, when we feature other farms produce in our prepared foods, we make sure we tag them, they reshare, and that's getting eyes on us who are also local. We send it out in our newsletters. We give ideas on how to gift it. We give, you know, if we're gonna, I mean, we don't go camping because we're farmers. We don't have quite as much time for camping. But I like, you know, before a long weekend, I'll send a newsletter that's like, if you're heading out on in the RV or camping this week, here's seven prepared food items that work really well at a campsite. And I'll put, put those items down there with hyperlinks to each individual product and then we'll get a bunch of them that are sold because people are going away for that, that holiday.
- [52:10]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah. Are you doing any kind of promotions around, like special offers to try and get people to come in and get a bunch all at once or so.
- [52:19]
C
When we, we do bundles, we don't do bundles as often anymore because now our customers are just so ingrained with buying them. It's such a part of their regular. But one thing that we do is we always include a free prepared food item. When somebody signs up for Ranch Club, which is our monthly meat subscription, we send them, we do pork fat and sage biscuits, so they're like the dough that's frozen and then you just stick them in the oven and we put a little sticker on it says, welcome to Ranch Club. Please enjoy these on us. And it's like a little branded sticker. We stick it on that prepared food item and we put it into our meat subscription because you can add prepared foods onto your meat subscription. So I want somebody to try one of the items and be like, oh, this is so convenient. And then they'll go and add those prepared foods to their meat subscription.
- [53:05]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah. That's so smart. I hope those of you who are listening are just noticing she has this amazing, like she's creating buying habits slowly over time. So she has a very clear like, here's your first step. I know what I want to try and pitch them first. I know this is going to sell well and now they're going to come back and get that thing again. But now they're going to try this thing and it just slowly over time that, that average cart value grows and grows and grows. And now you've created this habit of I, this is just what I buy. This is part of my shopping list every week it is.
- [53:38]
C
And we have customers who say to us, every single Friday we cook prepared foods. Like that's just what we do in our family, like Taco Tuesday or spaghetti, you know, Wednesday. For some families, they just rely on at the end of the week, they're so tired. They're just like, they just know Central Park Farms prepared foods is what they're having on a Friday night. Right?
- [53:55]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah. You know, it's interesting because when I think of, when I think of farmers and like the ideal kind of customer that I imagine using my food, it's, it's the person who does slow cooking, right? Who, who goes a slow, the slow food movement, right. Like, I take this, this food home and I take an hour and a half and I really enjoy the process of making it and savoring the flavors and all of that. I think that's kind of where our default setting is as a marketer to kind of just imagine that's my customer. But you're sort of identifying like, hey man, probably most of America and North America is actually more the throw stuff in the microwave or a quick reheat in the oven type or fast food, like going through the drive through kind of lifestyle. And so how are we catering, you know, our healthy food? How can we create a healthy food product that caters more to that lifestyle? There's a huge opportunity there.
- [54:54]
C
And there is.
- [54:55]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah.
- [54:56]
C
And I think there's almost a disservice because there's so many people who want to buy local and they want to support local farms. And we're making it so that the only people who can are the people who want slow food movement type food. And that's just not realistic to most lifestyles now. Like, I never like to market on price because I think, think that that's, that's a tough go. But one of the things that I do like to do is because fast food is so expensive in my area now, it's crazy. So I'll go online and I'll take a look at what you know. Two, two cheeseburger meals are at a fast food restaurant. Our chicken noodle soup and our split pea and ham soup with two biscuits is less per serving than it is to get fast food. So Jay and I will make it for lunch and I'll just take a picture of it. I'm like psychic. Two cheeseburger Big Mac meals at McDonald's is this. This only cost us this. And then people are. And it was ready in this many minutes. You didn't have to, like, skip the dishes as big. In my area, way more expensive than prepared foods. And I, I will say, like, you can get this in the same amount of time as it takes to order from skip the dishes. You have it in your freezer, and it will cost you less money because you don't have to tip, you don't have to pay the fees you like. The restaurant costs for skip the dishes is expensive. I'm catering to the people who want to eat healthy. They want to feel like home cooked meal, but they don't have the time. And moms love that because they get to feel good about what they're feeding their family, and they get to do it in a way that makes sense with their schedule.
- [56:30]
Kendall Ballantyne
So good. Kendall, we could go on and on and on, but I, I want to leave some more information for these farmers to learn from you if they want to go deeper. I know you have. You have a whole class about this, don't you? I do deep dive. Like deep dive workshop. You want to talk about that?
- [56:48]
C
Yeah. So I have a workshop. It's an on Demand workshop. It's 65 bucks. You go on, you watch it. It has everything from an hour of video content. I break down what products worked, what products didn't, packaging, how to work with your chef, all of the things. And then you actually get a copy of the spreadsheet that I work with my chef. It is the exact duplicate. It tells you exactly what Adrian charges me, exactly what I charge our customer, how much meat goes into each item. It is full transparency of what we sell as a business, the names of the products and everything. And yeah, that's an all on demand course that I do. And then we also have, which we didn't get too deep into, which is our raw dog food line. We do a line of raw dog food that is very lucrative for our farm. The margins are really great on it. People do not flinch to spend a Lot of money on their pets these days. And we have a really fantastic recipe. We did a lab tested. So we made our dog food, we sent it to the other side of the country. They lab tested it, the results went back to animal nutritionists. They balanced it to meet AFCO standards, which is the American animal feed group that says, you know, this is what makes healthy dog food. So we got it all custom made. That process cost us over $5,000. We're giving you our exact recipes that we use, the equipment that we have, what we would do differently. We've been doing raw dog food as part of our business line for eight years now. That guide is available on our website. It's 97. So you can get that and start making raw dog food right away for your line. And that is such a good byproduct use if you are a meat producer. You know, we get stuck with like organ meat and trim and things that we can't move. So again, we were able to find an issue within our business and make use of a product we could not sell. And now we make a heck of a good margin. And it helped us bring on staff that do raw dog food for us on a weekly basis. But it fulfills enough revenue that they also can work full time for us helping on the farm just because of that product.
- [58:47]
Kendall Ballantyne
Well, I hope you guys can tell that that Kendall knows what she's talking about. She's an amazing teacher, a great facilitator, a great coach. You actually coach farmers to build their business and market online. You want to talk a little bit.
- [59:02]
Corinna Bench
About the Workhorse Collective?
- [59:04]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah, join that.
- [59:06]
C
I've been doing online group coaching since June of 2021. So it's been a while now that we've been doing this monthly coaching. So we offer a coaching program. It's me and a business partner, somebody that I work with and respect very much, which is Jess at Moose Valley Ranch. She specializes in rural small business, agritourism, glamping, things like that. I lean in really heavily on the farming end of things. How to make it make sense, how to make the numbers work. We dive into everything from pricing and profitability, diversification, social media, email marketing, you name it. You get access to all the past teachings so you can go in there and access from June 2021 every monthly teaching that we've ever done. And we do live sessions, sessions every month. And we have a community in there and things like that. So you can get support from other farmers.
- [59:52]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah. And that's something you can just pay that's a membership, right? A monthly membership. So you can join for a while, see if you like it. If you don't, you can stop.
- [59:58]
C
Yeah, there's no commitment, period. We have some farmers that have been with us since 2021 and they come in during the winter and then when busy season starts for them, they go. And that way they're not incurring a cost through busy season when they can't actually utilize the teaching because they can't make it live. And then they join back up when the season slows down for them. So we're not somebody that, you know, you come for the season that you need us and hopefully when you get to the point where you don't need us anymore, you can move along and.
- [60:24]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah, such a good, it's such a good program and I want to encourage all of you guys to check it out this winter. If you'd like some group coaching, especially in terms of like business development and marketing, highly recommend it. Where can people go to access these resources? I'll put all these resources you just shared in my show notes. But where can they go to learn more about marketing for farmers and about your farm Central?
- [60:49]
C
You can find me on Instagram. That's where I spend most of my time. And it's just marketing for farmers.
- [60:53]
Corinna Bench
All right, well, thanks so much for.
- [60:57]
Kendall Ballantyne
Joining us today, Kendall, and we'll have to have you back again. Hopefully we won't wait two years before that happens.
- [61:02]
C
But I appreciate it. I appreciate you inviting me to talk about this because I am so passionate about value add products as a way to create financial sustainability for farms.
- [61:10]
Kendall Ballantyne
Yeah. Well, you're definitely the expert. Thanks for being here.
- [61:14]
C
Thank you.
- [61:16]
Corinna Bench
I told you it was going to be good. All of her resources can be found in the show notes@mydigitalfarmer.com 285. You're welcome. You guys have an amazing week. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode. If you enjoyed this episode, would you please go leave me a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts? It really does help more farmers find out about the show. Plus, I just like to read what you think of the episodes. Now. Don't forget, if you want to get onto my email list and learn some more tips about farm marketing, you can go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe or you can follow me on Instagram at mydigitalfarmer. I like to show up there in Instagram stories. You guys have a wonderful week. Remember, I believe in you. I'll talk to you next time.
- [62:09]
Kendall Ballantyne
Bye.