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My Digital Farmer Podcast
317 The Farm Stop Model: How This Ann Arbor Store Sells Local Food 7 Days a Week
01:13:33
What would happen if you merged a grocery store and a farmers market—and gave small farms a seven-day-a-week sales channel that actually pays them what they’re worth? In today’s episode, I interview Alex Blume, Marketing Manager for , a...
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- [00:00]
Corinna Bench
I'm interviewing the marketing manager of Argus Farm Stop Today, which is a seven day a week farmers market that's stocked with exclusively local products. Farmers choose their own prices. They get 70% of that price by selling through Argus Farmstop and by giving farmers a seven day a week sales channel, they're helping small to medium farms stay in business. You'll learn how they find their customers, how they keep them coming back for more. So many good marketing lessons in here. Let's get started. Hey there, this is Corinna Bench and welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast. In today's market, it's not enough to just grow your product, you've got to know how to sell it too. Welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast where we reveal online marketing strategies and tips to help farmers like you get better and more confident at marketing. Let's learn how to find more customers, increase your sales and build a strong brand for your farm. Let's start the show well. Welcome to episode 317 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast. I am your host, Corinna Bench, one of the farmers at Shared Legacy Farms in Elmore, Ohio. I'm also the founder of mydigitalfarmer.com which is all about trying to help other farmers like you get get more confident in your marketing and sales strategy so that you can grow a profitable business. How's everyone doing today? Welcome back to the show. A big shout out to all of my regular binge listeners. If you are new to the podcast, thanks for checking me out. I hope you enjoy today. We have a really great interview lined up. Make sure you subscribe to the show and if you're new to the marketing space and you want to learn some of the lingo and the framework for it, go check out my first 10 episodes. They really work. Were designed long ago to be an on ramp into the marketing space. Another place to go is just to get onto my email list. Because when you do, I'm going to send you an email about every five days for three months. That's going to walk you through the jungle. It's going to show you the key things you need to know, the tools you need to have in your toolkit, the people you need to be following. In some cases, I give you some templates and freebies. It's really good. So you can subscribe by going to my digital farmer.com forward/subscribe and that'll start right away. Today's episode is sponsored by my friends at Local Line. If you're like me, winter is your downtime to plan and prep for the upcoming growing season. Set yourself up for success with Local Line. The best sales platform built for farms. Local Line is the most comprehensive software for farmers and food hubs that's out there selling direct to to restaurants, schools, wholesale buyers running a CSA and more. With features like e commerce, automated inventory management, they have subscriptions, a box builder, point of sale, and more. Localline helps you grow sales. It saves you time and streamlines your operations. In fact, on average, this is cool. Farms that use Local Line grow sales by 23% and they increase their average order size by 9.5% annually. So, ready to switch to sales software that does it all? Logoline has no setup fees, no sales percentages, and your onboarding manager will migrate your storefront for free so you'll be up and running in no time. As a podcast listener, Localline is also offering a free premium feature for one year with your subscription when you use my coupon code MDF2025. So to claim it, go to mydigitalfarmer.com localline and then enter that coupon code MDF2025. Don't wait. Start your season strong with Localline today. And now back to the show. All right, today we're jumping right into it because I am interviewing a guest for the show and this was another strong interview with so much good stuff, stuff that I struggled to cut things to keep it under an hour. So I want to make sure I keep my introduction here short. This particular person, the way that I met him, is really cool. I felt like it was a divine appointment. Kurt and I went on a trip last January, February. I'm losing track now of when it was, but we did a trip to Colorado, just the two of us, to celebrate my healing. And we stayed in an Airbnb and we hiked a bunch of mountains in the Colorado Rockies. Had an amazing experience. But on our trip out there, we got onto the plane and the guy who sat next to me in the back of the plane is today's guest. This is how I met Alex. And the. The funny thing is the. The conversation starter was my sweatshirt. I was wearing a Local Line sweatshirt. And. And he asked me if I had Local Line and, or if I worked there or something. I forget. And I told him that I was a farmer and that we used their platform. And so he was like, so do I. And then saw that my husband was wearing some kind of a hat that identified him as a farmer. I forget what the brand was, but that led to a opening conversation. He sat down next to me and we spent the next two and a half, three hours on this flight to Colorado Springs talking the whole way, and it made the flight so fun. And then to find out that he's the director of marketing at Argus Farm Stop in Ann Arbor, which is like, you know, an hour, 15 minutes away from where I live. It was so cool. I thoroughly enjoyed geeking out about marketing with him. We talked a long time. He was also very enthusiastic. It's hard to find people who are excited about talking about marketing, right? And so I told him at the end, I'm like, hey, so I have this podcast and I would love to invite you on and like, meet up with you again and have you share all this stuff you just shared with me with my listeners, because I think it's a really neat model and I'd love to introduce people to it. And he said yes. So you are getting to meet my friend Alex and the conversation goes in a lot of different directions. And I think it's really valuable if you are any kind of producer to kind of learn how this model works. I want you to listen to the Farm Stop model and if this is something that you want to try developing in your region. But it's actually, I think, even more helpful to think about what is he doing in the way of marketing for this kind of a marketing model? What does he have to do in order to attract his ideal customer? And. And what are the things that he really prioritizes? Because they're kind of like a Trader Joe's is sort of how I would equate them, but they only have a couple of stores. But it's that sort of feel. And what are the unique challenges that this kind of an organization or this kind of a business has to face when it comes to marketing? And what can we learn from that? Like, how can we take some of his approaches and apply them to our own business? I think it's a really good conversation. You're going to love it. So let me read his bio and we'll dive right in. My guest is Alex Bloom and he is the marketing manager for Argus Farmstop, a seven day a week market stocked exclusively with products from local farmers and producers. Alex has been leading the marketing team there for about two years now. Before that, he worked on the Whitney Farmstead, which is a regenerative ranching and maple sugaring farm in Ann Arbor. And Alex actually comes originally from my home state, from Dallas, Texas, where he worked in the local music industry as a promoter. After he received A double major in music and marketing at Southern Methodist University. In his work, Alex tries to increase the reach and accessibility of local produce and products that strengthen the community around us to a wider and more diverse audience. Please join me in welcoming Alex Bloom to the show. Well, Alex, welcome to the show.
- [08:28]
Alex Bloom
Thank you so much, Corinne. I'm so happy to be here.
- [08:31]
Corinna Bench
This has been a long time coming since we first met on the airplane heading out to Colorado. And it's just so bizarre how the stars align. We randomly sit next to each other, we find out you're like, hey, do you work at Local Line or do you use Local Line? Because I'm wearing my Local Line sweatshirt. And then all of a sudden we realized that we're both in the farming space. So that was really neat. Start out by just introducing yourself to my audience. Tell me a little bit about yourself, how we met, about Argus Farm Stop, where you work and your role there, wherever you want to start.
- [09:13]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Alex Blum. I'm the marketing manager for Argus Farmstop. Argus Farmstop is a. The Farm Stop model is taking the farmer's market of, you know, a high educational, high revenue space exclusively for local farms and turning that into something that's a little bit more convenient like a grocery store of having a seven day a week market that's more of a one stop shop than a farmer's market having a single checkout line having pretty much how do we make it easier for local farms to sell their goods in today's day and age? And how do we have a place you can go and buy exclusively from local producers even if you don't. You woke up late on Saturday or weren't able to get to the farmer's market on that day. Let's. There's, you know, many different ways that farmers can sell their products and a lot of them have shifted towards larger farms, more industrial agriculture and small and medium sized farms have really lost their ability to start and maintain business. And so Argus Farm Stop looks to change that and help grow the local food economy of southeast Michigan and as well as teach people how to grow that local food economy around the nation. Personally, I've been working for argus Farmstop since 2022 and I've been leading our marketing team going on this second year now. And you know, we met so serendipitously I was on a plane ride out to Colorado to go skiing with my and we just had our Farmstop conference which we can get into a little bit later. And I saw you walking down the row with a local line shirt. And I was like, well, we use local line all the time with all of our online sales. I know exactly what that is. Wow, this is cool. And I saw somebody behind you wearing a real organic project hat. And I was like, oh, cool, there's two farmers. I would love to talk to them. And then you're like, can I sit next to you? And I was like, well, wow, this is ideal. So, yeah, I was really excited about that.
- [11:07]
Corinna Bench
You made the flight so much more enjoyable. It was either watching Gladiator 2.
- [11:12]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, I usually, you know, put my earbuds in and do something like that, but I was like, this is too, too great of an opportunity.
- [11:20]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Oh, it was super fun to talk to you. We talked the whole time. I think. I think there's maybe 30 minutes where we were in our own worlds, but yeah. Okay, so you tell me how long Farmstop's been around. I don't know if I saw that in your.
- [11:35]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, I don't know if I. So the farm set model was originally. We were originally inspired by a group called Local Roots in Worcester, Ohio. And so in 2014, we launched our first location on Liberty street, which was an old gas station. If you ever come down, I always recommend coming to the Liberty store, just because you can see sort of from the ground up how it started. We do a lot in a very small amount of space there. And. But yeah, so the farm Stop model, we work on consignment, which instead of wholesale, you know, I would say the vast majority, as you probably know of, like, sales from farmers to consumers, is probably going through a pretty big indirect wholesale chain. And on average, farmers are getting about 15 cents on the dollar for the produce that they're selling. Through those. The traditional grocery channels, you have to be able to provide an inventory that can satisfy these large brokers and distributors, and you have to pay their price. So Argus Farmstop sort of has a foot in the door with our local farmers, where you bring us what you can provide and we will put it on the deck and you get 70% of the price that you decide. We're always in contact with our farmers on what prices might be working and what might be recommended. Farmers are always sort of looking at the market and seeing what other people are selling for who have. Might have similar growing practices. But, yeah, that's sort of like the basis of what we tell everybody who comes in the door. You know, when you buy this apple, this rutabaga, this romaine lettuce, these ramps, the farmer the forager, whoever produced it is bring is choosing the price and they're getting 70% of that price. So pay $4 or $4 is a little tricky math, but you pay $1 for an apple, you know, 70 cents is going right back to the farm. We only take 30% for, for the storage and the selling and a lot of great services that we provide by having a seven day a week farm or farmer's market rather.
- [13:34]
Corinna Bench
So this was not on my list of questions for you, but this is making me think, if you decide, normally when you go to a store, there's always a section that's like, these are two for five today or you know, or 20% off. Like, are they able to decide I want my item to go on sale? Or is there anybody in your operation that's making those kinds of calls?
- [13:55]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, great question. In terms of pricing, like, I think that mission is really ingrained into all of our employees. And we do a good job of having like all employees sort of have an ability to make decisions once they understand the mission of helping the farmers. And so like we don't do a lot of sales. I think that's something that we'd be, could be interested in doing in other ways. But it's like, you know, we, in terms of our mission, we would need to get in contact with the farmer. Sometimes that can be a pretty fast process. Sometimes it can be a more, a longer process. Like we definitely have some farmers where I'm like, if I ask them this, they might not get back to me for a couple days. And there are some who, you know, I know if I text them right now, they might tell me immediately. So I think it often comes from the farmer's side. We have dedicated produce managers at each location that do all of our ordering and a lot of communication with the farms. They're in great communication with them. But I would say most of probably any sales are usually coming from a farmer's desire to do so. Yeah, that's what I would say.
- [15:00]
Corinna Bench
Okay. Yeah. Because I'm just trying to merge this model of like a grocery store because you're probably essentially functioning as a grocery store in some ways. In terms of sourcing, you've got to have a lot of volume of food, I imagine, moving through there. But you have a sense of how much you move of, of these items. After a while you see the patterns and you can kind of project out what, what it will do at that price.
- [15:23]
Alex Bloom
Definitely. And I think something that's difficult in the marketing side for Argus Farm Stop. You know, a lot of people come in the door and they ask for certain products that we don't have, and we kind of never will have the most common one. People come in and they ask for lemons, they ask for lions, they ask for bananas. And it's like, I had one yesterday where I was trying to answer this question. Well, it's. It's difficult because, you know, we do a great job of customer service as well. And I really hate talking to somebody and telling them why we don't have lemons and limes and our mission. And sometimes it can come off as a little pretentious or snobby, but it's like we're trying to tell, like, we'll never have lemons and limes, pretty much. And this is why, you know, it's like, because we're here to help grow the local food economy. So, like, what you see here. What I like about Architect is what you see is a picture of current agriculture in Michigan. Like, what you see is completely representative of what's going on in your community. So when we don't have an item, like, somebody asked for tomatoes yesterday, and I said, we're going to have the best tomatoes you can find in Michigan. Not yet. Come back in July through November. We're going to have great, great tomatoes.
- [16:34]
Corinna Bench
Well, in this conversation today, there's kind of two elements that we could. That we could cover, and I'm going to try to do both. We'll see how we do with the time. But. But there's the whole side, like, sourcing the food from the farms, managing that operation. And I'm. I am actually really curious how that works. And then there's the marketing side. How do we target and market to consumers who's going to. Who are going to value the way that you do this? Right.
- [17:00]
Alex Bloom
Um, yep.
- [17:01]
Corinna Bench
If somebody's listening today who's intrigued at. I want to build a farm, you know, a farm stop, model out in my neck of the woods. I know they'll be able to contact you and reach out. You do trainings for that kind of thing all the time anyway. But let's actually start with the farmer side. I was going to do with marketing first, but let's. Let's switch. I'm going to turn my page and go to that section.
- [17:20]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, I think that's a good, good way to segue.
- [17:22]
Corinna Bench
Like, I mean, who are your typical farmers and how do you vet them? What do they have to be able to do to qualify to even work with you? And I imagine that like, new farmers, once they find out about you, want to try and get in, but maybe there's like. Like in the wholesale space, we're always trying to get into Whole Foods or whatever, and we're like, well, we already. We already have our lettuce growers we don't need anymore. Like, so just how does someone get into this space with you?
- [17:48]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, great question. The simplest answer for it is that on our website, we have a producer application, and we go through that and sort of vet mostly from, like, the perspective of, is this something that we think would fit at our guest farmstop? Like, preferably, is it a Michigan producer? And are they growing in a way that supports the local food economy? Like, is. Is their mission sort of transparent for us? And then that after that, it would probably go down to, do we think this product would do well in our store? I think from producers, farmers of produce and meat and eggs, they probably have a pretty easy time overall, if they're growing in Michigan and they're growing with good practices, they probably have a pretty easy time getting at least a foot in the door with Argus Farmstop and then other products outside of that would probably be more of a. Do we think this would move and do we think this is on mission? Do we think. Do we have too much of this? You know, we. We already have, like, I think three or four producers of hot sauce and probably wouldn't be looking to take on another one. So, yeah, we have that producer application. But starting out, what we often tell people is a farm stop works really well in a community that has a farmer's market for a couple reasons. It has, excuse me, a dedicated ache, demonstrated demand. So there are customers who go to that farmer's market. They buy from local farms, and it has a demonstrated supply. It has farmers that are coming to the area. Oftentimes Farm Stop works really well as, like, the farmers are coming in for the farmer's market, they can swing by, drop off at the farm stop, and then they can go back to the farm. So they have sort of that direct sale with the farmer's market and then immediately dropping off more produce to be sold while they're not there. So we definitely looked at the Ann Arbor Farmers market when we were starting out and had a lot of conversations with the farmers there about this model. Kathy, our owner, does a really good job of getting people on board and selling the mission, helping them understand it, and she just does a great job of talking to farmers, and that's a lot of what she did at the beginning is just talking to farms and getting them on board with the model and getting them to trust us in terms of holding their product. And so I would say most of the farmers at the farmer's market are people who are also selling at Argus Farm Stop at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. And then, you know, it's a pretty small community as well. Like, farmers talk to each other a lot, and we're always looking to find new farms. And a lot of people who will come work at Argus Farm Stop are often aspiring farmers. And so we build out that community and discuss with them and see what they're trying to grow. And we have yearly meetings with a lot of our larger farms who feel like that would be a good use of time and sort of plan out how they're going to go about the year, what they're going to, what they're going to plant, what they're going to grow. We've seen a lot of farmers go from, as this model is built out, you know, an expansion of their farms. Because of Argus Farm Stop. Last year, we've paid out over 26 million. I think, actually, if you're including 20, 25 now, we're paid out over $28 million to local farms over 10 years. Money going immediately back to the Ann Arbor community at large. Amazing. And farmers are reinvesting that in themselves. You know, 30% of our sales are happening from January to May. Very cold months in Michigan. Um, that's because farmers can now reinvest in themselves and have better root cellars, better. More, you know, winter squash that they're. They're growing and planting, and they can have that throughout those months. And so we're seeing the money that goes back to the farms through Argus farmstop is growing them. Like, we don't cannibalize the farmer's market. I think we work in great conjunction with it.
- [21:58]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, it sounds like it's a networking place and that. Yeah, working in conjunction with you. So does a farmer have to try out with you? Is there, like, a beta test period where you give something a try on a small scale to see how it does?
- [22:12]
Alex Bloom
Not really. It's more of, like, a good communication and understanding. I think we have that with all of our producers of sort of like, we want. With the consignment model, we want them to succeed, and so we're in good communication with them. We have, I believe our payouts are happening twice a month. And so in those payouts, we're in great communication with the farmers of, like, what's going on with their product. If it's not moving, we can have discussions about what we can do about that. Is it. Is it a problem on our end? Do we need to do a better job of merchandising it? Can we market it a little bit better? Is it. Is it just not working? Is it just not moving? Yeah, and I think that's. We're not looking. Really looking to, like, kick people out or anything like that more so just sort of trying to make sure that the space that's being used is being used well. And so we don't have a trial period. Okay. We. I think we just decide to take somebody on, and when we do, we. From that point on, it's. It's a relationship, and we will do what's best for them and they do what they can to help serve. Argus Farms have been having a good amount of products for the deck.
- [23:24]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Now, can a consumer tell which farm that product is coming from? Like, do you have signage at your store? I want to come see this place. Now, you're not that far away.
- [23:34]
Alex Bloom
Definitely. I would love to have you down.
- [23:36]
Corinna Bench
I'll make sure I do that this summer, and we'll tell you when we're coming. Is there signage to say this is from XYZ Farm?
- [23:43]
Alex Bloom
Yes, absolutely. That's a lot of what our marketing is doing. And we want far. We want customers to understand who they are buying from. And there's, you know, there's different prices, and we have, you know, some producers who go to the nth degree, and they have the organic certification. They maybe have the real organic project certification. They have multiple certifications, and they, you know, produce a really, really great product. And sometimes that stuff is going to be more expensive, and it might be right next, especially in the heat of season, to maybe a farm that's using more conventional practices.
- [24:16]
Corinna Bench
Okay, hold on. So I'm trying to visualize what this looks like, because all I can picture is, you know, a one booth at the farmer's market or, like, going into a grocery store, and all you see is the arugula, you know, in the. In the clamshells, and they're all the same. So you're saying that you've got an arugula section that might have two different. Three different arugulas, and they get to decide three different prices, and they're just choosing.
- [24:41]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, yeah. So it's like we. Our produce managers have different organizations of the produce deck, and it looks pretty similar, probably, to the untrained eye of, like, a grocery store. But what you're going to find, if you look closer is you're going to have, you know, three different baskets of arugula, and each sign has, you know, this one is Garden Fort from. It's going to say Dexter, Michigan. It'll have their logo and it'll have, you know, arugula with their price.
- [25:05]
Corinna Bench
Cool.
- [25:06]
Alex Bloom
Most of the time, I'd say the products are pretty close in price and we do everything we can to have, like, relevant certifications on there as well. But, yeah, sometimes different producers. We have some producers who are more of a. They price their things more to move, and we have some producers who are pricing a little higher. And we try to be very transparent and help people understand the growing practices of why something might be more or less expensive. I'm trying to do that more recently when I'm talking to people about what we have in store and sort of see, like, when you see something that's expensive at Argus Farm. Stop. It's like there's a reason for it and we can have a quick conversation about that. Um, yeah. And so different bins, different baskets, different signs, and that's a lot of what we do is identifying that produce operationally.
- [25:48]
Corinna Bench
This sounds like an amazing gig for a farmer. So, like, I'm. I'm just imagining all the benefits. Please come to Toledo. No, but what are. What are the. What are the risks for the farmer here? Like, what's the downside?
- [26:01]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, for the farmer. In terms of. Of downside. I guess what a lot of farmers would like to see, especially probably at bigger operations, I think this is a pretty good deal for farmers starting out is, you know, they don't have, like, a dedicated sale. Like, if you're a farmer and you grow, let's say, 10 bushels of kale and you bring it to Argus Farm. Stop. We're not paying you for 10, technically, 10 bushels of kale. So, you know. And you're not going to get that money technically, immediately. You will get it twice a month with the sales. But, you know, if something doesn't happen to move, you know, it kind of just.
- [26:40]
Corinna Bench
Oh, so you don't get paid unless it moves.
- [26:42]
Alex Bloom
That's true. Yeah.
- [26:43]
Corinna Bench
So, like, okay, so it's not like you're buying it, and now it's your liability just to move it and sell it. Got it. Which is why you can't change the price. Okay, that makes sense now. All right.
- [26:52]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, yeah. They get paid based on the sale. So it's like a customer comes in and buys your product, you're getting paid 70% of that, you know, so yeah, the risk is that like, if you, let's say something sad were to happen with Argus Farmstop and like you bring a product and there's nobody buys your, your kale or your hot sauce or whatever you're bringing us, then we wouldn't have any money to give you. That would be the downside. Yeah, that I would say is the biggest downside. But it really helps people grow a market. Like starting out farmers, like people can find out about you, people can become interested and I mean, you know, it's. I think the 70% is a big part of that. You know, it's like those 10 bushels of kale. It's like you might be selling that immediately to a grocery store, but you'll be getting 15 cents on the dollar or some rate of that. Where at Argus comes up, maybe, maybe you get to sell. You know, I wouldn't have the numbers on how much on average is selling. There are plenty of producers that we sell all of their product. But, you know, even if you were to sell seven of those 10 bushels at 70%, that's probably going to be higher than all 10 at 15.
- [28:03]
Corinna Bench
You said there was in, I read somewhere in some of the stuff you sent me in advance, like 250 producers that you currently work with and are, are most of those like small scale growers or do you have some that are like, just have a, are able to really do a lot of, you know, acreage and just bring in the large amounts for you?
- [28:27]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, unfortunately I don't have the numbers on like, maybe like acreage, but I can tell you definitely like some of the sizes. I would say the vast majority of the farms that we're working with on a national and especially on a global scale would be considered small, small farms, probably medium at best. So some of our bigger producers, I would say we've got Tantra Farm, Green Things Farm. Maybe Norm Holt's farm in Ida, Michigan might be considered one of our larger producers. I would also say second spring up in close to Traverse City.
- [29:03]
Corinna Bench
Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School. All right, farmer, let me ask you something. Is marketing your farm something you actually enjoy or does it feel like a constant struggle? If you are like most farmers that I talk to, you are wearing all the hats and marketing always seems to slip through the cracks. Can I get an amen? That's exactly why I created Farm Marketing School. It's an online membership designed to help farmers like you build a simple, repeatable marketing system that actually works inside, you'll get bite sized, step by step projects that make marketing easier. Each month you pick what to work on, like writing better sales emails or improving your website copy, or setting up your online store. And I walk you through exactly how you should be doing it. And you're not doing this alone. Every month we have a live Zoom meetup where you can ask me questions, meet other members of Farm Marketing School, get coaching and hear what's working for other farmers. It's like having a farm marketing mentor in your back pocket. This isn't some long, overwhelming course. The projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days. So you're making steady progress without it taking over your life. So if you're ready to stop winging it and finally build a marketing system that brings in steady sales, come join Farm Marketing School today. Sign up for your first month and see what a difference it makes. Go to mydigitalfarmer.com fms to get started. And now back to the show. Now, how are you? You use Local line. I found that out because of my. My sweatshirt on the plane. How does a. Does a farmer who works with you have to have a local line account?
- [31:00]
Alex Bloom
We have Argus Farmstop uses Local line and we represent all of our farmers through that. So I don't know how many of our farms are actually using Local line, but none of our farms selling through Argus Farms. We're not linking. It's like. And the way that our operations work is we don't really want our producers changing their inventory because we sort of have it here. We've got a better idea. And we don't have a split inventory overall between what we have online and what's in store. Our inventories are more of our online team's estimation of what would be available for your sale online with what we have.
- [31:38]
Corinna Bench
Okay.
- [31:39]
Alex Bloom
We used to do shopify for subscriptions, but we've started doing Local Line for our subscriptions, which is a weekly produce box that goes all year round as well as weekly flour subscription. We currently still have our Local Cuts Club, which is a monthly subscription for great local meat. Um, that's still going through Shopify, but we would love to convert that to Local Line once we're able to have a monthly, monthly option there.
- [32:03]
Corinna Bench
What, what are the features that you're using then with Local line, you have multiple price lists or you just have one?
- [32:10]
Alex Bloom
We've got multiple price lists for our subscription. Like we used to only have one when we just had the grocery store.
- [32:15]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [32:15]
Alex Bloom
But once we had Our subscriptions, we found it best to have, you know, different price lists there. So we have, I think free price list, probably with our weekly flower subscription, grocery store and produce box. I think that's. That's accurate. Yeah.
- [32:29]
Corinna Bench
Okay. Do you have the store credit feature? Do you use that at all?
- [32:33]
Alex Bloom
We don't, but I would love to. I would really like to, you know, especially building out. We were talking a little bit about sales earlier, like discounts. I think one thing that we'll probably get into this with the funnel, but talking a little bit about how people shop and what people are shopping for. Yeah, I think that a lot of consumers at large, not everyone, but at large in America, I think that the grocery receipt is the first thing place for us to be looking to cut costs, you know, and I think people assume and think that Argus Farm Stop is an expensive place to shop and, you know, maybe on average the receipt would be higher. There are some things that we are more expensive. There are some things that were less expensive. But how do we sort of communicate how we have this ability for people to try us out? Like, you know, I think through our mission, through operationally, our brain has sort of been like, oh, we can't change the price. It's the farmer and whatnot. And it's like we've gotten to the point where it's like we absolutely can, you know, subsidize and from Argus Farmstop's point, like get people in the door and things like that.
- [33:34]
Corinna Bench
So.
- [33:34]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, you haven't used store line credit, but I would really like to. That would be really.
- [33:38]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, it's not that expensive. I don't know what it would be for your size. I don't know if that's. I want to. I want to say it's like a hundred dollars a year extra for. It's something really reasonable for me. But we use it primarily just as a customer service tool. I don't. I don't take advantage of the. You give me money and I put. I turn it into store credit. I could create a product like that, but for me it's more like, hey, if I mess something up, I just go give them some money. Or. Or for my VIPs, it's a way to like reward people for good behavior. Yeah. Anyway, something to think about.
- [34:11]
Alex Bloom
We have a really robust subscription with local line, so I feel like we might have that feature currently.
- [34:18]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Well, let's switch over now to the marketing angle. I'm just so curious. In this kind of a model, all the things you have to Think about. Let's just real quickly. I don't want to spend too long here because there's so many other things I want to do. But let's talk about your ideal customer. I have a sense that you really understand your shopper and what do you know about them? What are they valuing? Why are they choosing Argus or something else? Especially because it sounds like you're a little more expensive. What are they primarily buying from you? If you even know that? Just what do you know about them?
- [34:52]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, I think the ideal customer sort of is like somewhat of a binary answer for me, where it's like, I look at currently who our customer is and who we've saturated and who we've satisfied. I think really well to this point and I think is often people who are older, like a lot of people I think who are sort of 40, up towards above 65. There's a lot of really great people in our community who are in the older generation and they do a really great job of connecting with local farms and having a place of community. I think somebody who is looking for products that they like, produce that they. At the very least, when I buy this, I know it's kind of going to a good cause. It's like, I know I can see transparently where this is going. In short, people who care about their food and that comes through and it's going to a good farmer. I trust this food. I'm excited about this food. I want to know more about it. Want to know more about where it comes from or how it's grown. Maybe people who are even just looking for really great tasting things. You know, I think that's something that I don't talk about enough is like how fantastic our food tastes and how fresh and seasonal and how the benefits of that versus like, you know, asparagus or tomatoes or strawberries, especially coming from who knows where and grown who knows how and how it's, you know, white in the middle and they're giant and they don't taste half as good as a local fresh strawberry in the short season that is there often people who have, you know, like a little bit of expendable income who, you know, are able to go out of the way of convenience at the very least and purchase directly from local farms.
- [36:46]
Corinna Bench
This sounds like this is an intentional decision to come here because you don't have lemons and limes like they're. They're going to have to supplement somewhere else. So they're making a decision or. Well, first I'm going to Go to Argus and get this and then whatever else I can't get there, I'm going somewhere else. So this is a very intentional, like values driven decision to support this location and the farm.
- [37:07]
Alex Bloom
Definitely. I think that it's a, it's a decision to come to Argus Farm stop a lot. And I think our locations are very well chosen, I'll say that as well. And they're both in communities like Liberty. Location is on the west side. It's like right on the edge of downtown where like there's plenty of people who are in Arborites who love to just walk to their local grocery store. And I mean that's fantastic. It's a great opportunity for that. And so I think that that's a lot of it as well. But there is definitely a lot of I'm going to go to Argus Farmstead. That's how I shop. And on Packard, similar thing. We're more in like the student section over there. But like, I think there's definitely a lot of people who love having a walkable grocery store for them. So I think that's a big part of it as well. Like there, there are some people who we are very con it for. Like we're literally in their community and then there are some people who are looking to shop directly from us. I mean, we're never going to compete with like completely with like a Trader Joe's, a Whole Foods, a Meyer. You know, we want people to buy their produce from us, but like we're never going to have the full array of products that they're going to have in the One Stop Shop.
- [38:22]
Corinna Bench
Do you feel like it's an experience, do you feel like it's an experience shopping in your store? Like a little bit like a trade. Like to me, going to Trader Joe's feels like an event and I just, I make extra time and I love to just soak in the atmosphere. Is it, I want to go see your place now. Like, is it one of those kind of stores and the, where you've, you've taken care of the environment and really thought about how it, how it looks and feels. Okay.
- [38:46]
Alex Bloom
I. Yeah. And so I think so we have a cafe as well. Like, you know, talking about if 70% of our produces or our prices going back to our farmers, you know, as wonderful as that is and how that is ingrained in our mission, it can be difficult to continue to stay in the green and to stay in business after over 10 years. So the cafe is sort of how we have a couple things. It's A, you know, a higher profit margin for us. B, it's a community space. It's a way that we can get people interacting somewhat. Like a farmer's market where we like to say, like, and this happens all the time. Like, farmer Lucas from Woodfoot Pines, probably our biggest egg producer. Great guy. I love to talk to him all the time when he comes in, all the time. He's coming to get his coffee. Because you get one of the perks of for farmers when you drop off is you get a free drink from the cafe when you drop off. And that's, you know, both to say thank you to the farmer as well as to create this interaction where it's like somebody is checking out with eggs and farmer Lucas is right there getting, you know, a hot chocolate or something. He's like, hey, I grew those eggs. I raised those eggs.
- [39:52]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [39:52]
Alex Bloom
And they can have a conversation there. They can understand more and have that community space. And that community space also, like, I've heard Argus Farmstop sort of goes in the face of convenience, uber convenience of today's day and age. And at the same time, you know, as my job of marketer and talking about how we can increase the customer experience and get more customers in the door, we all are always having conversations about how we become more convenient. So it's sort of this balance. And a farm stop is just a more convenient farmer's market in many ways. So I've heard one of our friends and producers say, quote, like, convenience kills community, you know, And I think when you come to Argus farmstop, we do a really great job of customer service. I think that's one of our biggest marketing platforms is our customer service. So many times I go into a grocery store, and I feel like the people there don't like working there and they don't want to be there, and they're not really equipped with, like, great customer service. They will often give you a very easy answer. And, you know, I often feel bad for them. But at Argus Farm Stop, we do everything we can to keep our employees happy and have them be equipped to both give the passion, have the passion and answer customers questions effectively, handle complaints well. Like, I try to get as many names for as many customers as I can because it makes all of my interactions so much easier. So, like, as I said earlier, like, you come into Argus Farmstep and what you see there is a direct representation of, like, Michigan agriculture. It's also a direct opportunity to connect with the employees, connect with the producers. Yeah. So I definitely see it as an Experience. And it's very relaxing and, I think, humbling and just beautiful experience when you come into Argus Farmstop and you can just sort of just like, take a second and really soak it in, if you'd like.
- [41:56]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. And, yeah, it's making me. It's making me just pause and reflect on the importance of engineering the experience that a customer has in the store. And I'm thinking about when I go to the grocery store, like a Meijer. I'm actually trying to do it as fast as possible. How can I zip through these, get the stuff, and get out of there? Whereas when I want to go to a place like an Argus farm, Stop. I'm thinking a Trader Joe's. I have a feeling you're probably even better than that. But I actually want to stay. I want to linger in the space.
- [42:34]
Alex Bloom
Yeah.
- [42:35]
Corinna Bench
And I'm just kind of sitting here thinking, why, like, what is it that's making me want to stay in that kind of a place? And it is the ambiance, it is the customer service, the feeling you get from the team that they're so glad you're there. It is this feeling of all the other people shopping around me. I'm, like, looking at them, and I'm like, they are like me. They get me. They're into this. Right. There's a sense of identity. Like, this is what we do. I'm gonna stay here a long time. So I look like I belong. To show I belong. Right? Yeah. And just. Even just soaking up the signs and, like, reading stuff, you feel like you're in a museum.
- [43:09]
Alex Bloom
Yeah.
- [43:09]
Corinna Bench
But. Yeah, so just kind of thinking. I'm just. I'm reflecting about that. And as my listeners are listening to this, me thinking about, you know, is. Is part of your marketing or part of your success in attracting customers and getting them to linger? Because I think when people linger, they probably spend more money, maybe not all the time. But how can you make it so that they want to stay in your space? They want to browse it, they want to put more things in their cart, and. And that is a whole element I haven't spent a lot of time talking about on this show. But, you know, what are we doing to engineer and architect the space around us so that it feels like a place people belong? There's community, and that's part of the experience, too. So that's a really. I'm glad you brought up that point. Thank you for.
- [43:53]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, yeah, definitely. That goes into, I think, merchandising, and we do a really great job of Merchandising as well. There's a couple tips that really elevate. I think our marketing. Color blocking is a really good thing. You know, just sort of having our colors be of different produce be, you know, apparent, and like, having like a section of green, a section of red, section of purple that can really dry the eye. And I think the number one thing that I try to tell people is this. I think before you start working in merchandising, this feels surprising, but once you start to think about it, it's not surprising at all. And that's people don't like buying things that are not abundant. You would much rather buy. We say pilot high. Watch it fly. Watch it fly.
- [44:41]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [44:42]
Alex Bloom
You know, so it's like I want every single bin that we have to look stocked. You know, nobody wants to buy the last bunch of Hawkeye turnips. You know, everyone wants to buy, like, a fully stocked one. So we do everything we can. Where even when in Michigan, when we're getting to February, when very few farmers are able to be harvesting anything, we make sure our products, whatever we have, is abundant. Like on our produce deck. If we need. If we don't have enough space, we do everything we can to fill out that space. And that's something that the consumer might not notice. But, like, if you work at Argos Farms up, you'll definitely notice. In February, we might have, you know, maybe eight total producers on the produce deck. And we might even need to trim the sections where we'll put, like, black crates upside down so it, like, is less obvious on the end. We don't do that a lot. We're usually using the entire produce deck space. I would say over 90% of it is always being used. And, you know, whatever we have, if, like. And as we were talking about earlier, we got a lot of producers. Like in September, when we have just everything, we have probably upwards of 20 producers on the produce deck. Many different items. Nobody has anything more than a small basket, you know, and it's just like we'll have four different farms of bell peppers. We'll have all of this stuff going on. But, like, in the winter, we'll have, you know, maybe our trumpet royales, our. Our clamshell mushrooms will take up more like three feet, where in September they're going to take up three inches. And so changing that and having the. When the customer comes in, what they're going to see is they see abundant.
- [46:22]
Corinna Bench
So how are you finding new customers to come into Farmstop? Because I want my listeners to kind of Hear the marketing principles that you're using on a larger kind of enterprise here. What are the marketing channels that you use? How do you target these people? How are people finding out about you that you exist?
- [46:44]
Alex Bloom
Yeah. So the ways that we market, I think, you know, word of mouth is fantastic and that gets cultivated through our customer service. How do we have the people who come in the store, have a great experience, feel welcome, feel that experience, then they will tell their friends about Argus Farm. They'll want to meet@argus farmstop. Um, so besides that, we do. We've got social media of Facebook and Instagram. Instagram is what we use mostly. Um, I think that does a really good job. And our social media manager does a fantastic job of cultivating that experience of Argus farmstop and making Argus Farmstop seem like a place that you want to go to, making it seem fun, making it seem interesting, great photos. And really relying, really relying on the produce and having that mission carry forward. We have a newsletter email. We use constant contact ourselves that there's a lot of ways to segment your. Your lists and your contacts. We used to do that kind of, kind of on a quarterly basis. It was probably ending up coming out more like three times a year. This year we're trying to get it out monthly, and I think that's. There's a lot of great benefits for that. We're always concerned about spamming people. But I think the thing is, like, with Argus Farmstop, people are often very excited to hear from us. Like, we've got very high open rates. People enjoy engaging with Argus Farmstop. And I think the people who would be really turned off to getting a monthly newsletter are probably people who, you know, might not be shopping from us very much anyway.
- [48:13]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [48:13]
Alex Bloom
So. And also, like, there's. So there are so many messages for us to send as we could keep talking for hours and hours. You know, we're trying to tell the story of local produce. And so, like.
- [48:26]
Corinna Bench
And there's a lot of good stories.
- [48:28]
Alex Bloom
Yeah. And it changes monthly, you know, every month we're like. Like right now asparagus and rams are in, and next month we might have a couple of those still left, but we're going to start having strawberries and we're only going to have them for a very small period of time. So getting our newsletter down to maybe more of like, something people want to read. And like, our newsletters, when they were coming out quarterly, were pretty long. So they can become a little bit shorter, a little more, you know, directly. I don't want to Say call to action necessarily, but you know, like directly relevant to what they're experiencing now.
- [49:00]
Corinna Bench
How do they get on that? Do you just have a form?
- [49:03]
Alex Bloom
We've got a form online as well as sign up sheets in the store and those we're. We've gotten into the 21st century where we have QR codes on them. But still a lot of people like to write down their name and so that can, that can be a little laborious. But yeah, inputting them.
- [49:19]
Corinna Bench
But yeah, I love that you're doing a monthly newsletter and I challenge you when you get comfortable with that to maybe try even doing bi weekly because then you can tell two stories. I just wonder if it would bring in people again for another pull of the frequency lever. Right. If it would cause someone to, to say, oh, they have this in this week. I'm going to make sure I stop by. And.
- [49:39]
Alex Bloom
And we're also in building out our newsletter, we're building out a blog on our website. We've done a little bit of that in the past and this is more so to really good do good SEO and sort of have Argus Farmstop show up when people are looking for local farms, looking for local producer, looking for grocery stores in Ann Arbor and sort of bring us up there. And it's also, it does that as well as is right now we're on a podcast talking for over an hour. You know, we can have these really deep conversations and that's what happens in my role of marketing a lot where people are like, we need to tell customers about this. And I'm like, oh, we've got so little time to do. So this is a really deep conversation. How do we do this? And so this blog can be this house for in depth conversations. And yeah, we can also link to that. We can go to that.
- [50:27]
Corinna Bench
I was going to say it's evergreen. It becomes an evergreen resource and you can point to it in future social media things. Hey, this is something about Strawberries that we wrote last year, but it's still just as relevant. Or create an email nurture sequence that you then engineer them through a customer journey that everyone has heard these seven messages. Right. That are on the blog. Yeah, it's brilliant. Good idea.
- [50:50]
Alex Bloom
Yeah. So we're building that out. So those are like, you know, some higher level ones that now that we're really upping our marketing, we're trying to get into more of having. Yeah, as you said, generating that customer experience and keeping just having places for people to go if they want to learn more about Argus Farmstop and it's not a problem for us to. For people to be engaging more.
- [51:11]
Corinna Bench
Let's talk about the middle of the funnel. Well, actually, wait, do you do social media ads? I was going to ask if you do any meta ads.
- [51:18]
Alex Bloom
Not yet, but we're probably going to get them running this year. Yeah, I did a lot of that when I worked in the music industry and I would definitely be interested in doing that for our weekly flower subscription and maybe some of our cafe. And we're really looking, probably this week, next week, looking to kick off Google advertising as well. I think that'd be a great place for us in terms of just being at the top of people's searches when they're looking for grocery stores, farmers markets in Ann Arbor. Just having, I think a lot of what I've tried to bring to the marketing team at Argus farmstop and sort of like, I've never, like, we've got a lot of great artists on staff and a lot of great people with great messages. And I think what I've done a good job of doing is helping tie everything together and make things more cohesive, make it more cohesive and also boil it down to, like, simple ones. Because, you know, we're talking about, like, yeah, people want to come into the store and experience it and hang around and whatnot. But, like, people also do have their lives. Like, we, we have to understand that people, you really don't have that much time to pitch yourself. And so I try to have things be cohesive and consistent, like, have people hear the same message. Like, when you think Argus Farms up, I want you to think local, fresh, seasonal. I want you to think those things. It's like, there's probably somebody who's heard of Argus Farm stuff. And even going into that, I try to say, every single time I talk about Argus farmstop is to laboriously say Argus Farm Stop. Because we've got a store in Ann Arbor called Arbor Farms, and I've heard so many people talk about the place I work as Argus Farms and confusion of what we are and what we do. And I think the Farm Stop really emphasizes what we do and differentiates us. So, yeah, trying to make it cohesive and trying to boil down those messages and keep those messages in. All of our messages and all of our signage, all of our graphic design on our website, like, have, like, if you go to the bio, if you go to this, it's going to say these couple things. Yeah, that's what we want.
- [53:22]
Corinna Bench
So good. That's so good. Or in all of your social media and wherever you're putting your main messaging out, that these are the. These are the same three to four messages. You're beating that drum.
- [53:31]
Alex Bloom
Yeah.
- [53:32]
Corinna Bench
Over and over and over again. I love that. I need to do a better job of that. And anyone who's listening, I want you to just pause and think about that, that little principle and how you can apply that better to your current farm sales system, because it is an important one. What are you going to stand on? What is that thing you want to be known for? Because it is. It can be confusing for the consumer.
- [53:53]
Alex Bloom
And I think when you're the person who's doing it, you might get a little tired, might think it's not working, but like, yeah, having understanding what you do and sort of being contained in that regard. Like, we've got a lot of different organizations that we work with and there's a lot of great ways that Argus farmstop does work. And I think it's by. We understand our mission. You know, we are here to grow the local food economy. It's very defined. So, like, I don't feel bad about certain decisions that we make because of our mission. I'm like, this is in servitude to the mission. And so, like, when you have that defined and when you can just continue to say that and continue to do that and continue to have that message be applied in different ways, then I think people get it, you know, and they understand what they can come to you for.
- [54:40]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the middle of the funnel. So what person finds out you exist? They start to dabble and they come in for the first time or the second time. What's the. What's kind of your gateway.
- [54:53]
Alex Bloom
Yeah.
- [54:54]
Corinna Bench
Into the store, if, you know, and. And then how. How do they mature as a buyer? Do they begin to shop every is the goal every week? What is the super buyer look like for you in the ideal world?
- [55:06]
Alex Bloom
I think, like, the ones that we have an example are often those ones, as we were discussing a little bit, who are like, it's convenient for them. Those people will show up multiple times a week. We've got some people at the cafe who show up every day pretty much, but at the market, you know, they'll show up multiple times a week. Those baskets are probably a little bit smaller, but there are people who definitely come. I'll see them like once every two weeks, maybe even once a month. And they usually have very large baskets. I think. Yeah. What we would love for people to be doing and would love to build them towards is probably weekly or monthly shopping that involves a lot of produce or involves probably the produce that you're going to eat. Maybe not all of it, but a good amount. Like if you're. If you're buying your produce, you're buying it from Argus Farms up and then multiple of the products that you're really excited about. Our top two sellers at our Packard Market, surprisingly, are ice cream and coffee. In terms of literal items. And, you know, some of that, we have so much data and it can be a real pain to get through. You know, it's like, for example, we have, as we were talking about, where we have different bins, we've got probably a substantial amount of items skus that are kale. And so when we put that in the data, no kale is ever going to be at the top, even if it was the top seller, because there's so many other. So trying to aggregate that would probably make things a little bit. But yeah, I think having really good. We have really great bread from really great bread producers. Coffee, milk and eggs, you know, the things that people need and want and.
- [56:54]
Corinna Bench
The highly perishable things that require you to have to come back more frequently. Right?
- [57:00]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, definitely. I think those can be a lot of the gateways in the door. And the way we design our store sort of is to where getting to the register, you're definitely walking by the produce deck and you're seeing that and it's like, that's the emphasis. We're starting to do more with our merchandising of, like having displays at the front of the store that tell a story and are like really seasonal and like. Yeah. Sort of this telling a story where it's like, you see this and something is that like graduation just happened. We had a lot of graduation displays and so people are able to engage with that in some way. And then there's always just a, what's called like a billboard look of the produce deck. It's. It's unblocked. You can see it from almost any part of the store. Yeah. So having these, having the merchandising, I think really helps people understand the store as well and be suggested sales. We've. We've changed it around multiple times for things that aren't working and testing things out. I think, I think A and B testing, you know, is a great thing for all, all marketing initiatives.
- [58:06]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Oh, I want to have you back. Or when I go visit you, I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to talk to me. About merchandising? Because I would love to know, like, where do you even learn that? Like, is there a class you take on that somewhere? Because that's just fascinating to me, the whole science of where things go and how they're positioned. You don't have people paying you to put your product in a prime location like they do in some of the. Or do you. Is that a part of your.
- [58:30]
Alex Bloom
We don't. We don't have that.
- [58:31]
Corinna Bench
Okay.
- [58:32]
Alex Bloom
Yeah.
- [58:33]
Corinna Bench
Okay. Where are you spending most of your advertising dollars in the funnel in terms of your time and resources? Is it more at the top of the funnel, building awareness or is it like trying to feed offers to people.
- [58:49]
Alex Bloom
That are probably not awareness? Probably further down, where it's like keeping people engaged with the mission. I would say as our newsletter has moved to monthly, definitely taking more time there. We spend a good amount of time. We do weekly emails for our produce boxes where people are finding out what's coming in their produce box. Um, and that's pretty like we've gotten that down to a system, but it. It still takes a significant amount of time every week. And rechecking that, I would say, yeah, sort of middle of the funnel, like keeping people engaged. Signage takes a lot of time for us. That stuff can move around so quickly and we've got a lot of different ways of signage. Signage is something that I'd like a lot of our employees to have a somewhat different look at where it's like we have. I think a lot of people get asked a question more than three times and an employee will ask me for a sign for it. And I think a lot of signs don't get read. And I think if we have too much signage at all, the value of each one of it goes down. We've got some really great customer facing displays on our registers now that will show it's like a slideshow of images that's been a fantastic resource. And so we use that to highlight our offerings, things people might not know about. And yeah, different signage across all the locations. I think that takes a significant amount of time and keeping. That's another place where I've tried to like, keep things more on brand like keep a cohesive font, keep cohesive colors, keep cohesive style as well. And that sort of makes it to where like, it goes beyond where it's like if you see that font, you see those colors, you see that, you think Argus Farm stop as well.
- [60:34]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, just like Trader Joe's has a very like, you know, a certain look in terms of their Font. I can picture one of their signs right now. And same thing at Zingerman's, which is actually part of why it feels so artsy when you go in there. Because the. Yeah, it's a. Yeah, the copy is well written too. It's just different. It's not this standard one bunch. Organic.
- [60:59]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, yeah. There's a character to it.
- [61:01]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, yeah, for sure. What are some of the offers that you're using to get people to come back again and again? Like, do you, do you run offers at all since you were kind of restricted by this price that you're paying? What does that look like?
- [61:16]
Alex Bloom
We don't do much. I would, I would like to do.
- [61:18]
Corinna Bench
More so you can't decide. You know, spend $150 and you'll get $10 in. I don't know, we could definitely coupon bucks or whatever.
- [61:29]
Alex Bloom
We have, like, we have the budget and ability to do that. I think it's. That's something that we're, you know, as we're discussing a little bit at the beginning of this podcast, like operationally and more so into the forecasting and predicting and, and making those. And spending those dollars in those ways. That's something I would like to get into. This this year is sort of like maybe like we have the capacity and technology to have like a rewards program that could be cool. Especially at least at our cafe. We definitely have the budget and ability.
- [61:59]
Corinna Bench
To, you know, or at least to beta test it. Right. For three months in the summer or whatever and just see what you learn from us from doing it in a coffee shop. And then, yeah, decide we'll. We'll try it over here in the produce section or whatever. Okay. I was your reflection there. Just made me think about the role of, of habits and rituals in a buyer's journey. And I have to tell you, I don't like it when I go into a grocery store and they've switched everything around. Like, where the whole like, paper section or, you know, paper goods section is now over here. And you're having to like, reorient the map in your, in your head. And I'm sure there's a merchandising reason for doing that, but I'm just kind of reflecting here. Like, one of the cool things about your model is that you have stock that's probably always there, that's kind of consistent. These brands my, that become my favorites. I know where to go find them, and it's built into my weekly or monthly pattern to go restock that. And I know exactly where to go to get it. But you also have this beautiful, like, rotating section over here. So you, as a designer of the space, have the freedom to say watermelons are here, you know, and like to just change the look of the store. Or maybe I don't know if you have flowers, but you know that the flowers change as the season goes on too. So that it does feel a little bit like a new experience in a controlled way in a, In a. In a small section of the store. But you don't change the whole, like, layout. Right. There's still some security about. I know where to find stuff and these things will always be there. And I don't have to worry about that.
- [63:45]
Alex Bloom
Yeah, we got with our merchandising consultant, I think, in this past last year, and we did a lot of changing over at our Packard Market. And there was definitely moments where it's like we were changing the peanut butter or the jelly. And even me as an employee sometimes didn't know where it was. And customers ask that all the time. And I think the way you say that, it really piqued my interest in a couple of ways of a. Like the way we are. We really are. Like, we look like a grocery store, but we really operate like a farmer's market. Like, we don't even have like these. We've got a lot of great displays and they, they do stay there, but they're like, so few of them are permanent. Like the flowers are. They are in buckets and they go and they come in and out. And so it's like very transient. And so I think there's a lot of things that people, either through the repetition of coming to Argus Farm Stop, or just by virtue of our merchandising, they understand that these displays are going to change. And also they, like, are engaged with them.
- [64:41]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, they're looking forward to it.
- [64:42]
Alex Bloom
Yeah. If you move the peanut butter, people will. It's going to disrupt things, you know.
- [64:48]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, yeah. Or an entire freezer section which is now over here.
- [64:53]
Alex Bloom
You're like, what? And I think having a smaller store also helps with that, where it's like, you know, I was imagining Meijer with the paper goods section being moved. I was like, oh, that'd be a two minute walk.
- [65:05]
Corinna Bench
Yes. Sometimes. And you've got that big thing of toilet paper that you're trying to hold in your hand. Not cool to walk that long. Or you're. You're. That you're that person that doesn't bring a cart because all you think you're gonna get is 2 gallons of milk. And then you know what happens? You end up wanting, like. And then you're doing this in the store with your arms. Yeah. Anyway, hey, we gotta wrap this up. Let's. Let's ask a final question. What are some of, like, your marketing breakthroughs? Any tips, final tips that you want to share if you could come from a place of wisdom. I am the Yoda of marketing all things marketing. What are some things that you've learned that you want to make sure people hear today?
- [65:44]
Alex Bloom
I think the biggest thing that I try to tell people, especially when we're working with farms and, you know, people who are often, you know, a couple who are trying to grow organically on their farm and trying to grow a market, I think especially with digital marketing people, we've got so many big terms, SEO, like, I barely even understand SEO and all these things and thinking that we need to do all these things. You need to have this expertise, you need to have this ability, you need to. And it's like, I think simplify and do multiple things simply is much better than trying to even do one thing expertly. And you're going to learn like, it's a journey. I'm really starting to view, like, the marketing initiatives that we do is like, I don't need to do this one perfectly. We need to get this off the ground and start testing things and start moving things, like, starting to see how these things will evolve over years. So, like, have a website, have it do specific things well. Like, I think it's much better to have a website that has three things that it does well than have a website that has 10 things that, you know, maybe some of those pages are like, coming soon. You know, it's like, understand who you are and what you can do and send that message directly. I also try to, like, not tell people bad news that much. I'm like, I'm not going to tell you that we. We don't have this thing when I'm going to frame it in a way of a good, positive thing, you know, um, so, like, use. Have it be easy for people to find you, like, have it. Have an Instagram and do things on it. You don't have to be the expert of social media, but have, like, if somebody looks you up and they go there, they see posts, they can click on things, they can learn more about you. That's what I'm trying to build out with this blog and more of our website is like, if people want to learn more about you, they can. Those things are available like, yeah, have a newsletter, have an email, have a way for people to get that and do it sometimes, you know, and you'll, you'll learn it and you'll, you don't need to do things expertly and I don't think you need to find somebody who's going to, you know, absolutely revolutionize. Like I was learning more about Google advertisements and I heard somebody really brilliantly say it's like you 100% may reach a point where you need a social media expert and a social media team and things like that. And great for you when you do. But right here, right now, if you're starting off or you're a small farmer, like I would not go and immediately pay high dollar for the absolute best. I would like try like understand who you are and what you can do and finding those avenues. Yeah, I would recommend website, social media, newsletter and do them.
- [68:27]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, you're speaking to the find you're good enough and that we don't have to, we don't have to achieve this perfection. I also liked how, how you earlier said that you spend more of your marketing time and dollars on taking care of the customers you already have. And I, I feel like I want to lift that up as part of the wisdom in this episode too, because those are the people that already love you that are actually probably supporting the financial arm of your business anyway. And if we can do a good job of taking care of them, we build security in our business. And it's a whole lot easier to do that once they're in the door than constantly find new people.
- [69:12]
Alex Bloom
Yeah. Technically, from just dollars and cents, it's much more expensive to get a new customer than it is to keep the one that you have. And I think that that's something that people in our customer service training as well is like, if somebody comes and asks us for a product that we're out of, you know, we have an. Our answer is not we don't have it or we're out of it. You know, it's like we've, we've built out a lot of operations with Airtable, a project management software where it's like, we take special orders all the time. Where it's like those special orders will be like, I want you to hold a baguette for me every week to hey, tell me the next time you get duck liver, you know.
- [69:51]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [69:52]
Alex Bloom
And we'll give you a call when we get it. And so it's like we have, like, we have a place to do something with the concerns and things that are brought to us. Somebody wants this item, we'll put you in the special order form. You know we have something to do with it where it's not just a dead end.
- [70:08]
Corinna Bench
Well, this has been so fun. We could keep talking. Let's. Let's just book another flight to Colorado. Sound good?
- [70:15]
Alex Bloom
That sounds great to me.
- [70:17]
Corinna Bench
And go skiing. Where can people go to learn more about Argus Farm Stop and what you're doing there? If they want to be a part of this conference. Yeah.
- [70:28]
Alex Bloom
Best place to go would be www.argusfarmstop.com and there you'll see a lot about our, our model, our growing practices, our farmers, our offerings, how to learn more with our external training, we do a monthly welcome webinar which is one hour free. Just anybody can come and learn more about the model, how it works. And if you're interested in starting a farmstop, we have multiple other ways to be more hire, engaged and more consulting and training through that website. You can also go to our social media Argus farmstop. I would recommend the Instagram, really great Instagram there. And you can sign up for our newsletter on our website. That's where we'll be getting as we discuss a monthly newsletter coming out to you. Those would be the best place and then obviously like would love to see you in store if you ever come down.
- [71:21]
Corinna Bench
I was going to say go. Yeah. Come down to Ann Arbor, everyone. We'll do a little.
- [71:26]
Alex Bloom
It's a. It's a great place to just see what's going down. Yeah.
- [71:32]
Corinna Bench
Awesome. Well, it's been so fun seeing you again.
- [71:35]
Alex Bloom
Yeah.
- [71:36]
Corinna Bench
And we'll stay in touch and I promise I'm going to come visit this summer. We always go to Zingerman's at some point and we do some rafting on the, on the river there. So.
- [71:44]
Alex Bloom
Okay, great.
- [71:46]
Corinna Bench
We'll make sure we. We stop by and there's definitely a.
- [71:49]
Alex Bloom
Time I'll be driving through Ohio this, this summer too. So I'll. I'll try and stop by.
- [71:52]
Corinna Bench
Please do, please do. We'd love to host you.
- [71:55]
Alex Bloom
Awesome.
- [71:56]
Corinna Bench
All right, thanks so much.
- [71:57]
Alex Bloom
Thank you so much, Bruna.
- [71:59]
Corinna Bench
Today's show notes can be found@mydigitalfarmer.com 317 and if you liked today's episode, please go leave me a rating or a review on Apple podcast. It really does help more people find out about the show. If you want to get onto my email list and learn all about how to do your marketing better for your farm, I have some really good free stuff to send your way and you can do so by going to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe don't forget I'm now on Instagram at my Digital Farmer. I show up there a few times a week with a marketing tip or a mindset coaching moment to help keep you on track in your business. I'd love to connect with you there. I'd also love to see you inside of Farm Marketing School. If you want to join me this summer. We're doing a lot of really fun things. I'm dropping a social media project into the school this summer and that's something that's been sorely needed and I'm really excited that that's now finally done and just really love hanging out with people in there. So if you want to be a part of a great community and just be in the trenches working on your marketing this summer and have that support someone you can go to and be like, what do I do? Please join us inside. You can learn more@mydigitalfarmer.com FMS thank you for joining me today. Have a wonderful week and remember, I believe in you.