Farmer Spotlight: Yasukochi Family Farms
Yasukochi Family Farm has been a part of the Oceanside, California, community since 1929, serving their local community fresh produce and berries at farmers markets and through their CSA program. Several weeks ago, they announced direct home delivery for their produce boxes, and it went viral. Britinee Yasukochi explained how their Farm is handling the flood of demand in the San Diego area.
The last 10-15 years, Yasukochi Family Farm has grown and sold specialty produce (Japanese tomatoes, cucumbers, and strawberries, to name a few) at farmers markets in the San Diego area. Britinee’s mother, a school teacher, received interest from other teachers to buy boxes of produce from the Farm; the program steadily expanded and soon they were delivering 200+ boxes weekly to local schools and businesses.
Britinee explained how the pandemic quickly shifted their business.“Once the farmers markets closed, which is our primary source of income, we reached out to the people we knew, saying ‘We’ll be delivering boxes on Monday. We’d love your support.’
That was Friday, March 13th. “It happened so quickly. It went viral! We had no idea how quickly ‘word of mouth’ could travel online — especially right in our local community. Customers put it on their Facebook, and then on the NextDoor app. Suddenly, we had requests and people signing up in counties 2 hours away. We delivered pretty far out, to the very edge of what’s considered ‘San Diego’.”
“It was crazy,” Britinee said, describing the flood of orders. “I was just in charge of text messages to my sister’s phone; she handled routing and orders. I sat from 9 AM to 9 PM responding and coordinating. There were 5-6 of us all taking orders and trying to keep up. Our venmo was frozen because of all the transactions, so we were trying to respond and take payment and coordinate deliveries. We just weren’t ready!
I called Mariel [Barn2Door Employee] on Monday, and signed up on that phone call. On Tuesday, Alessandro [Barn2Door Onboarding Manager] called us. I told him, ‘We need a web store today, because we’re going to be on the news tomorrow.’ He got back to us Tuesday night, we configured it Wednesday morning, and (luckily) by 7 PM on Wednesday we had the store linked in our website.
Without Barn2Door, I think we’d be in a really tough situation. You’ve made it easy for us, and easy for our customers. We can find all our orders without searching through venmo — that was a mess. It’s not only streamlined all the orders coming in, but made it much easier to communicate with all our customers about products available. We now have all our customers emails and phone numbers at our fingertips. That’s invaluable! Before, we’d be missing one piece or another — things would fall between the cracks — or it would be in PayPal or Venmo or email. Now, we can take and fill orders quickly and correctly, all in one place. We get order summaries and our customers get automatic order reminders. It keeps us organized!”
When asked what she was most delighted with, Britinee said, “the ability to configure delivery zones and order cut-offs have been great features for us. Each day has a different delivery area. We could customize the store the way we needed while still serving every area. People understand the system and it’s working, we’re no longer driving an hour and a half for a few orders. Home delivery is what people need right now. It’s great business for us, and it’s a service to the community.
This Farm has been in our family for over 80 years. This is a way of life for us. We love serving the community, and we’re so grateful that they stepped up and supported our Farm. This isn’t just a business, it’s a family operation and we’ve made friends through it.
Of course, we’ve had all kinds of challenges. Like any small Farm, we struggle to have enough product or enough customers. Farming is so seasonal. We can have a crop of tomatoes get sick and lose thousands of dollars, simple as that. You just never know. We’ve gone through a lot, but we’re here now and will do our best to stay here.”
Barn2Door is happy to help Farms like Yasukochi Family Farm streamline taking and filling orders, and continue serving the San Diego area during this trying time. For more Farm success stories during the pandemic, visit our free coronavirus related resources page. If you’re interested to learn about Barn2Door for your own Farm, you can watch this 5 minute video to learn how it works.