Farmer Spotlight: Hopewell Farms
In this week's episode, Janelle meets with Phil of Hopewell Farms to discuss becoming a Farmer, marketing to local Buyers and making healthy food convenient. Phil shares his best practices for reaching Buyers in his community and making a plan for his sales.
For more Farm resources, visit: barn2door.com/resources
-
Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast, the go to podcast for do it yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers. This podcast is hosted by Barn2Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand and sell online and in person.
Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
Janelle Maiocco: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Janelle, CEO of Barn2Door and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners may be aware, Barn2Door offers an all in one business solution for independent farmers, who are cutting out the middleman, taking control of their business, selling under their brand, and [00:01:00] making sure their customers can purchase from their farm both online and in person.
In today's conversation, we'll meet one of our newest fans, Phil from Hopewell Farms. When I say fans, what I mean is a farm advisory network. We work very closely with a number of farms, specifically to get their feedback and to engage them more regularly. Today, I'm happy to welcome Phil. Hopewell Farms has worked with us since 2021, has built a successful direct to consumer protein operation in Georgia.
I'm excited to talk to you today about your farm story, and your success and advice you have for other farms. Welcome.
Phil Bonelli: Thank you, Janelle. Well, I'm glad you clarified that because I have been a fan of Barn2Door for quite a long time. It's crazy, it's been since 2021. And I can't even imagine having started selling to consumers without it.
Truly.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, you know, that's music to our ears. And it's funny when we named it the Farm Advisory Network. Again, we work with about a dozen farmers really closely. We didn't realize until we looked at the acronym that it actually was FAN, which was quite [00:02:00] a fun moment of aha. But we appreciate that. I mean, we're equally fans of farmers we're working with.
So I guess it works both ways.
Phil Bonelli: Thank you.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, 2021. That is a minute or two, isn't it? I'm so glad to hear that we've been, obviously a partner, but a help to your farm. And that's just, I mean, that's why we exist, frankly, is to help farmers like you be successful.
But before we dive in on that, let's learn just for the folks listening, I want to make sure they understand your operation. I mean, everybody sort of has a farm story, right? Like, how did you get started? Why did you start and what does your farm look like today? So maybe we can hop in and just get to know you a bit.
Phil Bonelli: Sure. Well. I became a farmer by accident and now it's just an all consuming passion, but I was a, commercial banker. I was a finance major at UGA, Go Dawgs, and I was a banker for businesses. And in 2019, my wife and I, we have four kids, and depending on when this airs, we might have five because, May 2nd, [00:03:00] 2025.
Janelle Maiocco: Congratulations!
Phil Bonelli: Thank you.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing.
Phil Bonelli: It's all that grass fed beef, Janelle. It's just
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, that's so great. I didn't realize. That's great. Congratulations. That's wonderful.
Phil Bonelli: Thank you. And we, uh, we wanted to just live on a couple acres. And we found a house on 10 acres that we liked, but it was part of a 43 acre farm, and they were going to sell the other 33 separate.
And we didn't want to have a subdivision around us. And so I was like, well, if I rent out the basement of this house, I can buy the whole thing. And the guy, he had a cow calf operation and I was just told him, Hey, you can just keep your cows here. Cause I just want to play on this land.
So, we did that in 2019, but then over the winter, I don't know, my parents had given me a, folks, This Just Ain't Normal by Joel Salatin, which is a great book.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes. Yes. Yep. This Just Ain't Normal.
Phil Bonelli: Yeah, and I was like, well, there's cows out here. I want to start doing grass fed beef. So in the spring of [00:04:00] 2020, I purchased half of his herd.
So I got 15 mama cows and a bull, and a donkey named Madea and started with daily rotations right away. I knew I wanted to do all grass fed and mob grazing and you know, it was a beautiful lesson and that I knew enough just to keep the cows alive, but you can't really learn till you do. So then I just kept reading and watching YouTube videos and learning.
And, we had kept kind of the whole thing from, from birth to harvesting. So, you know, it takes a couple of years, you know, 24 to 30 months for us to finish out a grass fed steer. So, in late 2021, we started selling and then we expanded to broilers and egg layers and pork and turkey, not at first as much of a, like a sales and business diversification thing, but just because we were focused on regenerating the soil and the environment and nature is very diverse.
So we want to be [00:05:00] more diverse in our animals to have more of a full ecosystem to regenerate the land faster. But now it's a crucial part of our business that we provide basically all popular Western animal proteins outside of lamb.
Janelle Maiocco: That's incredible. And I would suspect to you, if you look back, you're shocked and surprised at how much you've learned.
Phil Bonelli: Oh my gosh. And it's. You learn so much and then last year we built an on farm USD exempt poultry processing plant. So, you think you learn so much about raising pastured broilers and everything, but then, I mean, that's really not even farming, that's manufacturing. And learning all the regulations of that and lean concepts and all that stuff, so the learning never stops.
Which I like.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes, well, I hope you like it because it sounds like it's been a firehose literally for a number of years now, across, to your point, so many proteins and including expanding your business in many ways, dimensionally expanding your business, which [00:06:00] is really exciting. Awesome.
Okay. And then just so folks know, you're in Georgia, who are you selling to? How does that function work for your farm?
Phil Bonelli: Great question. So we're in Northeast Georgia, Gainesville, Georgia, which is actually the birthplace of like industrial, fully integrated poultry production. So it's the poultry capital of the world.
And so, there's a lot of industrial operations around us. So it's fun to be doing some completely different.
Janelle Maiocco: You're literally redefining the poultry capital of the world in a way that it should be.
Phil Bonelli: Working on it. Yep. And just a quick side note, I mean our marketing and who we truly are and what we talk about is like so different than putting 20, 000 birds in a warehouse, but it is quite the blessing that we are surrounded by that because like for example, we're building out a much bigger brooder, because we're scaling up the birds.
Well, there's all sorts of expertise around here on brooders and I can get used grain bins with [00:07:00] silos and I can get used brooder lamps. So, having the industry that I'm so against here is handy from an infrastructure standpoint.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, and, I think repurposing in a purposeful manner, just to be cheeky with words.
Phil Bonelli: I like that. Repurposing in a purposeful manner. We do a lot of that.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, that's so good to hear. I'm excited. Good. Well, you've come so far in a few years. Do I dare ask what you want the next five years to look, usually I wait till the end, but I'm too curious because of this trajectory that you're on.
Phil Bonelli: Well, boy, we have so much we're looking to accomplish this year, it's tough to even think about five years, but I definitely I would say in five years, I would love it if we were five days a week if I had two delivery drivers going full-time, eight hours a day delivering to people's doors.
And you asked about who our customers are. That's the bulk of it is just direct individuals. We sell to a couple restaurants, 'cause they're my buddies, [00:08:00] but we have weekly subscriptions that we are looking to continually expand and right now it takes us the better part of Wednesday to go do all those deliveries.
We just sell to people. And, I'm very thankful that I live in an area where I can do that. We don't go anywhere more than 45 minutes away. Most of it's within 25 minutes. And, we target, we're very specific in our marketing to target specific neighborhoods because we want route density when we go, but that we just sell to people and love feeding families.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. I want to circle back later in this conversation actually about route density because it's so incredible, so many farmers that we work with that have picked up the door to door delivery and in many cases uncovered a it's efficient. B. you actually, in many cases, our farmers are actually making money off delivery because there's a delivery fee per drop.
Plus, to your point, if there's a density, you create this efficiency and then you're [00:09:00] literally, people are like afraid of it, but you can have somebody else do it and you can literally make money off door to door delivery. And then consumers, sorry, I get excited here. Consumers have no excuse, because they're all like you know, convenience, convenience, convenience driven. And yet, nine in ten consumers prefer local food. And so, if you take convenience off the table, if you will, as there's no more friction, they will choose a farmer's food nine out of ten times. Like, for your future, five days, you know, every day of the week.
That's exactly what they'll choose.
Phil Bonelli: A hundred percent, Janelle, that is what we want to every day be more of is we want to be all natural, the most nutrients dense, delicious, nutritious, local foods with the convenience of Amazon. And that's what people need. Now there's ways to do that.
So, I exclusively do local. Right now, I was doing two counties, but now it's just like my county. That's my whole focus for this year is the county that I live in, which is pretty densely populated. [00:10:00] Thank God. So if it wasn't, I might have to adjust, but blow out the larger subdivisions, first of all, and have that be my foothold.
Janelle Maiocco: Yep.
Phil Bonelli: Then, with that, as we're driving to these big subdivisions, Well now it's easy to stop off some places directly on the route, but we want to be the convenience of Amazon, With local all natural food and so we have to just sell local so we control the delivery. I'm not shipping and I'm sure some, I'm sure there's Barn2Door customers out there who are having great success shipping meat, but I just don't want to play that game.
I want to deliver to people's doors.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I would say the majority of farmers who have tried it have veered away from it because then you end up being in the shipping business and that's an expensive business and because of all the packaging and especially if you're trying to ship proteins. I mean, we could digress on this for a long time, but a lot of farmers have just learned that because you add in variables called, you know, UPS and delivery [00:11:00] services, you sort of lose control of that supply chain. And then what happens is many times you know, there's a hurricane or there's a snowstorm somewhere and it doesn't get delivered or it's on a doorstep and it's too hot somewhere.
And, the meat goes bad and then the waste and they're just out money. Like it's just so costly. And yet, and it's so much work. It's costly. It's so much work and there's too many variables. And so I would say, you know, frankly, 95 percent of the farmers we work with are delivering and serving their local communities all across the country.
And I can't tell you how excited that makes us because to your point within 25 or 45 minutes. Typically, and some farms go further because they're even more rural, but in that case, they consolidate, they don't go like you're going, Hey, I'm going to go five days a week. For them it makes more sense to be like, I'm going to go, you know, four times a month, or I'm going to go maybe up to eight times a month and just cram all of my deliveries into those services and the towns and the people and the buyers are there. And so concentrated, route density and concentrated marketing, you know, from a [00:12:00] geo or a location, you know, localized marketing essentially, has just become a game changer and you have so much more control.
Like, you have so much more control over the product, the delivery, the quality, the experience of your buyers, and so, so we get, we're, I think I share clearly the passion that you are sharing, in terms of serving your local communities and frankly, honey is a great example, right?
If you have honey that's in your community, you're getting all the right nutrients, you know, based on where you live, and, and, and, and, and.
Phil Bonelli: Yeah, I agree. And I, when I think of my avatar, like my ideal customer health and quality of food is number one driver. And then convenience, that might be second local is probably third, but if they can get local, they would prefer local.
So then, I'm not really competing against the grocery store, but I might be competing against like a national shipping stuff all over the [00:13:00] place, like a butcher box or something. But they would prefer local if they can get it right to their door, so.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. And they don't, and the shipping cost alone for somebody to get something delivered when they can actually source it local and not pay a huge shipping fee.
Is and also know their farmer, right? I mean, to be fair, you know, those companies that are shipping typically are folks that are aggregating across a couple of large farms, not necessarily a local farm that's growing and serving their local community. And I think just the transparency and the transportation and there's people out there who care about that carbon footprint too, right, where it's like, I don't need to involve lots of big trucks and, you know, to get food delivered when Phil's going to give it to me on Tuesday.
Phil Bonelli: You bring up a great point. That's another benefit of focusing on local is that I can do in person marketing. I mean, I like people. So, like I go speak at the Rotary Club. I opened my farm, I used to do a farm [00:14:00] tour every single Saturday. Now I do it the last Saturday of the month and make it a bigger deal.
But we do a lot to bring people to the farm. I bring the farm out. So, that is the most powerful marketing I could do as far as like a conversion rate. And I can't do that if I'm selling across the country. So, that's helpful. I will say also on the marketing. So, you know, I do Social media which kind of draws people in and I'm getting their email addresses and sending weekly emails I do face to face but one thing that I don't know if it's as popular but it's been very helpful to me is, there was a lady that was shopping at the farm store and she's all into organic meat and everything and I started chatting with her. And, her name is Joy, and it just so happens she owns this company postcard mania and they do mailers and that sounds kind of old school, and they do a lot of other stuff too, but if you want a geographically specific, mailers are the best, I can say this exact neighborhood of a thousand [00:15:00] homes. I'm sending my mailers there. And it's been very productive.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, and I know we already went straight to talking about density in terms of your door to door delivery, which I love.
That is just a juicy piece of information for any farmers listening. If you are trying to drive local awareness, focusing on specific neighborhoods or households, or a delivery zip code, what Phil just said here is gold, right? Which is to market to them. One way to do that is through mailers to a specific zip code.
I'm hoping that wasn't too expensive to contract with somebody locally to do that.
Phil Bonelli: Not at all. And I'm wearing a bracelet on my wrist, run it by the numbers, which I try to live by on the farm. And, yeah, I just looked at what the return was and at the time, I was just doing one subscription, which was $50 a week.
So, that's $200 a month, $2, 400 a year. And then you can look at what my gross margin is on that. But it didn't take [00:16:00] a whole lot of new customers to make that pay for itself.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome, I actually would love a couple of bullet points around now that we're talking a little bit about driving density for your door to door delivery and doing that from a marketing lens.
But before I say that, I have to say 1 thing about your farm tours. We work with a number of farms, obviously, the majority of who are delivering either door to door or with local pickups, you know, going into communities to provide that convenience for people to pick up, or have that delivery service.
And that's just been a game changer, and then they will do in many cases, you know, farm tours or show up at things, but, frankly, we have farmers that don't prefer the social side, right? And they too are having great success. Like, I just want to make sure people know that it is great if you love it, but you can also have great success if that's not your thing, having a booming local business, even by just using and highly leveraging, especially email marketing, or having local partners that sort of champion your farm for you. Right. And so, [00:17:00] there's a lot of that that can go on too. And frankly, even to your point, those mailers, great example, like you're not talking to each of those folks individually, but you're putting some of those activities in place to ensure that you have a booming local business.
On the scale of I'm introverted all the way to extroverted, you know, this can be done, 100 percent and leaning into whoever you are as a farmer and a business owner, and what that means is also great because you will be energized by those activities, if you're choosing the right ones for yourself and your farm, yeah.
So, I want to dig into so many things, but one of them is, you talked a lot about making sure that you have concentrated marketing and areas, for the purpose of that route density from a door to door delivery, you know, you said the flyers focused, you know, sending out mailer flyers, literally, which I love because it's sort of counterintuitive to the digital world and people actually pay attention to what comes in the mail now, because guess what?
They don't get a lot of mail, so they get your mail and they, they're loving that. What [00:18:00] would two other suggestions be Phil, before we move on to other beefy topics that you would say, Hey, if you're trying to increase local marketing door to door delivery density, what are two or three other, top tips you would give?
I mean, I'm wondering, do you give promos? Do you have local businesses that support you? What is it that you feel is really working? You did mention email too.
Phil Bonelli: Yeah, I definitely, the emails 100 percent working and, I get so many compliments on my emails and I do not write them. I have a great friend, that is what he does. His name is Alan Drago. I'm gonna give Alan a shout out. He's awesome at it. That's what he does. And he was a customer of the farm and I give him, through Barn2Door, I have him set up with an account and I basically give him a credit every week. for, he does an email every week, he gets a credit.
So, he just shops through my store and he's on my delivery route and we just barter it and...
Janelle Maiocco: Love it.
Phil Bonelli: You know, we get together, I just tell him [00:19:00] stories. Cause the emails are not salesy. They are stories, education. And it's like, Hey, if you want to support us, boom. Click this link.
Janelle Maiocco: I actually, I'm really, really glad you said that because, we do a lot for farmers at Barn2Door with regard to marketing help, many farmers like you can schedule, automated order reminders, you can capture emails automatically, both through people who are shopping or who visit your website.
We send, the order reminders. We also, a lot of farmers subscribe to our monthly marketing toolkit, which is like 50 graphic media designs that they can post on social media. We give them sample content. We develop four to six seasonal marketing templates that they can use in MailChimp, and give them sample content for that.
So like we do a lot of that, but we always are like, we can do all this. But at the end of the day, the stories and your brand are you, we can't superimpose that on all of the marketing materials, we can get you like 80, 90 [00:20:00] percent of the way there, but at the end of the day, you have to insert yourself, your brand, your farm.
Like, I don't know that there was a calf just born or that you're getting a new breed of chicken or that you're starting to sell turkey or a funny anecdote about, you know, chickens crack me up all day long. So, you know, there's always stories, right, that you can share from your farm. And I think that is the brand, like your brand has to actually come through on top of that marketing exercise.
Phil Bonelli: A hundred percent in, in tying that in with something you said earlier about being the authentic you. I am an excited, peppy individual. I'm definitely, there's probably a lot of happy farmers that work with Barn2Door because they're doing real good food product, but I'll tell you. I'm the happiest farmer in North Georgia and that's me and that shows through on all my Instagrams and everything.
But if you're not, you don't have to be me, be you on your thing. Just share who you are. People will love you that you are doing [00:21:00] real food, be you, and don't feel like you have to know it all. I barter food for this guy to write emails. I am in, and I tell him the stories, and that's it. I record reels of myself for, it's funny you talk about the calf being born, or it's time for turkeys.
That's all on my Instagram, and I like that, but I don't like sitting there and making Instagram posts. So, I just record the reels, and then my friend helps me do that. You don't have to be extroverted like me, and you don't have to be out in front of a million people, but you have to partner with people.
And maybe that's your spouse or your child, but you can't grow your farm if you're not going to partner with people and love doing it.
Janelle Maiocco: I think 10 out of 10 farmers that are successful that I speak with, you know, especially through a podcast or everything else, or our fans that are also hosting Connect, our office hour program for other farmers, farmer to farmer, and also some of our farmers teach Academy classes through Barn2Door.
And I feel [00:22:00] like they all come like email marketing, email marketing. And some of them will say we started once a month. But once a week is gold, like once a month wasn't enough. So, it's just interesting to hear that reverberating theme through every conversation. And they don't have to be long.
I think it's untrue that they have to be big, long newsletters every time, frankly people don't, they get thumb cramps that they have to scroll too much. Right. So, like just a little love in a short email of like, Hey, I'm here or don't forget to order this week, has been a game changer for farms that we've seen literally double their business year over year over year. It's just incredible to watch.
Phil Bonelli: 100 percent, nobody's reading a long email. And so, it's gotta be short and sweet. And you gotta do it and it's just, people love hearing your stories and they love hearing about food and connecting with it, your customer does, and just be you in the email. Every week, let's say I add 10 people on my email list. [00:23:00] And two people drop off my email list good because those two people aren't my customers, so I got to be me in my emails and my customer will like it.
Janelle Maiocco: I'm so glad I was literally going to ask that next, which was, look, you've said for buyer density, you sent out flyers and then regular email marketing, but you must collect those emails.
And that's something we could sort of beat our chest when we're talking to farmers and our farmers are talking to other farmers, which is collect emails, collect emails, collect emails, and it doesn't have to be like, you're going to go knock on every door. There are some really easy ways to collect emails, but you do need to collect emails because that is your, that's your customer list.
Phil Bonelli: Yes, you've got to do it. So, we do go to three farmers markets, which we, of course, want to sell and make a profit off of. But, if I just broke even at the farmer's markets and collected 20 emails each time, that's a win.
Janelle Maiocco: Love it.
Phil Bonelli: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Love it. Love it.
Phil Bonelli: The longterm, my plans for my farm, [00:24:00] I'm going to sell through multiple things, but like it's going to be direct to door subscription, or that's what I want to do. That is what is the best for my business. And email is the tool for that. So, all my social media marketing is for building up awareness of who we are and connecting us to customers and wanting to get emails.
And then, we go to farmer's markets or whatever, and really, it's so funny. You always beat yourself up about the things you didn't do well, or the missed opportunities. And I think of how many folks I've spoken in front of, and I didn't have a sheet to say, sign up with your email, you know, but the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today, just start collecting email and make it, make it your thing.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yep. Yes, I could not agree with you more. I know that our success team, who talked to farms all day, every day, literally to help them win, are always telling folks, if you're at a farmer market, always [00:25:00] have out a sheet, farmers that use our POS, we built it so that it will automatically capture that customer's email at checkout, which is just a game changer.
And so, those sorts of things, it's like helping farmers be successful, but collecting emails and doing it in places where you already are showing up is just great, right? Because it's not meant to create a lot of extra work so definitely ways that we help folks. My team will beat me up if I don't ask you, A, why you decided to work with Barn2Door, and then I want to know your favorite feature.
Phil Bonelli: Okay. I decide to work with ,Barn2Door, let's see, it was so long ago. And now I have so much context since I have worked with Barn2Door. I knew I wanted to sell to individuals and I was like, I want to have a website. So, I think I just started digging around and Barn2Door looked like the best one. I loved, and it's hard to tell if I knew this much going in, but I would say the thing I love the most now is like all the resources.
So. [00:26:00] You know, obviously the platform is great. I love using it. There's a lot of great features, but I love that. I mean, there's so many unknowns. So many of this is scary. Before, I had never sold a dozen eggs, let alone for three times as much as a grocery store. And there's so many, you got to be a marketer.
You got to do accounting and you know what? I just want a plan so I can follow the plan. And when I get on the phone with like Ryan, you know, there's the videos that are very empowering. But man, I get to talk to people who are working with other farms I want to emulate, and I get to listen to those farmers and talk to them.
So I just love that resource, man. I'm not out on an Island trying to figure out, cause when you don't have a clear plan, you procrastinate and you just go do what you know to do. And guess what? You're not growing your business. Yeah. It's scary. Change is scary.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. I think it's a consistent bit of feedback we get.
And I think [00:27:00] that because we are a business solution built for independent farmers, right? What that means is, when farmers are using our platform, we just learn information. Just like you learn, we learn information on, we're watching across thousands of farms for years. And we're like, Oh, the most successful farms are doing X, Y, Z.
And oh, if they do this and this and this, you know, they sell twice as much. We have the data, we have the information and we push that back into our resources, whether it's podcasts or ebooks, academy classes, office hours, best practices when we're onboarding farmers, to get their store set up in a way that, you know, is most convenient and easy for their buyers. So, there's a lot, you know, and if you hit chat, you're talking to people who, know about farming and they know about how to help farmers be successful. And so, we're domain experts, if you will, or from a thought leadership and not just from an information perspective, but also from a platform perspective, right?
I think a lot of folks might come and be like, Oh, I need a website, [00:28:00] but, you know, what did they used to say? Any Tom, Dick or Harry could build a website, but the important part is a website's a brand that we say it's a billboard to nowhere if people can see it, but not shop and so, it's like marketing is there for the purpose of sales and, so you need to have your sales channel open up where buyers want to buy. So, we make sure people get hooked up on social. They have, you know, their store is like it's proprietary. That's what we've built so that farmers can sell, you know, quarter, half, a whole cows or half or whole hogs or subscription to four chickens every month.
And so, we've built subscriptions from the ground up for farmers. Whether that's ongoing, whether it's seasonal subscriptions, whether they want people to pay up front or pay as they go. So, when we're building things like subscriptions, we're like, but what do farmers need when we build subscriptions, right?
Versus any generic solution out there that's not purpose built for farmers. And so, we get excited about not just the platform, but the fact that [00:29:00] we help farmers like we're business owners too at Barn2Door, right? So farmers, just like us as a business, well, you have to have your finances squared away.
You have to think about marketing. You have to think about your brand. You have to think about sales. How do you make sure that sales occur? You have to manage inventory, right? And we have the leading solution in inventory management for farmers, just by virtue of how it works, you know, whether you're selling cows and you have to map to your butcher dates or whether, you're selling online or in person.
You know, you can sell chicken in person at the same time somebody buys it online and that inventory is seamless. There's so much that goes into not just the business management, but the business expertise. And it's, you know, it's fun that people come in for, hey, maybe I need a website.
But what they're getting is a team, you know, expertise, the platform and everything to be successful. And, clearly you can tell I'm over the moon passionate about this.
Phil Bonelli: It's funny you said that because when I went to Barn2Door, that's what I was like, Hey, I need a website and I knew I was at the right place when the team was like, Okay, well, we build your [00:30:00] store.
The first step is building the store and then the site. I'm like, wow, this is what I'm talking about. Cause yeah, that's why you have it to sell. You got to get after it on the sales because I am in it, I'm never going to become a millionaire. I don't think, nor do I really care just from farming, but I can make a good, healthy living and do something I am passionate about.
I'm so full of purpose. And if I don't sell product, then I can't do that. And I sell product for an appropriate margin. We got to get after it.
Janelle Maiocco: I think we've mentioned before, like your goal, and we love this because we have a lot of Farms that have never sold subscriptions before, and then they come to Barn2Door and we're like, Hey, look, this can really be nice.
You know, you get consistent sales. You can count on those sales week over week, month over month when somebody just bought it once at the beginning. And so, subscriptions can be just a beautiful thing so that you know going into every single week or month you already have x percent of items sold. And for many farms that [00:31:00] consistent revenue has been gold, in terms of saving them time even from a marketing side, having a really streamlined fulfillment and logistics around that and it's just been a game changer and we find that many farms who start offering subscriptions end up with the ability to sort of think bigger about their business and think about scale and think about that consistency that helps frankly build any business, right? But you have some goals. I mean, you, I think you caught onto that pretty early on and you're pushing for a pretty high percent of your product to be subscriptions.
Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Phil Bonelli: Yeah. Well, it is key for sure. And I definitely want to scale because the more that I grow my farm, the more that I can protect land from being developed and feed people real food and have a good time. The things that are good about subscription for me, definitely consistent sales because people come in and they would just get random stuff and you know, I sell predominantly frozen meat.
So, what [00:32:00] I did was I want to sell more frozen meat at a good cadence and people want eggs and eggs. You have to tie in if you can, and it's good to tie in your subscriptions, more perishable weekly staples. So, eggs are that for us. Our eggs are like, and we started doing this before egg prices got crazy with the bird flu stuff, but every weekly subscription box comes with a dozen eggs and then some frozen meat items.
So, we have that to keep them getting it on the weekly cadence, which of course you could do a monthly if you didn't have a weekly, you know, if I were to sell raw milk, that would also be a great thing to have in the weekly. And certainly veggies. But, it's key for cashflow. Also, it's key for my inventory management, which you mentioned because, I have a poultry processing plant. I do pastured poultry. Everybody wants boneless, skinless breasts. Thighs are my favorite. Drumsticks are also delicious. But, if I just had [00:33:00] people a la carte order what they wanted, I'd be sitting on a bunch of drumsticks. I do a weekly box. And I say, Hey, you're going to get some of, let's say these 12 items.
You're going to get a couple of them every week, but it's farmer's choice. So, if I'm getting high on drumsticks, boom, drumsticks are going in. If I'm sold out of hot sausage, but I have chorizo, which by the way, chorizo sells like crazy. So this wouldn't be the case, but chorizo is going in that week. So, I can manage my inventory, so I can sell the whole animal.
Janelle Maiocco: That is just gold. I need to like pull out that whole section and then put it on the billboard, but I agree. We have so many conversations with farmers about farmers choice boxes and how that is literally actually a win, win, win a lot of farmers think, Oh, I have to give buyers choice down to the cut.
But to your point, you end up with only drumsticks and you also end up with, forgive me for saying this, picky customers, like line yourself up with people that are like easy to please throw it in the box. They don't want to think about it. [00:34:00] They don't want to choose all the individual cuts.
They trust you. They know that it's you know, it takes them no time to shop. Right. And buyers love that too.
Phil Bonelli: One thing I'm lacking at that's in the growth plan this year is that, you know, I want people to be eating healthy, nutritious food. And I was actually blown away at how many people like they had never cooked a whole chicken or they're like, Oh, what do I do with the, like this ham steak?
And so, empowering them by sending recipe cards or including some recipes or a quick video of you preparing it. You want to prioritize cuts that are easy to cook, but empower them. This is how we love to do a chuck roast so that they feel comfortable using all that.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. And it's healthy to mix it up.
I'll take the chicken feet all day long, by the way, for my broth. Start making my own stock. I love it. It's my favorite.
Phil Bonelli: We just did our first big batch of, I think we made 45 gallons of broth the other day at which then we threw in the, [00:35:00] in the box, I'll say one quick thing too, on inventory management is, you know, the box went, since it's farmer's choice, it allows me to distribute across how I want to, but I would really encourage farmers also to make sure they're getting the cuts that people want.
For example, I mentioned ham steaks and ham. Ham does it for me. It has never sold the way that sausage does. And I actually get more per pound for sausage. So I just stopped getting most of my pigs cut up with ham and I turned it into sausage. You don't have to get every cut. You don't have to do everything.
If for whatever reason, your customers don't like drumsticks, figure out how to get a grinder and make chicken sausage and sell that for a premium.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I love that. I'm getting so tempted to invite you to start teaching Academy classes on pricing and packaging. So we'll talk about that later. But I mean, I think you're right It's actually very similar to how you think about if you're gardening like just grow what you want to eat, [00:36:00] you know, versus all the cool things you could grow, and then you don't eat them, to your point, I think you have to pay attention as a farmer to what people buy, and people do love, while farmer's choice is great for farmers, actually, buyers love it too, again, they don't like decision fatigue. They want shopping to be quick and easy. They know it's good for them. They love learning new things. It's very empowering. It's just a streamlined experience across the board for the farmer, for the buyer, for everybody. So we're really big fans, but yeah, like pay attention to the various cuts and things that are selling.
We're putting out a lot of content on that recently, so we'll have to dig into that one another time for sure. Okay, we've covered so much and I feel like we could double click and talk about so many things so much deeper, but I want to be respectful of your time and the listeners time and we can maybe give them a teaser for future conversations as for sure. In terms of tips that you might give to people like what do you wish you knew or is there anything that you wish you knew or would tell yourself from when you've just first started farming?
Like what do you wish that you had known [00:37:00] going into it?
Phil Bonelli: I wish I'd known the importance of making a plan and a budget. Because again, there's so many unknowns with a direct to consumer business. You're not just in production. You know, I went to this workshop regenerating land through lifestyle. I was with all these farmers and we're all getting jazzed up about Being organic in daily mob graze and moving your chickens every day.
But I looked around this room and I was like, we're all pumped about production, but if we can't sell a $25 or $30 chicken, or, you know, whatever, then we're gonna be out of business. So, you gotta be marketing, accounting, sales, everything. So, have a plan and use resources. You don't have to do everything.
But you need to have a plan and know what you want to accomplish so that you could find the resources to help you.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I'm not meaning to just take advantage of putting a plug in here, but literally that's exactly what Barn2Door does, right? We help farmers.
You're so spot on that farmers love production and I do too. Geez, I love, I mean, I, [00:38:00] greenhouses and I've always had chickens and everything else and, and grew up on farms. But ultimately, it's a business. You are an independent farm business and we love helping independent farmers because again, they're cutting out the middleman and maximizing those profits, but we help with finance, inventory management, orders, customer growth, and running your online store and in person sales, right?
We are the framework for that plan, right? And help, to your point, with our resources, try to help people get through, but you do have to be aware that it's more than just production, for better or for worse. I mean, any business owner probably doesn't love doing all parts of the business.
Like they're probably not like, wow, I have to deal with finances again, you know, but at the end of the day, you're a business owner, right? And so you do have to give a nod to the various quote unquote departments of your business, and have them work in concert for a successful business. Even beyond the fun parts, right?
Which I totally appreciate.
Phil Bonelli: And I would say that you should be bold in your pricing. It used to be so tough for me to communicate pricing, which of [00:39:00] course, if you have a website, you don't have to communicate it, people look at it, but, I am more expensive than the store, although the store is certainly catching up with me on a lot of, a lot of things.
And, I am so comfortable with what I cost. I cost what real food should cost. And the stuff that's cheap is cheap for a reason. So, I'm not expensive. They're cheap and I don't...
Janelle Maiocco: I love that.
Phil Bonelli: You got to be so comfortable with rejection. Look of my area, if I sell to 1 percent of the population, I mean, I'm crushing it.
So, I don't need everyone to be my customer. And a bunch of people can tell me they think that $8 a dozen for eggs is too expensive or whatever. I don't care. They're not my customer and I love them. God bless them, but I'm not worried about keeping them happy.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, which I feel like that piece is something we need to double click on, even in another podcast, what that means, because if you're not being afraid of your customers, and knowing that there's always going to be a [00:40:00] little bit of attrition and that you're looking for your right customers, and it's very empowering, we love that, let's empower independent farmers all across the country to be wildly successful, like yourself, which is so great.
Phil, because he so graciously, said yes to working closer with Barn2Door, and as part of one of our fans, or one of our farm advisors, he now actually starts hosting Connect sessions. And if I can get 'em to probably some academy classes as well.
But connect is office hours hosted by farmers for farmers. And what that means is if you join Barn2Door or if you're at Barn2Door, and a farmer using Barn2Door, you can go to an office hour where Phil is the host and can just ask him and pile on the questions, 'cause clearly such a rich resource.
Many of the farmers who join us go to so many of the Connect sessions, but just go, you know. By farmers for farmers office hours has been such a winning program for the farmers, that we work with. And I'm so excited for you to host those classes go forward.
That'll be great. [00:41:00]
Phil Bonelli: Well, thank you. I'm flattered to be a part of this. I love being a part of Barn2Door and I so appreciate, when in speaking with you, like I could just see the greater mission and purpose that you are driven by empowering farmers that do real whole, foods. And I thank you for that.
Janelle Maiocco: Amen. I appreciate that. Good. Well, I'm going to quick wrap up, but listen for this podcast, more podcasts with Phil and great farmers like him, join office hours to talk to him more. And hopefully in the future we'll have him teaching some of our Academy classes as well. I want to extend my thanks to Phil for joining us on this week's podcast episode.
You can check out more of Phil and the farm on their Instagram @HopewellFarmsGA. So, Hopewell Farms GA. Check it out. Here at Barn2Door, we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country. We're delighted to offer services, tools, data, support, you name it, to farmers to access more customers, increase sales, scale their business, save tons of time, especially save tons of time.
If you're an independent [00:42:00] farmer who is just getting started or transitioning to selling direct, or if you've been at it a while and want to simplify your business management, please visit Barn2Door.com/Learn-More. Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to joining you the next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn2Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country.
For free farm resources, or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barn2door. com backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next [00:43:00] time.