How to Sell Beef Subscription Boxes
In this week's episode, Janelle meets with Cory from the Barn2Door Success Team to discuss best practices when selling beef in your Farm store. Learn tactics that successful Farms use to move more product through their store, how they manage less popular products, and the ideal product mix and package sizes.
For more Farm resources, visit: barn2door.com/resources
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[00:00:00] 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 making [00:01:00] sure their customers can purchase from their farm, both online and in person.
In today's conversation, we're going to be discussing selling beef with Cory, one of our account managers, welcoming you today, Cory, from our success team. Every day, Cory talks to and works with farms across the country to implement best practices in their business operations. I'm excited to talk to Cory about selling beef direct to consumer, and how many farms have created successful sustainable operations doing this. Welcome, Cory.
Cory Hutsen: Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Janelle Maiocco: I know, so much to talk about. But before we get started, I want everybody to know a little bit about you, a little bit of your background. I know that sometimes you give a quick, high overview of yourself when you're chatting with farmers.
And then I'll ask you a little bit about your role itself and what it is that you do for Barn2Door every day.
Cory Hutsen: Yeah, absolutely. When I'm first meeting with the farm, I'll give a little bit of a background on myself and let them know that I've been working in customer success in different industries for over eight years at this [00:02:00] point, but coming to Barn2Door, I was kind of finally able to merge my real life passions with work.
Finding kind of a perfect blend of my interests, my passions, with customer success. I love food. I'm very into nutrition and, I've read, listened, invested a lot of my time into all those things. So, buying locally, direct from farm, all the nutritional benefits and the things that come from that, and being able to just work with the farmers who are actually producing those food every day, makes it great to come to work and just something I'm extremely, extremely passionate about doing.
Janelle Maiocco: Thank you for sharing that. I am so glad you did because, what people may or may not realize is when we're interviewing folks to join Barn2Door, we think about our different core values, including hungry and hardy and different things like that, but one of them is heart. And we're always looking to see, Hey, I'm happy for you to join the Barn2Door team, but I want you to care about our farmers.
Right? Like [00:03:00] genuinely be like, wow, I get to help farmers be successful. Which, frankly, is what the success department does, right? Which is like, hey, how can we daily talk to farms, help them be successful, and people who genuinely care about each and every farmer they're talking to, and the impact that that can have.
So, I'm so glad that you joined Barn2Door and are here and helping so many farmers, but so people listening understand that even better, what is it that you actually do every day?
Cory Hutsen: So, as an account manager, I am meeting with farmers who have completed onboarding. So, they go through usually about a month, maybe two months with the onboarding team.
Everybody kind of works at their own pace, but once they're finished with that, they will get passed over to myself, as we call a handoff. And so, I will meet with farmers in more of my time like my first meeting I let farmers know, hey, these meetings are for you. I'm going to ask you [00:04:00] questions, I'm going to get to know your business, so I can help you establish what your priorities are, what you want to work on. Whether that's, you know, accessing more customers, freeing up your time so you can spend more time farming. Whatever it is, I want to kind of tailor that meeting to help you going over email marketing, talking to you about the best ways to increase and drive revenue, like some of the things we're going to be talking about today with bundles and subscriptions.
So, I'll meet with farmers, you know, and not just farmers that are recent with us. You know, farmers have access to me. So, if you've been with Barn2Door for two years and all of a sudden you're thinking about implementing subscriptions, I am going to have that meeting with you.
I'll sit down with you, show you examples, talk to you about best practices, the best ways to implement that. So yeah, it's super enjoyable. I love meeting with all kinds of different farms from around the country. Yeah, there's nothing better.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome. And I appreciate [00:05:00] that explanation.
So, if I'm a farmer, the first thing I do at Barn2Door is I meet with an onboarding manager for a number of weeks, maybe even a few months, to get set up is what I'm hearing. And then you, an account manager, is sort of the next phase of their life with Barn2Door. So, if I'm a farmer after the first, say, month or two, I can meet with you.
But, it sounds like more as needed. Like they might meet with you a lot right away if they're getting certain things set up, but then they can meet with you at any time when they're wanting to try things for their business.
Cory Hutsen: Absolutely. My goal, and I'll let farmers know this.
My goal is for you to become self sufficient. The hardest part about initially getting started is getting used to the technology. These are all new things for you. But I'm going to work to get you up to speed, but I'm not going away as your account manager, right? We can circle back at any time.
You will have something new you want to work on. Hey, you want to work on a, you know, new marketing campaign via email, or as we discuss, you want to start implementing subscriptions or bundle boxes or, you know, [00:06:00] Hey, I'm starting to think about deliveries, what's the best way to optimize that? Can you help me figure out the schedules?
Those are all things that we can discuss and schedule a meeting about.
Janelle Maiocco: Thank you for that list. I was literally going to say, Hey, I know today we're talking about, in particular, folks selling beef and adding subscriptions, but you just gave a great list of, Hey, there's so many things you might want to work on, whether it's email campaigns, thinking about trying to add delivery, or maybe just doing a gut check with you. You know, I suspect people are like, hey, give me feedback on my storefront or on pricing or packaging, or can I do better at branding and what are some other opportunities for me to find more customers?
Cory Hutsen: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think as a farmer, you're running your own business. I think, you know, circling back meeting with someone, just kind of going through, Hey, can you check through my store, getting a second set of eyeballs on that, are there any things you think I could be doing that I'm not fully optimizing right now? I think is a great [00:07:00] resource, whether you are already extremely successful or you're an emerging business, it is always beneficial to have a second set of eyes and just constantly reevaluate. Are there things I could be doing better, or things I need to tweak or clean up?
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I appreciate that. I think the other thing, at least when I'm thinking about the account managers on the success team at Barn2Door, who are doing an amazing job helping farmers, I also feel like you are a quick go to, almost like a quick path to all the resources that people might need. Barn2Door offers many resources for farmers to dive in on particular topics.
If I'm a farmer and I'm like, Hey, I need to learn more about email marketing and we'll get into subscriptions in a second. And I'm like, I want to set it up, but I also want to learn more. What would you recommend? This is the fun, right? You're like, I know exactly how to help.
Cory Hutsen: That's a great question. And again, it is something I love talking to customers about because we do something very unique and offer resources to farmers that are a part of their subscription. So [00:08:00] when I first meet with you, I will explain those resources or if I'm meeting with you and you haven't talked to an account manager in a while, I'm going to bring those back up because we offer things like our Connect, which I always preface, hey, this is my favorite resource we offer. We do these Connect Sessions with our Farm Advisors. So, it's a rotating cast every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday farmers who have been extremely successful through Barn2Door, you know, this is and I let them know this is unique. Right. I've worked in other industries.
There is not, you know, whether you're in insurance or real estate, it's a very rare thing for top producers, high performers, to take time out of their day, to give free advice, ask, you know, answer any questions. Nothing's off the table, whether it's farm practices, Barn2Door related, marketing related. But the best part is they want you to succeed.
There's a larger mission with farming, you know, health, nutrition in this country that like all farmers are kind of back [00:09:00] fighting the same fight and they want other farmers to succeed. So, I think it's extremely unique. And I encourage people, like, hey, if you're not utilizing this, you need to think about doing so, right?
And then we also have, our Academies. Which, hey, I know nothing about email campaigns or social media. This is super foreign to me. Great, let's get you in Social Media Academy. Let's get you a mini college crash course on social media. And, you know, the best part about that is, this isn't, you know, you could have anyone lead, a so called social media expert, but this is a farmer leading it.
This is how they utilize social media to optimize their business. Same thing with email campaigns or grassroots marketing, which, I will ask questions, Hey, what do you think is best for you right now? What are you in need of? Okay. I think this academy would be a great starting point for you. You're looking to access more customers, develop that base.
Let's get you in grassroots marketing with [00:10:00] Alex and Chucktown Acres. Let's start from the basics there.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. And the farmers teaching those classes are just next level. It's so amazing. And you're right, other industries, you're not going to have, you know, experts in those industries giving a crash course.
Very well said and just incredible farmers that are worth listening to, all of that good advice and how it might apply to people. Thank you for that. Well, I know you do talk to a range of farmers I know from dairy to produce to beef and poultry and everything else, but today we're going to focus on farmers selling beef.
So, ranchers and farmers, who might have mixed proteins, but are selling beef. And I know that you talk to many, many of them. And so you have this trove of experience across those types of farms, and I know you are often recommending subscriptions. So, tell me from the very basic of it, Cory, why do you recommend subscriptions to Beef Farms?
Cory Hutsen: Well, to start, there is a reason that businesses try to move to a subscription model. It [00:11:00] allows you to have a consistent cashflow, customers tend to spend more money, but it's also going to be easier for both the farmer and the consumer. Now, with beef subscriptions and food subscriptions, like this might be a little bit of a unique thing for a lot of our farmers.
Of course, if they have never done one. But their consumers, who they're actually trying to sell to, are very accustomed to being on subscriptions. I think the average American has four and a half subscriptions.
Janelle Maiocco: I think it might even be higher than that, Cory. I mean, yes, four and a half. I've even heard as high as like eight or nine or 10.
Cory Hutsen: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure it depends on your customer base too, but yeah, the number is high. So, people are very used to it, but, it can be, you know, a way to also control and manage your inventory. And I'll talk to farmers, like, I'm going to talk to the farmer who, Hey, I'm processing, you know, two head of cattle the next month and maybe eight this year.
And they're really just starting [00:12:00] out growing their customer base. And I'll talk to the farmer who's doing, you know, 10 head a week. And they have consistent processing dates. And both, when we're first talking about it, might have reasons they don't think subscriptions would be the right fit for them.
But in reality, there's a reason subscriptions might be the best solution for both of them. If you have limited inventory, you're just starting to process your first couple head of cattle, that's a great opportunity to control your inventory, build an exclusivity marketing campaign around doing these subscriptions.
You start to message out, I've got my processing dates coming up in two months. I am going to be doing a box a month for 10 customers for the next three months. And you start to build up this exclusivity, this FOMO, fear of missing out, and start building a marketing campaign, you're going to get farm fresh beef every single month, 10 pounds, 10 to 12 pounds, however, you want to [00:13:00] position it, for the next three months.
So, that's on a really small scale, that's just a three month subscription, but that also allows you when you go to process, you can decipher exactly what inventory you need, right? You go through the cut sheets. Okay. I know I'm going to have this many pounds of ground beef, this many roasts, this many steaks, and you can start to kind of section those out.
But yeah, it's a really great way to start that out for your customers.
Janelle Maiocco: And I think you really hit it on the head at the beginning, where your first response was recurring revenue, consistent sales. I almost think to you're kind of maximizing the frequency of your customers buying from you too, right?
Otherwise without a subscription, they just might forget for a few months. Or you might have to re-remind them to order from you, so you're not only getting consistent revenue, but almost consistent orders per customer when you offer a subscription. Now what I really want, let's start at the top though, let's kind of back up a little bit, because I have a [00:14:00] lot of questions about how it can work for various farms, and then to your point, what some of the hesitations might be.
So, I definitely want to dig in on that. But first things first, sort of practically speaking, let's break down how it works on math. You started to do that already, but let's talk about different sizes of farms that this could work with, and then also different sizes of subscriptions, right?
I think there's a couple of different things like that. So, farmer type or farmer size, does it matter? And, you know, are there certain sizes that you would recommend, size of subscriptions, you know, how big or small should these subscription boxes be? And then, even what might go into those particular boxes.
Cory Hutsen: Absolutely. Yes. And that is something you all have to kind of factor in, brainstorm, consider what's going to work best for you. Timeframe, we're very accustomed to kind of the Netflix quote unquote style of subscription, the ongoing, never ending, set it and forget it, you don't need to be reminded.
Your card's going to be charged and you're going to [00:15:00] get your order every single month. Now, that's an awesome way to go if you do have consistent processing dates. And you think you're going to be able to consistently fulfill those orders. But as I mentioned a little bit earlier, like offering the exclusivity of a three month, a six month subscription where maybe I'm only processing, you know, 10 head of beef this year.
So I want to manage all that inventory, know it's all going to be accounted for, but I might have a period of time where I'm not processing for a couple more months after that. So, I want to limit and just do a fixed three month subscription or six month. Now, you asked about size as well. So, this is something I talk to farmers about quite a bit because I will see farmers who are accustomed to selling Quarter, Half, Wholes.
So, they are used to these big bulk boxes or orders. So, their heads [00:16:00] immediately jumped to 25, 50 pound boxes, right? Where we know 97 percent of Americans don't have a chest freezer. This is also a reason that smaller bundle boxes, subscription styles, appeals to a much broader consumer base. So, let's take into account the person that lives alone or with one other person.
Let's discuss maybe a eight to 10 pound box, right? Let's also take into account the mom who's trying to feed her kids healthy food and wants to tell her friends that she's buying from a farm and she's got four kids and three teenagers. So, let's look at the 20 pound option as well that can fill up her freezer for the month.
So, you do want a little bit of variance. You want to make sure you're accounting again for person living alone with one other person as well as the families.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that suggestion and so, do you generally recommend, like, you mentioned 3 different options, right? Because you're thinking [00:17:00] about 3 different size families and basically 3 different size freezers, right?
He might have a single who's very into health. You might have a medium sized family, or you might have a large sized family, with a lot of teenagers. I love that. But people who are going to eat a lot more meat. So, do you generally recommend three different size subscription boxes. Is that pretty typical?
Cory Hutsen: That's that's pretty typical depending on you know, it's different for every farmer, if you have that ability, yes, three is awesome. Now, there's a danger in getting you know, you don't want to give your consumers the fatigue of having too many options where all of a sudden you have seven, eight different subscription options like that can be overwhelming.
The number one reason consumers abandoned shopping carts online is because of decision fatigue. So, we don't want to do that either, but two, three options, where you're able to kind of cater to a broad customer base is the sweet spot.
Janelle Maiocco: [00:18:00] I'm so glad you mentioned decision fatigue and abandoned carts because of decision fatigue.
It's such an important thing to consider when you're selling to today's general buyer, if you will, where people like to have a few good decisions, but if you give them 12 to choose from, all of a sudden they're overwhelmed. And they're like, I can't, I can't deal with this right now. It's too much thinking involved with 12 different options and varieties.
It's sort of like having a simple menu versus like 20 page menu. Right? So, you know, where do you, you have to make it simple for those Buyers, and that's why it's really good, like you're saying to keep in mind, who are those buyers? Give them some very simple options. And it just makes it far more likely that they will make a purchase, which is incredible.
A, that it was easy to choose and B that it actually is the right size for them. So, really good things to consider now, so you've told us, you know, options and sizing of the boxes. I love that you mentioned different lengths of subscriptions [00:19:00] like set it and forget it. It could be just like once a month for a very long time or until I might cancel or skip.
But there's also the benefit of doing a three month or six month. If, for example, that's a better reflection of your inventory and processing dates. All amazing recommendations. Now, when it comes to farm size, you sort of mentioned that a little bit at the beginning. So, talk a little bit about what size of ranch or farm who is selling beef as part of their product offering, what size farms would subscriptions be a good idea for? And are there any sizes that aren't a good idea?
Cory Hutsen: Yeah, absolutely. So, the size of the farm, to me, we can fit subscriptions, and make it a fit for any size of farm in actuality. Which, Hey, I'm a small farm I'm processing just my first couple head, I don't know, I'm thinking I'm going to sell these and just Quarter, Half, Wholes, try to find consumers, but again, this is a way to really [00:20:00] maximize your profit, you know, make sure you're getting top dollar, but also, build up that exclusivity, which I mentioned earlier, if you're a small farm and you only have two head being processed, okay, well, let's do the math that I can fulfill five boxes for 10 customers for the next three months.
Right? So, I already can section off, I can pre sell it on Barn2Door. I can schedule it out. I can do Facebook posts, newsletters. Hey, I'm going to be doing this exclusive meat club, 10 pounds of beef every month or every two weeks for the next three months, right? And then you're able to build excitement with your customer base.
And kind of get those pre sales, which is extremely valuable. Like we said, being able to know the revenue you are going to be having coming in instead of, man, I'm really trying to find this next buyer for my last half, right? You know, you're searching under rocks, trying to find that consumer who can take that half beef, [00:21:00] is willing to pay that high dollar figure and has the freezer space available, versus offering that subscription, that more digestible box size.
Now, the same thing, you're a bigger farm, you have a lot of inventory available to you. Maybe you are so accustomed to just doing everything a la carte, right? And that is just been the way your business has been run for over years, but subscriptions can be great for that as well.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. We actually have a number of large operations that are using subscriptions for even 60, 70, 80 percent of their entire business. I'm thinking of a farm in particular in Texas that we work with that started selling about 40 K a year and three years later, they're over a million dollars in sales. And a lot of what they do is literally beef subscriptions. They just keep building up that loyal customer base.
And then they just have consistent Beef going through essentially their program, on a [00:22:00] weekly, monthly basis, and they're able to just, well, you know, frankly, partly that's what our platform is good at, right? Which is helping people just stay very organized around their inventory customers, the pick and pack list for any given day, those sorts of things.
So, I mean, I, I will do that shout out, which is, you know, farmers that are using Barn2Door, we help keep that all organized for them. Right? It's very easy for you and I to go buy those subscription boxes. By the way, my farmer delivered my subscription box last night. So I got my next, a whole lot of lovely grass fed beef from a farmer that I adore.
So, it's certainly is absolutely a win win. You mentioned really small farms, I love that too. I feel like that was just screaming loyal customers that they were building up. If that loyal customer ever did get a freezer in their garage, they probably will buy a quarter cow from you, right?
So, you're really doing yourself a favor by gaining those loyal, loyal customers, and all of those touch points when you're delivering. And then, I've got it online, I have the schedules, I'm [00:23:00] ready to post it. You said post it on social, send it out in newsletters, et cetera.
I'm trying to sort of engage the folks to purchase that. What does that first round look like? How do I get past that inertia? Like I'm nervous at this point.
Cory Hutsen: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you're able to control your timeframe. Which I think is key with your scheduling, so you can pre sell your subscriptions through Barn2Door where you can set a date where okay, this is going to start on February 15th I know I have three weeks to get all my inventory line.
I can start pre boxing stuff, sorting out, take into account for all of my inventory. And so, that is the benefit of being able to pre schedule things and start doing pre orders where you do not have to just, you know, publish it, everybody rushes to buy it, oh my gosh, I have 20 subscription orders already.
There on different fulfillment dates. What am I going to do? You have the ability to control all that. You're [00:24:00] able to choose your own frequency. Whether you're delivering it or picking it up, so you can schedule out and prepare. All right, in three weeks when my subscriptions start, I'm gonna be doing deliveries every week or deliveries every month on Saturdays, so you have that ability to control it and you can choose what works best for you.
Janelle Maiocco: That is very calming. It's like, okay, I can do this. I can set it up. I can make it work for my farm. I know the best practices and the hurdles to get over and it's financially worth it, including for that convenience. So all good, good advice. It's so neat that you've worked with so many farms. And so, the next thing I want to understand, and this hopefully is quite fun, you have success stories.
You've had farms that you've worked with, say, months and months ago to set this up, and now we're months and months in. Without giving names, because we don't want hundreds and thousands of farmers calling them. But talk to us [00:25:00] about, say, a farm. I think you mentioned to me, when we were passing in the hallway, you were mentioning to me a farmer who did a really good job with add ons.
Can you just give us that example story of like subscriptions, and sort of the benefits of being part of that club and what is an add on and how has that business for them grown from when they first started?
At least tell us where the farm's from.
Cory Hutsen: Yes, yes. So it was a farm I was working with in Ohio, I believe, and they were doing al a carte historically and wanted a better way to kind of manage their inventory, which is a key part of subscriptions and bundle boxes. A lot of farms, you do a la carte, you're going to have your steaks sold pretty quickly.
And you're going to have a freezer of roasts and things that are awesome products. They just aren't the most accessible to your everyday customer. There's still a lot of very amateur home cooks out [00:26:00] there who might just not know what to do with a Chuck roast or, you know, something along those lines.
So, Barn2Door has a really unique feature that farmers actually love when I show it to them for the first time, if they're not aware of it, where if you do purchase an item, you can make that item unlock your private store. Now I have farms where I'll explain like, Hey, we can make your subscription even more exclusive, where if a customer purchases it, they will be able to see that they get access to the private store.
And maybe we put the rest of your premium cuts, like steaks, like ribeyes and New York's into that private store. So, the farm I was working with started to do that and they were able to one manage their inventory a lot better, but they found the customers they did have on subscriptions started to spend way more beyond than just their subscription.
Janelle Maiocco: Yep.
Cory Hutsen: Oh, great. I already got that order coming in two weeks or I'm setting up, I get an automated order [00:27:00] reminder that two days before my orders delivered. Awesome. Let me get back in the store. You know what? I could use a couple extra T bones. I've got some friends coming over this weekend. It's already coming to my door anyway.
So let me, let me tack a few things on. So, we find that with a lot of farms we work with, the customers who are on subscriptions just end up spending more regardless. Right? They already have that relationship with you. It's already coming to them, direct to their door. So, they might as well, you know, do their entire grocery shopping for the week with you.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that and I'm cracking up because I am absolutely culprit to that. I'm always like, are there some extra like filets in there, some extra New York's that I can just tack on? And then the day they come, I'm going to cook them off. Right? I'm just, so it's definitely like, Oh, I'm got reminded you're already coming to my door anyway.
I might as well get anything extra in the store that I didn't add when I was getting the subscription. So yeah, that's really, really exciting. I love it. I know [00:28:00] you often talk about eggs as being, I know some farmers actually do have chickens too. And you've talked to me a few times too about if like adding on eggs is sort of as juicy as if I have steaks in the private store, right?
Cory Hutsen: Nothing gets me more excited. If I'm, if I'm looking at a farmer's store and I see they have eggs in there, it's time to talk. Like, I'm starting to think about just calling every farmer I have and just scouting stores for eggs, because there is no better anchor for a subscription than having eggs. Eggs is something people buy every week, maybe they buy twice a week.
People forget eggs at the grocery store. It's one of the few things they're going to turn around and make a separate trip for. So, having things like eggs, as well as ground beef are awesome staples for a subscription. So, if I see a farmer has eggs, great. Let's start with that. Hey, you are guaranteed to receive a dozen eggs, and then [00:29:00] let's fill out the rest with a farmer's choice bundle box of you know meats. Whether that's you know, one pound of ground beef, two steaks again, you leave it as farmer's choice.
So, you can kind of fill in the inventory as it's best for you, but also keeps the customer satisfied. But yes, eggs, if you have eggs, I see a lot of farms who, you know, they sell them to their neighbors. They sell out of them quickly, but shuffling those to be exclusive to your subscription, like that is going to make your subscription automatically more enticing.
Awesome. I can get this and save myself a trip to the grocery store for eggs. Let's do it.
Janelle Maiocco: That's great. I feel like eggs is also the one thing that almost everybody unanimously knows is the higher the nutritional content and the quality of farm eggs is so, it's like an extreme sport of like health compared to what you can get at the grocery store.
Right? They're like, of course, [00:30:00] why would you eat store bought eggs that tastes like nothing and look, you know nasty, and you really want some good stuff. So, there's even a higher motivation there and that's what I'm hearing from you, and honestly, I got eggs with my beef subscription box last night.
So, you're absolutely spot on. I will definitely sign up for a subscription of meat, a meat bundle, if I know I'm getting eggs. You did mention a little bit about inventory management, and I don't think I explicitly asked you, and I want to make sure that I do. What should go into the boxes? Am I, you know, you mentioned farmers choice, you mentioned bundles, you mentioned different cuts and controlling inventory.
How should I think about what goes into the box?
Cory Hutsen: When you're thinking about what needs to go into the box, the number one thing you want to avoid, to start, is leaving it up to the customer. There's a common misperception that customers want to choose what goes into their own box, when in reality, I mentioned earlier, decision [00:31:00] fatigue.
Consumers trust you, especially if this is their first time buying directly from a farm, they're viewing you as the expert. They want you to let them know what is good. So, leaving it as farmer's choice bundle isn't turning away customers. It's doing the exact opposite. It's being like, awesome, all right.
They're going to choose what's their best products they're going to fulfill my order with that, and so it also allows you to give customers an idea, hey your 10 pound box, you're going to get four pounds of ground beef, you're going to get two steaks, a roast and a pound of stew meat coming out to roughly around 10 pounds. You can give yourself a little leniency, Hey, this might differentiate nine to eleven pounds, you might get substituted out stew meat for ground beef, you can give yourself a little room.
So, okay, maybe you do run out of stew meat or something else, you can substitute in, but you give them a good idea of exactly what they're going to get, but that also allows you to control your [00:32:00] inventory and manage that pretty cleanly.
Janelle Maiocco: I like that. It's even, it's even a little bit week to week, right?
I know when my farmer, they're like, a roast. Well, great. I can choose from any number of the roasts that I have left because those aren't all exactly the same. Or, you know, it might be stew meat or this or that, or even the steaks, if they include a steak or two in my bundle box, it's like, it's going to be any one of these four steaks, you know.
Who knows which one's going to pop into your box this week. And I'm fine with that. I am completely fine with that. So I appreciate that. It's nice. Frankly, I love this because it really, to me, feels like you're putting the power back in the hands of farmers. And I love that you called out the fact that the farmers are the experts, and we as consumer eaters, assume that, of course, they know all the things and I'm going to trust them and also I don't want to decide, I can't be bothered, I just want to know that I have quality from a farmer that I love, and to go from there.
That's great, great, great feedback. Okay, just for fun, we'll do one more example of a farmer and then we'll have to peel off because I know we're coming up against time. [00:33:00] But you've worked with so many different Farms that have done different things with their subscriptions and had a lot of success.
Is there another example of a farmer, that you've seen have a lot of success in the last couple months or year?
Cory Hutsen: Yes. So, I want to use an example of something that I didn't mention. We're talking about bundle boxes with all these varieties. Like, you know, we mentioned this bundle box of steak, ground beef, roasts, you know, you're getting a little bit of everything, kind of like, you know, a mini version of when you're buying quarter half whole, but, we mentioned eggs.
I briefly mentioned ground beef. I have had some farms be extremely successful just doing ground beef subscriptions. The simplest thing. It appeals to consumers.
Janelle Maiocco: Nice.
Cory Hutsen: A lot of customers may have no idea again, what to do a roast. Almost every single person knows what to do with ground beef, tacos, meat [00:34:00] sauce for spaghetti.
That takes no explanation. You don't need to throw a recipe card in there for a consumer, although it's always a nice added bonus. But yes, I have worked with a ton of farms who I have advocated them. Hey, let's look into ground beef. How much extra ground beef do you have? Oh, yeah. I always have ground beef on hand. Awesome.
Well, let's look at putting it into a subscription. This is again, something that people buy every single week from the grocery store. So, why don't we just knock that out for them and offer, whether it's a five pound, 10 pound, 15, or you have wholesale accounts or bigger bulk buyers, let's put a 50 pound ground beef subscription on there, right?
So, I have worked with a lot of farms. Also a great entry point to super easy. You don't have to, you know, go crazy with it. Let's start with grounds.
Janelle Maiocco: I want to extend my thanks to Cory for joining us on this week's podcast episode.
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