Travis Hopcott and his siblings Brad and Jennifer might tell you they have been flying pretty much by the seat of their pants since each of them came back to their family farm at various times over the past 20 years. That is sometimes how they have felt. But, in reality, what they have been doing is finding ways to be constantly open to learning … with each other, from each other and for each other.
Is their approach the new definition of how to run a farm in Canada? If yes, what makes it work?
It doesn’t take long to find one key — although the list certainly doesn’t end here — which is their outlook, constantly going beyond the farm to improve their skills and to build the insights and knowledge any farmer needs to effectively run a highly diversified farm operation today.
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In their case, some farmers might think it’s a “farm” in quotation marks, which is how it probably would have been thought of a generation ago. Now, though, the management strategies that it takes to run their Pitt Meadows, B.C. venture with its 1,000 head of cattle, its cranberries, its retail store and its abattoir place it at the heart of Canadian agriculture, and have required not just educational courses and workshops, but tons of networking and collaborating, and some intense brainstorming with business consultants, peer groups and other successful local businesses.
If it all sounds a bit dizzying, well, that’s only from the outside.
In fact, the Hopcotts love to learn and will explore ideas and advice anywhere they can, and they have already taken a ton of things on board as the operation evolved into multiple enterprises on what was a dairy farm when their grandfather, Fred Hopcott, bought it for $9,000 in 1932.
Today, Fred’s grandchildren work alongside their parents, Bob and Debbie, on a transition plan. “The philosophy from the very beginning has been that the one constant is change, and we knew it was important to diversify,” says Travis, who adds that their dad has always been forward thinking.
“Dad wasn’t afraid of taking risks or taking on debt if he saw a need in the market and it was a calculated risk,” he says. “He loves disruption and starting new things and new entities, and that’s what began all of this.”
Keeping ahead of the curve
Back in the early 2000s, Ocean Spray was looking for more cranberry producers, which got Bob thinking about a way to diversify the farm’s then 5,000-head feedlot.
“Cranberries were a hot commodity at the time, so my dad and another local farmer partnered up and got their feet wet,” Brad says. “When they saw there was definitely some value in it, they got more heavily involved.”
The two farmers travelled around Wisconsin and Massachusetts to learn how to grow cranberries from growers there before investing about $2.5 million to convert 85 acres of the farm to cranberry production. It ended up being a good decision for the farm over the long term, but there were some stumbling blocks at the start.
Cranberry plants take roughly four years to mature, so by the time Bob was into full-scale production, the price for cranberries had taken a nosedive to around a third of what they are today.
“That was a bit scary, but I’ve in farming long enough to know that you live with the highs and lows,” Bob says.
The next diversification came as a result of the BSE crisis of 2003. The family had been dabbling in direct marketing some of their own beef to a few nearby communities, but when BSE effectively closed the border to Canadian beef exports overnight, it prompted them to consider scaling up the marketing end by building their own on-farm, retail meat store at a cost of around $2 million. Although more farms today have ventured into some form of direct-marketing, back in 2006, when the store opened, it wasn’t at all commonplace and was likely the family’s biggest gamble to that point.
“We didn’t have a clue whether people would come to it,” Bob says. Not that there was a shortage of people who could be potential customers.
“Within 45 minutes driving time of the farm we have access to about two-and-a-half million people, so that was obviously one of the biggest deciding factors for the retail store; it’s all about location,” Travis says.
Over the years the store has built up a solid and regular clientele, and it expanded in 2015 from 6,000 to 14,000 sq. ft., adding a bistro and venue for hosting weddings. Demand has grown exponentially, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the store’s turnover is currently around $10 million a year.
How to manage it all
Each of the three siblings has their own defined role on the farm. Brad (38) is the cattle guy, Travis (36) runs the cranberry production and Jennifer (44) manages the retail store. Bob is still involved in day-to-day farming, but it’s the next generation who make the decisions about their particular areas of the operation.
Brad has farmed full-time since graduating from high school. Travis, after travelling for a winter and then taking an ag diploma, came back to farm in 2008, and Jennifer came back to run the retail store in 2012 after working as a graphic designer alongside her husband, John, in their sign company for 16 years.
Although Jennifer had created the logo and website, and handled advertising and marketing for the store from home over the years, she had never worked at the store and had no retail experience. But she did have plenty of management and business knowledge, and what she didn’t know she set out to learn.
“I love a challenge and I had the support of my family,” she says. “I went into the role with extreme humbleness and eagerness. I knew I had a lot to learn. I did lots of reading, explored other stores, asked lots of questions, listened to any advice I was given, and took all constructive criticism to make myself a better leader and manager, and to help the business grow.”
Lesson learned – and now for an abattoir
In 2022 the Hopcotts added their own processing facility, which they knew would not only be complementary to their existing businesses but would provide new opportunities.
“Processing was the weakest link in our chain, and we knew our own plant would give us a much better handle of the quality of the produce because we would be our own customer,” Travis says. “It would add to the brand, and our story, and because with so few processors, there’s a huge market out there for custom processing. So, there were many reasons, but we base our decisions on what makes sense to the overall picture, our brand or community.”
Despite being a sound decision from a business standpoint, building the abattoir has proven to be the most challenging expansion yet.
Early on in the design process, the family realized the initial consultant they had hired to help design the abattoir was not on the same page as they were. The biggest issue was the kill floor: the Hopcotts wanted an on-the-rail system to move the animals more efficiently and make the kill process easier. But the consultant had stuck with a cradle system design.
“We wanted to get away from that to do an on-the-rail system, but by the time we realized the consultant was not capable of designing a plant like that, the foundation had been poured and walls were going up,” Brad says. “It limited us on the changes that we could do, not to mention it was a huge challenge because we had to come up with a bunch of different ideas, designs and equipment to be able to accomplish what we actually wanted to do.”
Thankfully, they managed to make changes and get the plant built, but Brad says that if he could do one thing differently it would have been to get some actual working experience in an abattoir before they built their own.
“I wish I could have worked at an abattoir for a few months to get an idea of how things operate and carry the information over to our build,” he says. “Never having worked in a slaughterhouse before, I talked to as many people as I could and did countless hours of research online to gain the knowledge. But things would have been done differently with the knowledge I gained working in our abattoir over the past few months.”
The abattoir just opened in late 2022, and currently slaughters 20 to 24 cattle a week but within six months Brad aims to double that.
Structuring transition
The farm is run as one entity, while the retail store is a separate enterprise, but when it comes to ownership, everything is shared equally.
“Ownership is even between the siblings which is nice because if the cranberries have a good year, or the cattle processing plant, or the store, it becomes everyone’s success,” Travis says.
The transition is also working well because although the siblings have defined roles and responsibilities, they all make sure they are constantly communicating with each other and the various different divisions.
“We are each ultimately the decision-makers for our part of the business,” Travis says. “But the siblings meet once a month just to go over any of our thoughts about certain matters or our experiences about that’s what’s happening in our world.”
Good communication is especially important on the retail side of things where there are so many employees who need to be well informed and have a chance to offer their input. Jennifer and her team use many different methods to ensure things run smoothly from white boards in high traffic areas and department head email groups to monthly departmental meetings and a bi-annual meeting with retail managers and all the Hopcott siblings. (Remember what I said about it looking dizzying from the outside?)
“That meeting is solely meant to improve the business; it’s all about let’s go around the table and see who has a specific goal, or a big idea,” Travis says. “That is recorded and we make it clear who’s responsible to do what, and six months later we have a followup. Then we talk about the successes or the lack of success and maybe set a new goal.”
There is a lot more emphasis on the retail side in terms of formal business structure and planning because basically it is the brand for the whole operation.
“The store has been and is the gauge to our brand or to the farm,” Travis says. “It’s what everyone connects us to.”
Every family has its problems sometimes, but the Hopcotts all agree that for the most part they get along well and rarely disagree on anything major.
“Fortunately, we’re definitely on the same page” Brad says. “We know that each other’s motive is to improve, so when it falls on a certain part of the business whose role that is, that’s the decision-maker. Ultimately, it comes down to that person but we are pretty thoughtful about each other’s opinions.”
The family goes formal
There have been plenty of challenges over the past 20 years but the Hopcotts believe those are basically just more learning opportunities, although there are always a few things that everyone would change if they had the luxury of doing some things over. For Jennifer, it would be making family business arrangements more formal.
“When it comes to working with family, at the beginning we should have done things a little more ‘business’ and a little less ‘family,’” she says. “When you go into something like this, working with family, there’s a lot of verbal decisions, faith and trust, instead of putting things on paper or creating legal documents. I honestly am not sure if we would have done much different though; mistakes are part of the growing process.”
Maybe other farmers still have the mindset that they must do everything themselves and that if they’re not too busy, they aren’t working hard enough, and the Hopcotts are not immune from that, but it’s something they are working hard to change.
“We’re in this transition right now, and with the number of employees we have, we need to transition to more of a proper industry business,” Brad says. “We have always had that old kind of farmer mentality where it was just three employees, and things didn’t have to be so fine-tuned. But obviously we need things to be done professionally. That’s the trend we’re getting into now, and what will move us forward over the next 10 to 20 years.”
Another challenge that the Hopcotts have had, and which is common across agriculture today, is finding and keeping employees for the various enterprises. On the farming side, there are three full-time and two seasonal employees, as well as the brothers and their dad, who all are still involved in the day-to-day work. The store employs almost 70 people and the new processing plant, that has a staff of five butchers and four wrappers, already needs more people to add to the team because the production demand is growing. To help out with that aspect of the business, they recently hired their first dedicated human resources person.
Jennifer also hired an assistant a couple of years ago, which has helped her to overcome one of her own personal challenges, a reluctance to delegate to others.
“I should have done that a long time ago,” she says. “I’ve learned to let go and trust my supervisors and managers to get the job done, which has had amazing results.”
Looking to the future
The Hopcotts have been through a lot of changes, and as they move through transitioning the farm from one generation to the next there has been a gradual shift away from an expansion and growth mindset to a different philosophy and long-term goals.
“As of now, our first long-term goal is, how can we make those around us more successful,” Travis says. “And secondly, how can we improve the brand. It’s funny to equate brand with a farm. In most places in the world, if you say you are a farmer, that would be equated with being poor, but when you say you’re a farmer here, they almost treat you like a celebrity. It’s good and bad. It’s a rare industry in this area, so because of that we’ve built a brand and now we’re always looking for ways that that brand can be directed.”
More and more, the farm is becoming a destination; a place that offers experiences as much as it does products. Brad’s wife, Rachel, runs the wedding venue and they are doing tours of the cranberry fields and helicopter rides for the harvest and weddings, with a plan to add barbecue lessons, an Airbnb and more farm-to-table experiences.
They are, of course, still learning, with a focus on improving their management skills and business structures.
“We’re trying to put proper policies and structures in place and then we’ll be able to look further out, because right now we just have four- or five-year goals,” Travis says.
Travis also just joined his first peer group and he wishes he’d done it a long time ago.
“I have been waiting for this for a long time,” he says. “I would encourage other young growers to find their own peer group … it doesn’t even have to be people in the same industry.”
Personal goals
So, while the vision is for the farm business to keep improving and be sustainable for future generations of Hopcotts, they also have some personal goals that are dependent on achieving their business goals.
“Within 10 to 20 years, I hope to see myself as not being so hands-on,” Brad says. “I find myself always doing too much of the work and not doing enough managing, and things get missed and opportunities are missed too.”
Travis has similar goals. “As soon as possible, I want to be working on the business rather than in the business,” he says. “That means taking more of a macro view and collaborating with local businesses and assisting in the industry that we’re all a part of. We do a lot of volunteer work so my hope is to do more of that, but it requires having the right people in place, which is our ultimate goal.”
Jennifer wants to see the retail store continue to grow and maintain its reputation as a trusted local butcher and grocery market. On a personal level, she and John try and maintain a good work/life balance as they juggle their businesses while raising their two children, Jackson (16) and Jorja (14). Although there’s no plan to throttle back any time soon, there will come a time when Jennifer hopes to have the people and infrastructure in place to be able to step back from some of the daily management tasks.
“I love my job, and I need to be busy, so I can see myself working in the family business for many years to come; no early retirement in my plans,” Jennifer says. “But I definitely see myself doing less after 10 or 20 years, with more responsibility on the leadership we will hopefully have in place by then.”
And for Bob and Debbie, their goals are already a long way towards being completed.
“It’s always a farmer’s dream that his kids will stay on the farm,” Bob says. “For them to stay, we knew that we needed to expand in order for them all to make a living. That was the driver … to make it attractive for them to stay.”
Importantly, Bob has given himself opportunities to earn respect for his children. “My dad had a lot of confidence in me,” he says. “He supported everything I did, which I appreciated … You have to think from their perspective. If you don’t show any confidence in them, you might as well do it yourself or get somebody else to do it. You don’t want them to end up asking ‘Why am I here?’”
