Around the lunch table in the teachers’ lounge at her school, Dana Thatcher always attracted a lot of attention. Unlike her co-workers, her lunches were not only homemade. They were homegrown too. And not only that, Thatcher also talked about why she liked her locally grown food, and she talked about it well enough to make everyone else hungry for her locally grown meats.
Eventually, those conversations turned into Thatcher Farms, a business that Thatcher and her husband Adam have developed on their Rockwood, Ont., farm selling local beef, pork, lamb, chicken, eggs, and honey.
Read Also
Riding the tariff rollercoaster
Farmers are accustomed to roller-coaster years. But the current geopolitical windstorm is something else entirely. On his cattle operation near…
In between, however, was a lot of learning about how to grow a business from scratch. And sometimes, it was learning that came at a price.
The business began in 2007 and started the way such businesses often begin. When other teachers started asking Thatcher if they could purchase meat from her, she began selling cuts out of a freezer in their shed. “But I didn’t want my fellow teachers to see our cluttered shed,” Thatcher says, “so we built an on-farm store, a nice place for people to come and buy their meat.”
With this focus on creating a positive customer experience, Thatcher’s initial instincts were exactly right, says Angela Leach, business consultant at Plan Insight in Glen Morris, Ont.
Thatcher had already differentiated her product from grocery-store meat, so her customers perceived they were getting extra value. Then, says Leach, who works with farm businesses and organizations primarily in the direct farm sales sector, Thatcher began exceeding customer expectations.
By building a clean, welcoming facility for customers to purchase their meat, and by delivering high quality products, Thatcher and her family were quickly building loyal customer relationships.
Those relationships, says Leach, are the ultimate goal in marketing.
The Thatchers’ second marketing decision was typical of most entrepreneurs, but according to Leach it’s one that doesn’t always generate a net return. They began advertising.
“We spent a lot of money,” says Thatcher, who placed ads in local newspapers and magazines. “But we didn’t get anything out of it.”
“Advertising is an important part of the marketing mix, but it shouldn’t be the only form of marketing,” says Leach. Although it’s an expensive marketing tool, farmers can use advertising to take customers from “barely knowing to knowing and buying,” Leach says. But they shouldn’t stop there.
Advertising can create awareness of a business or product, and it can make potential customers want to know more. Once regular clientele is established, however, advertising should become only one of many marketing tools. “You can pour money into awareness advertising but you need to get customers one step further by depending on the quality of the product you are selling and the experience you create,” says Leach.
And that’s just what Thatcher did. She stopped advertising and relied on word of mouth to build their business. Word of mouth can be the cheapest form of marketing, often providing substantial returns, and Thatcher kick-started it for her business by talking and networking with customers herself. She set up a stand at the farmers market in Guelph, Ont. every Saturday and made time to tell her story. Thatcher told market-goers all about her family, their farm, where the meat was raised, and what it’s like to live on a farm — and people were intrigued.
Knowing your target market is another important piece of the marketing puzzle. Leach suggests identifying the customers who buy a lot and frequently purchase your products. Getting to know who these people are will help you focus your marketing efforts. Thatcher’s approach to building relationships with her customers at the market and her on-farm store has gone a long way to retaining customers and getting referrals.
Networking skills are important because, Leach says, “you don’t just want to know your customer, but understand them too.” Focusing on the five W’s (i.e. who, what, where, when, and why) can then provide a foundation for a marketing plan to appeal that audience.
Thatcher’s personal customer approach paid off. Regular market customers began placing weekly custom orders, picking them up on market day and even visiting Thatcher at the farm. “Our customers became intrigued and wanted to see for themselves where I come from and to spend some time on the farm themselves,” Thatcher says.
Those visiting customers were great for the fledgling business, but over time Thatcher found it hard to find a balance between socializing with customers and getting the farm work done.
Thatcher has tried a variety of marketing approaches to build business. She has worked with the Guelph Wellington Local Food group, participated as a stop on local-food tours and attended local-food festivals.
By using such opportunities to network, Thatcher built relationships with local restaurants and caterers, who began identifying Thatcher Farms products an their menus. “We suddenly had free advertising,” says Thatcher. “And everyone benefited from offering locally grown products.”
The Thatchers also tapped into association and government programs. In fact, she says, “We couldn’t have done this much without help from our agricultural industry.” The Thatchers secured a grant for their business through the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association, and they are hoping to use funding from the federal-provincial Growing Forward program to improve their business by visiting other on-farm markets across the province.
The launch of their website ( www.thatcher-farms.com) brought another customer connection to the farm. New and existing customers used the site to place custom orders and learn more about the on-farm business, but it also increased drive-in traffic from the Greater Toronto Area because customers found her when they did Internet searches for local food.
Thatcher says that utilizing the Internet and optimizing search-engine performance have been effective, both from a cost and a performance point of view. Still, the focus of the website is consistent with the message that customers get at every other point of contact with the business, sharing the farm philosophy, family and farm photos, and telling their story about who they are, why they farm and what they can offer customers.
“People really want to know about us, from asking how we farm to what kind of life the animals have lived,” says Thatcher. “In fact, the number-one question asked is about how we treat our animals.”
The Internet strategy, together with other networking touch-points and the farm’s emphasis on high-quality products, has also fed into its strategy of generating word-of-mouth referrals.
In fact, says Leach, businesses need a plan to create referrals. She recommends starting by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. Review every touchpoint with the customer, including everything from the sign at your farm gate to the first person that customers talk to when they phone or drive up the laneway, right down to the cooking and packaging of the product.
Something as simple as having clean washrooms is an easy way to win over moms with kids, and offering recipe cards or product samples can also go a long way for first-time customers.
Don’t be afraid to ask existing customers for referrals, says Leach, who suggests placing flyers, referral cards or re-order forms in your store or market stand. “You can plan for referrals by exceeding customer expectations.”
Thatcher’s success and optimism hasn’t come without challenges. Running an on-farm business while raising two small children has been hard. So has making sure the farm has enough capital to keep running, and deciding whether or not to return to her teaching career.
These are all considerations that affect not only their farm and their business but their family too. Thatcher and her family have learned a lot about business operations and marketing in a few short years, but she’s confident they will keep working hard to promote and expand what they’ve built.
Long-term plans for Thatcher Farms include building a larger store with a butcher shop and bakery in one location, and expanding their product line to include ready-made meals, something she knows will appeal to their target audience. Thatcher Farms will also continue building on the them of understanding and respecting their customers, Thatcher says. “I think consumers like buying with an educated viewpoint.”CG
———
“ You don’t want to just know your customers, but understand them too.”
— Angela Leach
