A cooperative marketing model that works
“I just want to farm.” “I just want to grow stuff and have people buy it.” “Please don’t ask me to talk to a chef.” Does this sound familiar?
I think this resonates with a lot of folks. Afterall, a regenerative farmer tends to already be a soil and plant scientist, a livestock specialist, a bookkeeper, a pack-house manager, a field hand, a mechanic, an ecologist and so many more specialties. Many times, we as farmers are more suited to be in the background instead of blowing our own horns.
This reminds me of a Garrison Keillor analogy. Do you know the difference between an introvert farmer and an extrovert farmer? The introvert will look at his shoes while in a conversation with you and the extrovert farmer will look at yours!
In all actuality, this creates an opportunity.
For more than 15 years, we have offered a service to many of our region’s farmers of marketing and delivering all our products to restaurants and institutions. This began when we were invited to a Chef’s Collaborative meeting in Chicago. We met a number of chefs who were quite interested in purchasing our products. However, within a few short weeks we realized there was nearly no way we could supply the amazing amount of demand that these chefs had for local products. At the same time, we witnessed the slow exodus of young people from our community as they graduated high school and left the family farm in order to find their way in larger communities and make their own careers.
We began a collaborative group of young farmers, some as young as 12 or 13 years old. We had come from previous experiences of marketing and delivering our own handmade furniture to clients world-wide. Telling the story is the key. We were good storytellers, and it’s always easier in my mind to brag on someone else than on ourselves — especially bragging on young people. Soon we had dozens of restaurant accounts.
Fast forward to today and we are offering farm products from over 70 producers — young and experienced alike — to over 100 chefs each week.
Let’s think about some of the benefits to this kind of model. First, we each get to do what we do best and what we love. Build on the strengths of a group. Our farmers are amazing people and have so many talents and skills. Like I said above, many of them just want to produce good food. Some enjoy the farmers markets, but others feel burned out by them. We offer a simple and easy way for them to list what they have each week. We then share that list with nearly 800 chefs and individuals and take their orders. We communicate all of the orders to the farmers, and they deliver to us each week on Tuesday afternoons. Our team then loads our refrigerated trucks on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to make deliveries into Chicago and downstate Illinois. We collect payment from all the accounts and pay out our farmers every other week.
What we don’t have is 70 farmers contacting each chef asking for an order. We don’t have 70 farmers driving into the city trying to navigate a landscape that most are not familiar with. We don’t have chefs being inundated with deliveries or having to write 70 checks each week. We are being better stewards of time, fuel and happiness. The system works.
We deliver 50 out of 52 weeks per year, taking the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s off. We have talented drivers who are also our farmers who have some training in customer service and relationship building. They have a vested interest in all of the farmers and their products.
We have tried to take the competition out of the equation and replace it with cooperation. This is manifest in a number of ways. Because all farmers have access to the order sheet, if one farm runs short of, say, carrots, they can revisit the sheet and see who else has carrots that might be able to fill the shortfall. They can then contact that farmer and still fill the order. Similarly, we have several farms that take turns bringing each other’s product orders each week to our central location, saving fuel and time. Where there used to be this uneasy competition between some farmers, there is now a sense of pride and competition to fulfill the orders each week.
All of this, admittedly, takes some organization and leadership. We tend to lead with gratitude and encouragement. We find that a caring environment fosters more cooperation. It does take effort to get everyone on the same level of quality and consistency. But this is a progression. We utilize the experiences of the more advanced growers to help nurture the younger or newer growers coming into the group. The system requires certain guidelines and structures — i.e., drop off times at the warehouse, invoices to be sent to us on time and cut-off deadlines for listing products. It’s mostly time management for the farmers — something we all need to continue to improve on.
We try our best to find ways to be more supportive of the group as a whole. Recently, we had one of our large accounts host an afternoon farmers market where the account purchased $2,000 worth of product from five different farmers and asked the farmers to come and hand it out for free to their employees. This was a great opportunity to boost some revenue for several farms and to create an opportunity for conversations. I was able to choose the farmers who I thought would fit the event, and it went really well. We try to look at both the group as a whole and also each individual in the group. It’s important to meet the needs of both.
Another challenge is striking a balance between supply and demand. For instance, just like at a farmers market, some weeks there will be way too much sweet corn and others there will be not enough. Keeping good historical records of sales and also of unfilled orders or sold outs makes projecting a little easier. We also have a number of chefs give us a weekly budget and tell us to just bring them the best of what we have, whatever that is. This helps clean out a lot of smaller-scale farmers’ products.
The challenge of supply and demand then rests on the marketing person. Knowing each chef or account personally, developing a long and strong relationship and not pushing product onto folks makes it easier to ask if they can help take a little more. Again, asking them to support another farmer — not just you — makes the ask a bit easier.
Having these personal relationships is also the strength of the whole model. During the COVID shutdown, most of our restaurants were closed and we had to pivot to individual retail sales. A good amount of those buying from us during that time were chefs and cooks from the restaurants. We did our best to take care of them with the interruptions of the supply chain. They, in turn, saw the opportunity to take care of our farmers and return the favor once they re-opened. As John Ikerd has said, “the greatest challenge in creating a sustainable food system is the art and science of maintaining personal relationships.” I couldn’t agree more.
Another strength of this model is the sheer number of farmers in the group. Certain accounts might not want to purchase from a single farmer, as that farmer may not have enough to keep them supplied for a menu run or longer term. With a whole team of farmers, we can be in a better position to supply that chef with something year-round or season long.
Additionally, we don’t tend to get beat down on prices as a group. Sometimes I have seen other farmers lower their prices to make the sale. Overall, we have not done that. We feel we have fair prices that benefit the farmers and the chefs. Having this group of farmers has given us strength in being able to approach larger accounts with opportunities for growth of the individual farmers who wish to expand. It’s a lot to manage, but having worked with everyone for a good number of years, we have a system that seems to create opportunity for growth and happiness.
Our legal entity is an LLC: Down at the Farms, LLC. My son, Will, and I are the partners in this LLC. We chose this model instead of a cooperative because we felt we could make decisions and choices quicker and for the good of all. This has worked. We charge a percentage of sales to the farmers to cover the marketing, the invoicing, deliveries, collecting of money, paying farmers, record keeping and consulting time. We continue to see strong growth each year and have potential accounts lined up as we continue to expand our supply into the next 18 months. We continue to seek out like-minded farmers to join and offer specific items, working to not crowd the farmers we do have and their ability to produce at scale. We also work to keep most of our farmers local to Central Illinois. We only have a couple outliers. We have a rule that we only work with nice people. We don’t need any added drama, and we look for folks who can play well together. That’s important!
Overall, we are thrilled with this model and our system. It is farmer-to-farmer. We understand the nuances of a growing season. We can interpret any of those issues easily to our chefs and customers. We have become the advocate for the farmers to the chefs and for the chefs to the farmers. It’s an easy relationship, and it is seldom stressful. It’s exciting to share the latest and greatest that a farmer has to offer as well as the latest and greatest that a chef has created with that product.
Our hope is that this model can be replicated across more communities. It has merit for a small group of producers as well as for a much larger group. It has importance in conserving resources and also in sharing of institutional knowledge. It has the opportunity to greatly increase the availability of good food to many more consumers. It is also a potential source for added income for a farm that has the skillset to take on this kind of project. If you have questions or ideas, reach out. We are here to serve.
Marty Travis is a seventh-generation farmer at Spence Farm in Fairbury, Illinois. He runs a co-op that markets the products of over a hundred small farms to chefs in Chicago and throughout the state. Marty is the author of My Farmer, My Customer, published by Acres U.S.A.
