Microfarming for Profit. Dave DeWitt
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into other markets, which we did successfully for a while with food shows.
The Small Business Administration has some good advice about choosing a name for your business. Don’t get lazy and just name the business with your family name because that makes it more difficult to present a professional image and build brand awareness. You must consider how your name will look as part of a logo, on a website, and in social media. Does the name directly reflect what business the company is in, and most importantly, is it unique? You should select a name that has not been used by others, either online or offline. There are several ways to check the name you’ve selected: a simple web search, a trademark search through the U.S. Patent and Trademark website (Uspto.gov), a domain name search through the WHOSIS database (NetworkSolutions.com), and through your state filing office. Registering your “Doing Business As” name is simply the process of letting your state government know that you are doing business as a name other than your personal name or the legal name of your partnership or corporation. If you are operating under your own name, then you can skip the process.
Value-Added Products: How to Manufacture and Market Them
The first thing you should do if you’re interested in this type of expansion is to buy a copy of From Kitchen to Market: Selling Your Gourmet Food Specialty, by Stephen Hall. It is the most comprehensive book on the subject and will probably lead you to making the right decision. Of course, Hall wrote an entire book on this, so I can’t include all of it here. But since I’ve been producing a show for these types of products for the last twenty-five years, I know a lot about this subject, so I can give you the highlights of what to expect.
What type of product(s) should you make? The most obvious ones to me are concentrates of what you’re currently growing, assuming that’s possible. This is why I’ve turned my ripe tomatoes into purees and sun-dried slices. This is basic “manufacturing” and as long as you’re selling to chefs and not to the general public, usually you won’t need a particular license or even a manufacturing facility. Make sure you check your state’s regulations on this issue. Assuming you have some basic equipment, concentrated forms of your products will be simple to make and will require freezing or drying after they are processed. After the basics, there are an astounding number of products that can be made, and research into the specialty food market will be required. One of the simplest ways to learn a lot about the different products out there is to go to a trade show where they are on display. The Fancy Foods Shows, produced by the Specialty Food Association, are a good place to start, as is my show, the National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show.
Who will buy them? Generally speaking, your first customers will be your farm customers who already know and trust your unprocessed farm products. The next wave of customers will come from your contacts at farmers’ markets, so be sure that you have your new products well-displayed and even offer them for tasting. From there, you want your products continually on display locally at specialty food stores and even supermarkets. After that, I suggest (of course), exhibiting in food shows as your first form of advertising beyond the basics explained earlier.
Where are they made? Most states do not allow food made in home kitchens to be sold to the general public, with the possible exception of baked goods like cookies, pies, and cakes sold at nonprofit bake sales. This means you need to use a commercial kitchen if you want to produce and pack the products, or find a contract packer (called a co-packer) to do it for you. (The best way to find a co-packer is to ask manufacturers of non-competing products who packs theirs.) I think that usually you should go with the latter option because how much can you do? You’re a farmer, a food producer, and a marketer all at the same time? You’re going to need employees, and that is very expensive. Better to let someone else worry about paying the help needed to pack products. Yes, there are often problems with co-packers changing recipes to cut expenses, or using cheaper containers, but you can monitor all this in a lot less time than spending all day on your feet packing food into jars. And don’t even think about building your own commercial kitchen. How many headaches do you need?
What kind of packaging is right for the products? Some are easy. Your microfarm grows seventeen different kinds of mustard seed, and you’re going to make packaged gourmet mustard. Have you seen it packaged in anything other than glass jars, plastic squeeze bottles, or tiny plastic single-serve pouches? But some ingredients, like chile peppers, have a myriad of packaging possibilities. Today, for example, I discovered a squeeze tube of chipotle pepper paste. Who woulda thought? Again, attend a gourmet products trade show and speak with some product packaging companies. Since they want your business, they will give you plenty of free advice that should all be taken, as the Roman cooks used to say, cum grano salis (look it up).
How will you store and ship these products? No, your greenhouse can’t be your warehouse. It would be wonderful if you just moved your products from the co-packer to a food distributor’s warehouse, but that’s not going to happen for a while. So you will have to play it by ear and move slowly as you learn the business. Now is the time to consider mail-order sales, whether you might need a delivery truck or van, and how far away you want your products distributed if you have to do it yourself. All of this begs two questions….
How will you distribute them? And, How will you market and advertise them? You need to pick some people’s brains. Find the owner of a company that has products that will not compete with yours, get to know him or her, buy them some coffee or a drink, and start brainstorming. Find out what they do with their products and keep two lists—one of ideas you like, and one of ideas you don’t. Talk with some managers of local markets and ask them about their most popular locally made products, and what makes them sell. Discuss the situation with your co-packer, if you have one, and get some advice. At food shows, casually ask exhibitors (at slow times) how they advertise and if they have a distributor they could recommend. You’re researching, assembling the data you will need to plan a direction to take, a strategy.
I wish I could be more specific here, but there are hundreds and hundreds of specialty food products, each one with its own wants and needs. There are just too many variables to give more detailed directions about marketing specific products, or even product categories. Besides, you need to do this anyway. It’s part of your microfarm education.
Other Ideas for Your Microfarm, Some Crazy
Agritourism rules! Since my wife and I can never enjoy a normal vacation, like lying on the beach reading trashy novels, or seeing all the cathedrals in Spain, we have essentially become agritourists. In that capacity, we have visited fascinating agriculturally related places all over the world. I mention these to give potential microfarmers ideas of how they might exploit the agritourism aspects of their farm. As the Small Farm Center at the University of California notes, “Agricultural tourism or agritourism, is one alternative for improving the incomes and potential economic viability of small farms and rural communities.” We shopped for Scotch bonnet peppers in the produce markets of Ocho Rios, Jamaica, then snuck into the ganja fields, and we kept our balance when we visited the steeply sloped herb fields of Paramin, Trinidad, and then examined a Congo pepper plantation with ganja fields next door. (The agricultural Caribbean is like that!) And of course, we went to the Royal Botanic Garden in Port of Spain, and the Botanic Station in Tobago, where the first superhot chiles probably originated. We bought bags of peppercorns at a black pepper plantation in Costa Rica and visited the rain-soaked red habanero fields of the aptly-named town of Los Chiles.
In Italy, after visiting the Olive Oil Museum near Lake Garda, we stayed in an agriturismo stone house in the middle of a vineyard, visited an olive-pressing factory, a grappa-making plant, the largest ornamental chile field in the world, and met a pack of truffle-hunting puppies on a farm outside of Parma. We also stayed on a microfarm near Bardi in Emilia Romagna, owned and managed by Maurizio Bovi and Luisa Sgarbossa. The couple purchased and remodeled an old rock-built farmhouse named Ca’d’Alfieri that they run as a bed and breakfast and also a restaurant for the guests. They grow fruit and vegetables that they sell at markets around northern Italy, raise farm animals including black pigs, and live off the land they own and work. In Germany,