The Klesick Family Farm has a dilemma.
The farm and produce delivery business wants people to savor simple things — such as preparing a meal from fresh, organic vegetables. The Klesicks want people to unplug, slow down and learn how to make soup that doesn’t come from a can and brownies that don’t come from a box.
Tristan Klesick takes a moment for himself. (Dan Bates/The Herald)
But in order to help customers do that, Tristan Klesick has to meet them on their turf: on blogs, Facebook and other forms of social media.
Klesick recently answered some questions about how the farm is reaching out to customers online, and how it’s keeping customers while in the economic downturn.
Tell us about Klesick Family Farm.
The Klesick Family Farm has been delivering healthy organic fruits and vegetables to homes and offices since 1997. Our “boxes of good” are delivered in Snohomish County, Camano Island, Anacortes and Mt. Vernon. Our farm is located in the fertile soils near the mouth of the Stillaguamish River where we raise tree fruit, vegetables, grass fed beef and children.
What’s the greatest problem you’re facing, and how are you dealing with that?
The biggest challenge facing our business is time. People just don’t have enough time to enjoy the important things of life. Americans are just too busy, too busy for family, for personal enrichment, for church, for eating and for cooking. I have discovered that many of our customers grew up eating processed foods and really didn’t know how to make soup from scratch or brownies without a box.
Armed with that knowledge, we contracted with a food blogger and chef to write a monthly newsletter about different cooking techniques using the fresh produce in our menu that week. We also provide recipes and helpful produce tips with every delivery.
As a farmer, I need customers who enjoy eating and preparing fresh fruits and vegetables, who will actually sit down with their family or friends to enjoy homemade healthy meals and great conversation. Yes, I did mean sitting down, disengaging from their cell phones, computers and TV’s.
What about the recession? How did that impact your business?
The recession has been good for us from a refocusing standpoint, not profitability. We run our company debt free, which helped us weather the downturn, but more importantly, the downturn helped us to reevaluate what we were doing and why were doing it. I remember back in October of 2008 telling my team, “unemployment is pretty high, but even at 10 percent unemployment, there are still 90 percent of the people still working.”
We had been growing steadily every year and, like many, took the economy for granted. When things started to meltdown we were allowing our credit customers to pay their bills monthly. With large banks failing, I revisited that policy and within the month we switched our billing to the next day after the customer received their delivery.
Our customers still supported us during the recession, but switched their orders to every other week or to one of our smaller menu choices. In the first quarter of 2009, I couldn’t figure out why the usual expected profit wasn’t matching the new customers that were signing up in the first quarter of 2009. Eventually, I ran an analysis of my sales from January 2008 to March 2009. That is when I discovered the shift in sales towards our smaller priced boxes. It wasn’t a big shift, only 5% from our Family boxes to Small boxes, but that shift was enough to take a good bite out of our profit.
I didn’t panic, but I needed to act on the information. I did not raise prices. We watched our inventory more closely and began a systematic plan to increase our skews and offer more options to our customers and potential customers. As a result, our company offers more variety and flexibility to meet our customer’s needs today.
You’ve mentioned that social media is playing a bigger role in how you communicate with customers. What works for you?
Social media has allowed us to communicate in a “real time” capacity. We recognized that many of our customers were connecting with each other using social media. And since we are primarily an online retailer, we wanted to enter into the discussion where they were happening. So working with the premise “that birds of feather flock together” we have started to engage our customers where they are “flocking”. Facebook has been our most successful tool to connect with our customers followed by our blogs.
One of the best things about social media is the ability to engage your customers and respond to them and their inquiries quickly, but also at the same time answer that same question for a customer who wanted to know that answer, but wouldn’t ask.
We also systematically intertwine our brand attributes with our service and products to reinforce our value to our customers and potential customers.
In your experience, are there times when social media tools fall short? Anything you’ve found that doesn’t work?
Social media is relatively new and is constantly changing, but our customers are using these tools to connect with each other and companies they want to do business with. From my perspective, it requires a firm company commitment to benefit from the different social media outlets. Sadly, depth of communication is lacking in social media. You have to earn the right to be heard through sound bites and 140 character tweets.
I am also concerned that because of the short focus of social media, we are creating a culture of non-communicators and eventually, non-thinkers. I suspect in the near future we will lose our ability to communicate and think critically because the methods of communication today are inadequate tools to improve or even maintain effective communication.
How do you see Klesick Family Farm growing or changing over the next 10 years?
Our product offerings will continue to expand and we will allow our customers to have more customization within our menus. One thing that shouldn’t change is our desire to help people eat healthy and our commitment to local agriculture.
Does being a family owned and operated farm change the way you do business?
I would hope not. But when your name is on the delivery vans, on your packaging and people answer the phones “Klesick Family Farm” it is a very present reminder that all you really have in this world is your reputation. Our whole team works really hard to exceed customer expectations.
What advice would you give someone thinking about starting a family-run business?
Not everybody is created to handle the pressure of running a business. Being in charge of a business is completely different than being responsible for a part of a business like manufacturing, sales or accounting. If you don’t have a burning desire to run your own business, I would stay put.
If you decide to start your own business make sure you enjoy whatever it is you choose to do, because you will be living it more than you ever dreamed. I would also focus my energies on products and services that add value to people’s lives. That way when you do earn a sale, it will be a blessing to both you and the customer.
Know a small business we should write about? Contact Herald writer Amy Rolph at arolph@heraldnet.com.
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