Repeat customers, are the only issue that I see here. I wouldn't worry about the price as much as why you haven't had repeat customers. A couple things to look for when doing small batches of birds to gearing up to larger quantities is losing the focus of why you got these customers in the first place. People usually make really great small business owners but make horrible big ones. Big business in this case isn't selling millions of dollars vs. hundreds, the fact that being too busy usually is enough to make a problem. What I'm getting at, is basically if you go from a hobby farm to an actual business, make sure you don't lose the sight of customer service. I can remember when I first started that I would do anything to get a customer to buy from me, in a good way. For example, I knew their family, knew what they did for a living, gave them free product to keep them happy... especially if it was something new. I always treated repeat customers like gold, as they make your business fail or succeed.
The point is, from doing 100 chickens to almost 10,000 chickens in a year, my customer service is the same. It's not as easy to make that connection like it was when I had 20-30 customers but just remembering a persons name or the fact that they even exist means a lot to customers. Especially in todays big ag mentality when people are just considered another number. Farmers that deal with hundreds of thousands of birds in a year usually deal with just a couple of buyers if not just one. In todays market farming you have to be better than the next guy, and when the next guy does exactly what you do, production practice wise... your customer service has to be perfect. I'm not saying that customer service is the reason why the sales have been down, but I wouldn't put it on the economy. Our sales are up from last year, market sales on chicken is down but overall sales have been up. I think our decrease in chicken sales is from our CSA programs that we do. We have over 100 families in our CSA and everyone of them get chicken.
However, regardless of why sales are down... this is why having a diverse farm is extremely important. You may come to find that rabbits make more money than chicken and that's fine.
Another thing to keep in mind is that most repeat customers assume that if they ordered a turkey from you last season for T-Day, that they automatically get a spot the following year. We send out follow up e-mails about 3 times to previous turkey customers prior to T-Day. The first one going out in July and the last in October, after that, they are out of luck. The second year we did turkeys we had about 50 or so customers miss out because we had sold out.
The bottom line, make sure to keep your customer service strong, don't let people talk you down in price, and stand by your product 100%. Honestly, I wouldn't even break down the price for a customer, whatever price you ask, stand by it and sell the fact that you have the best product available. For instance we have people that snicker at chicken breast being $12.00 / pound. For an average pair of breast being around a pound the cost for a pack /pair of breast is $12.00. However when whole chickens are $3.00 / pound and roughly a chicken weighs four pounds.... you have a $12.00 chicken. It's safe to say that we sell more boneless skinless breast than we do whole chicken. When people complain, I tell them, well you can buy a whole chicken for the same price. I get comments back like " I don't like the dark meat" or " I don't know how to cut up a chicken" or "I can't touch chicken skin, it freaks me out". I simply say, well we do offer chicken cutting class and if they don't like our price I tell them that there is another chicken vendor that offers frozen product over there for about half the price. A lot of times they walk only to find out that they don't care for the other vendors customer service or the fact that it's frozen.
Good luck with it, these are the trial and errors of becoming a great farmer. It's a tough road but definitely worth it in the long run.
The point is, from doing 100 chickens to almost 10,000 chickens in a year, my customer service is the same. It's not as easy to make that connection like it was when I had 20-30 customers but just remembering a persons name or the fact that they even exist means a lot to customers. Especially in todays big ag mentality when people are just considered another number. Farmers that deal with hundreds of thousands of birds in a year usually deal with just a couple of buyers if not just one. In todays market farming you have to be better than the next guy, and when the next guy does exactly what you do, production practice wise... your customer service has to be perfect. I'm not saying that customer service is the reason why the sales have been down, but I wouldn't put it on the economy. Our sales are up from last year, market sales on chicken is down but overall sales have been up. I think our decrease in chicken sales is from our CSA programs that we do. We have over 100 families in our CSA and everyone of them get chicken.
However, regardless of why sales are down... this is why having a diverse farm is extremely important. You may come to find that rabbits make more money than chicken and that's fine.
Another thing to keep in mind is that most repeat customers assume that if they ordered a turkey from you last season for T-Day, that they automatically get a spot the following year. We send out follow up e-mails about 3 times to previous turkey customers prior to T-Day. The first one going out in July and the last in October, after that, they are out of luck. The second year we did turkeys we had about 50 or so customers miss out because we had sold out.
The bottom line, make sure to keep your customer service strong, don't let people talk you down in price, and stand by your product 100%. Honestly, I wouldn't even break down the price for a customer, whatever price you ask, stand by it and sell the fact that you have the best product available. For instance we have people that snicker at chicken breast being $12.00 / pound. For an average pair of breast being around a pound the cost for a pack /pair of breast is $12.00. However when whole chickens are $3.00 / pound and roughly a chicken weighs four pounds.... you have a $12.00 chicken. It's safe to say that we sell more boneless skinless breast than we do whole chicken. When people complain, I tell them, well you can buy a whole chicken for the same price. I get comments back like " I don't like the dark meat" or " I don't know how to cut up a chicken" or "I can't touch chicken skin, it freaks me out". I simply say, well we do offer chicken cutting class and if they don't like our price I tell them that there is another chicken vendor that offers frozen product over there for about half the price. A lot of times they walk only to find out that they don't care for the other vendors customer service or the fact that it's frozen.
Good luck with it, these are the trial and errors of becoming a great farmer. It's a tough road but definitely worth it in the long run.
