The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e84 Standing Orders with Restaurant Customers

Episode Date: May 21, 2016

This ep is a shorty. Matt Coffay returns to talk about setting up standing orders with restaurants. Approximately 1/3 of Matt's sales are to restaurants, and the majority of those sales come from standing orders of just a few products--salad mix, tomatoes, pea shoots, etc. Which means: no fresh sheets! Predictable supply management! And a happier Matt. 

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. I think this is a problem that a lot of small farms run into where they have CSA members or they have chefs or whatever that have these really unrealistic expectations of them because it's like they forget that they're running a business and they're dealing with hundreds of different customers that market in CSA and wholesale and restaurant and whatever. You know, you can't treat everybody like a special case all the time coming up matt coffee on setting up standing orders with your restaurant customers hey folks it's jordan okay so it's a pretty short episode this week the busy farming season is set in and so some of the episodes you're going to hear in the next few weeks might be pretty short and they might tend to be focused on the more practical stuff. If you're new to the podcast and you're

not a farmer or gardener, I recommend you check out the back catalog of the podcast. You'll find plenty of episodes that aren't so technically focused that feature conversations about broader topics like food security and food politics. But for today, I've got Matt Coffey back on the podcast. He's going to talk about how with his restaurant customers for his market garden, he's mainly set up standing orders, which he finds is a way more efficient way to deal with restaurants and ultimately makes his business more profitable. That's all I'm going to say. Here is Matt's bio, and then right after that, you'll hear my conversation.

I hope you enjoy it, and I'll talk to you at the end. I'm Matt Coffey. I'm the owner of Second Spring Market Garden in Asheville, North Carolina. It's an acre and a half diversified vegetable farm, and we do a lot of four-season production and run a four-season CSA. Matt Coffey, thanks a lot for coming back on the Revenant Podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. Matt, you're a market gardener. You grow tons of vegetables, and a healthy portion of your business is devoted to selling to restaurants. And as I understand, you, at least with one restaurant, perhaps more, have set up standing orders with one or more clients.

Is that right? Yeah, that's right. We try to keep our sales balanced in thirds. So we do about a third CSA, a third farmer's market, and a third restaurants and wholesale. Okay, so how many restaurants or chefs do you have a standing order system set up with? We have, depending on the time of year, anywhere from 12 to 15 restaurants around town that have standing orders for this every week. Well, so what I ended up doing is, you know, initially when I first started out, the market was very saturated here, and it was challenging to get going.

So my initial attitude was, you know, if any restaurant wants to buy anything from me, that's great. You know, that was how I looked at it. It was like if anybody wants to buy something from Second Spring, that's good for me. But my attitude is pretty different about it now. So what I do is the thing that I like to do for restaurants is salad mix. And it's like a very consistent mix that is priced at, you know, something that they can afford. And we have all these restaurants set up with a standing salad mix order. And so most of the restaurants, that's all that we do for them. And then we have a couple other things that come in seasonally that we'll do more or less

standing orders for once they kind of get in the swing of, of a weekly order. So, uh, things like tomatoes and, uh, pea shoot that we do as micros and trays in the greenhouse. Um, we have those things set up as standing orders with some restaurants as well. Okay. So Matt, like with, with all but one of my restaurant customers, I have about seven or eight. Um, I, I send out I send out a fresh sheet once and then in the main season twice weekly, always with reflecting what's in the garden. And so the orders are always happening just after the fresh sheets go out. Are you suggesting these standing orders, your setup is a little bit different? Are you still sending them fresh sheets every week?

My experience with the fresh sheet thing is that it's not logistically feasible and therefore really profitable for me to be doing like, you know, four bunches of this and two bunches of that for a bunch of different restaurants trying to keep all of that straight and packing all of that and making those deliveries and billing for ten dollars of this and twelve dollars of that doesn't really end up like making financial sense for us so um so that's that's how that's how our restaurant setup is right now and that's to say nothing of the extra effort like because i i am accommodating chefs in the way that you just described that you don't anymore uh i mean that mean, that's to say that, you know, that's to say nothing of just, just the task of, I write a separate fresh sheet for each restaurant twice a week and send those out and then feel the emails back and, and build my list. It's a lot of labor, uh, just, just to do that. Uh, so, so, okay. But, but I have a few follow-up questions then. Like,

can you walk me through back when you were making the transition towards setting up these standing orders? I mean, um, was that, was that difficult to set up with, with chefs? I mean, it sounds like essentially you have to tell them, look, um, I'm not going to make, I probably more diplomatically than this, but, but, you know, look, I'm not going to, I'm not going to Mickey Mouse around with two bunches of dill this week or next. So, so, you know, here's, here's how you have to order from me if you're going to participate. What do you, how do you set it up with chefs? Uh, so when I started doing what, you know, the whole deal with salad mix, the reason that I wanted that to kind of be our thing for restaurants was because it was just

something that I knew that I could produce year round, like, you know, unheated tunnels in the winter and all that stuff. So once I got them hooked into that, I knew that they would, you know, I'd be able to actually get it to them every week because if you want to, you know, if you want somebody to place a standing order with you, you need to actually follow through and you can't be like, you know, every three or four weeks being like, oh, I'm going to be short this week, sorry, because, you know, then they're not going to want to deal with you anymore. And the big thing for me, I guess, was when I first started out working with more and more restaurants,

once you had like a couple or three good restaurants on board, it was a lot easier to walk into a new restaurant and deal with a chef that doesn't know you at all and give them a sample bag of mix and be like, you know, look, I sell to your friend that owns this place and this other guy that you know that's a chef over here, and they buy from me every week, and so here's this stuff, and I can get it to you every week, and that's that. And, you know, choosing something that you want to get running as a standing order,

that's pretty generic, you know, that a restaurant can kind of always use. So some sort of microgreen or a salad mix or mushrooms or tomatoes or, like, something that they're always going to, or even, like, carrots or something like that that they're always pretty much going to want, like, every week that's not super seasonal. I think it's pretty key. So, but yeah, I mean, I still have like to this day, there are chefs that ask me to send them fresh sheets. And I mean, I've like played that game and they'll, you know, I'll send them a fresh sheet with like eight things and they'll ask for

one of them and then they'll be like, oh, do you have blah, blah, blah? And they'll just say, well, no, I don't. It's not on the sheet that I sent you. So I just don't even play that game anymore. It's just too much work. And I think I've heard J.M. say the same thing, that he kind of got tired of doing that after a while. And, you know, it's different if you're, like, running an urban farm or something, and you're on a very small plot, and you're, like, right in the middle of town, and these guys are, it's different if you're like running an urban farm or something and you're on a very small plot and you're like right in the middle of town and these guys are like all around you. And, you know, it's not a big deal to run a little of this over here and a little of that over there.

But logistically for me, it just doesn't work out. Well, let's say you have a restaurant that in midsummer is taking 25 pounds of greens and 40 pounds of tomatoes a week. That's their standing order, right? greens and 40 pounds of tomatoes a week that's their standing order right um what i'm interested in what i'm interested in knowing is i mean do they do do you still get regular updates from them saying hey can you cut it back this week or hey can i have more this week uh or or do you just yeah i try to minimize that as much as possible so i just i discourage that actively um so so everybody locks in their order for like the quote quote unquote you know for the season which is pretty much may to december and there will be a couple dips for

everybody you know where like at like uh when kids go back to school in august and stuff like that you'll see like restaurants will slow down for a couple weeks um uh even in a tourist town like this one but i uh yeah, when people start doing that, when they start trying to change their order every week, I basically tell them that I can't do that. So, you know, if they want to add or subtract a pound or something like that, that's okay, I guess, but I generally discourage that. And I've had people also try to cancel their order the day of

because they realize they still have some left, and I just drop it off anyway, unless it's like a friend of mine or something. Because they, you know, the same way that like I've actually told a couple of people, like, you know, if I order food in your restaurant and then you bring it out to me and I go, oh, actually, I'm not as hungry as I thought. So let me if you want to just send that back and order this other plate like you know I mean really like not to be an ass about it but like that is kind of what that's the equivalent of

no no I don't and a lot of chefs don't really you know they haven't worked on a farm I've worked in kitchens so I kind of get it but they haven't worked on a farm maybe so maybe they don't kind of understand the logistics of that well no I don't think you're being an ass about it Matt but i also but i also think we can both agree that i assume that that that restaurants can't totally predict their their business right

so that's why it's like so but but anyway what what it seems like to me is that is that you the way this works is you've just i mean tell, tell me if I'm wrong. You just kind of have taken this attitude. I know what's going to be best for my business. And this is how it's going to be. And you set a policy and then you end up, so then the chefs that are into it gravitate towards you and that works. And then you just don't worry about the ones that don't end up buying from you because they don't like the system. Is that about right? Yep.

Yep. That's exactly how it is. And honestly, I would, I know this is kind of off topic, but maybe in the same vein, I feel that way about CSA as well. Um, and, and I think this is maybe a good point to make. So, you know, when you're running a CSA, uh, you can never please everybody. Right. And so my goal with the CSA is very similar to my goal with restaurants, which is I'm very consistent. My quality is very high. I always do what I say I'm going to do and I do a good job, you know. And if somebody isn't happy with that, for whatever reason they might come up with, that's kind of their problem. And they can find another farm to buy from, you know.

So so I'm not you know, I'm always going to do the best job that I possibly can. But you can't like cater to individual people all the time and and still and still do. You know what I mean? And I think this is a problem that a lot of small farms run into where they they have members or they have chefs or whatever that have these really unrealistic expectations of them. Because it's like they forget that, you know, they're running a business and they're they're dealing with hundreds of different customers that market and csa and wholesale and restaurant and whatever and you know you can't treat everybody like a special case all the time well so you know i think i might disagree with you because i'm at the opposite of the spectrum at i i am that person that goes out of my way, but I will say, I would just restate it. I would just suggest that you can, but it brings a lot more stress and I would suggest less profit. Oh yeah. Yeah, you're totally right. Of course you can, for sure.

And then another consequence is that your wife or husband or spouse or whatever ends up having to hear you vent all the time about all this bullshit the, all this, all this bullshit that you have to take, even though, even, and then, and then, and then in my case, you know, she ends up pointing out, well, like, yeah, you, you kind of made your bed, didn't you, Jordan? Um, but what I find, what I, what I find, um, what I found fascinating about it. So I'll just quickly tell you, I really am at the opposite end of the spectrum. I've taken my CSA towards even more flexibility and more options. I now, I'm at a point where, uh, I'm way away from the traditional CSA. So I'm offering home delivery. I'm offering, uh, complete flexibility. Like people don't have to take the veggies every week. They get to choose what goes in their bag every week. So like maximum, maximum flexibility. And I, I, and I,

I won't, I won't, I won't go into details with the chefs but it's very similar i'm i'm the guy that yeah absolutely you can have a piece of horseradish or sorry horseradish or or you know a bunch of dill with your order um but what i find interesting i'll focus on the csa um and almost in a way depressing is it i find it doesn't matter to what lengths i go to make it more flexible i find the the more flexible I am, the more people just expect and demand. Like it's never, I know. Yeah, totally. It's so funny because I used to, in the CSA, I used to choose what goes in the bags.

And then the next year I chose what goes in the bags, but I allowed them to say one thing they never wanted to see. You know what I mean? And I slowly went in that direction. And look, my business is working well um but i can i can i can i can hear you know hearing you and how you've structured it i can really uh like i look at that with a bit of envy absolutely and i and i i've really learned yeah it's just human psychology is really funny you know and um it just really it sounds like you

you've you've you've ignored whatever neurotic impulses exist in a lot of us market gardeners that said, Nope, this is what, this is how it's going to be. I haven't ignored them. I've just tamed them. Like they were there. So I will say I started out doing exactly what you're doing. And it took, it only took like a year for me to be like, wow, I just can't do that for the rest of my life.

You know? Yeah. So I, and I will say, you know, that adage about, um, 20% of your customers take up 80% of your time or something like that, you know? Yeah. Uh, like that whole idea that like you have this small group of, of either CSA members or, you know, people that shop with you at market that are always like holding up the line or like the chef that's always trying to change his order with you the day of or you know like those people and I and I just feel like those people are always going to be out there and like whatever you can do to sort of weed them out a little like no pun

intended I guess but you know considering the line of work or whatever but like whatever you can do weed them maybe I did intend upon actually but whatever you can do to weed them, and maybe I did intend to pun, actually, but whatever you can do to weed them out of your customer base, like it takes a while, but I just feel like eventually maybe you can end up, and maybe not, but I think eventually you could maybe end up mostly with a customer base that actually understands to some degree, to whatever extent they can, what your job and life are like and can sort of respect that and respect your time and energy a little bit more and and i don't know maybe that's wishful thinking but i think you can get there eventually

if you set like the boundaries it seems like you're doing a good job i have to say i want to say just because it it doesn't hurt to to to take a contrary perspective uh even though i really it sounds to me it sounds to me like you the way you're doing things is awesome. And you know, it's, it's really good food for thought for me. But, um, the, a weird thing though is like, you know, one of my, I would say maybe just by the nature of their business, one of my most high maintenance chef customers is actually one of my favorites to deal with. Um, they're doing arguably the most interesting things with my stuff.

deal with. Um, they're doing arguably the most interesting things with my stuff. So, so there's aspects of that, of that kind of really committed relationship to a chef that's high maintenance that I enjoy. Um, uh, I enjoy the challenge, but overall, but I, what I, I, I feel like I can't deny is that the, the model you've described, um, it makes a ton more business sense. And we've, we've all, every single one of us market gardeners knows we just don't have enough time in the day and it sounds like you've got a really great system well you know and i think a lot of it too it just ultimately comes down to how your sales are proportionally reflected in your you know in your in your numbers throughout the year so so in other words uh if you're trying to mostly sell to restaurants,

or if you're Curtis Stone or something, and your goal is to do a farmer's market, but a lot of your sales are going to restaurants in the city that you're in because maybe you're doing an urban farm or whatever, then of course you need to cater to chefs because hawking eight bunches of this and eight bunches of that is kind of how you're going to make your money. But then at that point, if that's your business model,

then you would systematize that in a way that would make it easier. So you could go to some trouble with a Google Drive, or I know Curtis is working with a friend of his some sort of cloud-based app that will do things like this in a more efficient way than anything else that's out there right now. So, you know, send out a fresh sheet with, like, an inventory attached to it, and everybody places their orders, and then it all gets compiled into a spreadsheet for you. And then when you're going doing your deliveries, you've got it on your phone, and you just, like, drop off this and that, you know. So you would need to set something like that up. And then maybe it's not crazy anymore.

But like for me, when I'm doing a big farmer's market, like a lot of stuff for a farmer's market every Saturday and selling a lot of stuff. And then when I'm running a sizable CSA all year, like we do the winter CSA too with fresh stuff all winter. year like we do the winter csa too with fresh stuff all winter so like when i'm doing all that other stuff i can't budget the time to like deal with restaurants with that level of special specialty and minutiae and whatever but but it totally could work if you had a different business model from mine i think that's an important point i mean in my model i'm doing 75 restaurant sales uh and so and i have pretty good systems i have pretty good systems to keep the whole process of fresh eats and all the rest efficient. Matt, you mentioned you're not going to fool around with a couple of bunches of dill on the order. Does that suggest you just, for the restaurants, you don't even offer the crops where they're only going to tend to want small amounts?

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So. Yeah. So what I literally do at this point is like I said, we have 12 to 15 accounts. Um, and then, and then also a couple of grocery, uh, wholesale accounts for salad mixing and peaches and things too. But, but as far as the restaurants go, um,

we, uh, I really only have like a couple that I send a fresh sheet to. And one of them is placing a very large order because he's getting pretty much all of his produce for the week from me. But everybody else, I don't even bother sending them fresh sheets. They just have their salad next every week, and that's it. Or once the tomatoes kick in, maybe somebody will get 10 pounds or 20 bags or 20 pints, I mean, of cherries or whatever, you know. But, yeah, I don't even – things like radishes and beets and what, I just don't bother.

All right. Okay. Okay. So last question then, Matt. I think this is probably an important one too. That sounds like a great system. But I would bet that if you're not already in a competitive region in terms of other market gardeners, you know, you're in a population, you know, you're in, I think you're not already in a competitive region in terms of other market gardeners, you're in a population.

I think you're in Asheville. There's a decent population there. At some point. Oh, it's very competitive. Right. So don't you worry about someone, say, like me. Let's just hypothetically assume you and I have very similar quality of our produce. Both good products.

hypothetically assume you and I have very similar quality of our produce. Okay. Good, both good products. If I'm willing to come along and do that extra hustling and really cater and say, yep, you can order a bunch of dill and all the rest. I mean, geez, I, one, one restaurant I delivered to yesterday had about, um, 15 items I delivered and most of them were worth under 10 bucks an item. Okay. Um, do you, I mean, is there, do you worry about that? Do you, or do you, do you, are you concerned that in future, um, you know, you could get out hustled because of people who are willing to cater to that degree? How do you know? What is your stance? I don't know. I don't think so because I honestly like my aim just, you know, specifically with restaurants from the beginning was to fill a niche market that wasn't already being fulfilled for them.

And so for me, a couple of years ago when I started, that was salad mix, but like all year. So in the spring and fall, they could get some salad mix and the quality kind of went up and down depending on what farm you're getting it from. And then it falls off in the summer in the winter um so i was like hey let me just be the guy that does this for you you know like i'll drop off 10 pounds of this stuff a week all year no exception you never

have to worry about it you never have to place another cisco order for salad next ever again you don't have to like call a different farm text somebody and have them canceling you at the last minute or whatever and so they know they can get that from me so and and i i think this is where building uh personal relationships as much as you can with each chef is really important because if you if they know you if they know your face and they know your name and you know it doesn't mean that your name. And, you know, it doesn't mean that you're buddies necessarily, but like, you know, you're more than acquaintances. You have some sort of semi-formal business relationship. Somebody else that wants to come around and like hustle harder than you or whatever, which, by the way, I still hustle pretty hard.

Somebody that wants to hustle harder than you to do a little of this and a little of that. somebody that wants to hustle harder than you to do a little of this and a little of that, I still seriously doubt that any of the restaurants that I sell to would ever cancel their salad mix order with me to start ordering from somebody else or the early tomatoes that I do or whatever just because that other person happens to be willing to bring them some other stuff too. I think that would be really strange because they know me and I know them and there's an established relationship there and they, you know, they know that I've been consistent on this thing for a long time. And so, so no, I'm not, I'm not really worried about that. Um, uh, honestly, I, it hasn't, it's not even something I've thought about, but yeah, I don't,

I don't really worry too much about that well matt coffee i salute you and your approach to restaurant sales thank you man i well but you know but you're probably making a lot more money than me from restaurants oh no hey look i i'm not i i'm very secure in the way i do things uh i but i but that's not to say i can't look at the way you do things and think wow that's really deserves some thought and there's no reason you can't look at the way you do things and think, wow, that really deserves some thought. And there's no reason you can't have a mix of both. You know, the restaurants. Right, likewise.

Yeah, exactly. So anyway, very cool. Thank you so much for getting on the phone again, and I hope we can have you back on sometime in the future. Oh, yeah, I'm always happy to be on the podcast. It's one of my favorites, so thanks for having me. All right, so that's it for this of my favorites. So thanks for having me. All right. So that's it for this week, folks.

I hope you enjoyed that. Just a quick note. There's been some great journalism released in the last week or so regarding agriculture. The National Academies of Science in the United States released a major report on GMOs, on genetically modified organisms and their safety and efficacy. And there's all kinds of articles online about that report. I'll point out one at grist.org. You could read Nathaniel Johnson's take. He's been a former guest on the podcast. The New York Times has a really great take on the report. So I recommend checking that out well as tom philpott's most recent article on the

use of antibiotics in livestock production which you can check out at mother jones the so anyway tons tons to read go check it out and i will talk to you in a week take care off just not spring water and peaches we'll own nothing to this world of thieves and live life like it was meant to be Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking,

some real soul searching, and here's my final resolve. I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong so we'll run right out into the wilds and graces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be life like it was meant to be