Sometimes I print the orders in my office and physically take them to the farm. Other times, I transmit the orders to them online, and they print them at the shed.
The box integrity entirely failed in-transit. Rips, tears, bottoms falling out, tops crushed, everything. I had to refund and re-send orders as make-goods, in better boxes. When my customers showed me pics of the box conditions after delivery, it made my heart hurt (no lie). I thought it was all over. These days, we send all orders in a double-walled cardboard box, with a locking bottom, and aeration holes throughout. It's a tank of a box.
The box integrity entirely failed in-transit. Rips, tears, bottoms falling out, tops crushed, everything. I had to refund and re-send orders as make-goods, in better boxes. When my customers showed me pics of the box conditions after delivery, it made my heart hurt (no lie). I thought it was all over. These days, we send all orders in a double-walled cardboard box, with a locking bottom, and aeration holes throughout. It's a tank of a box.
They were all great, honestly. The first 2 had different operations. Farmer #1 would have worked, but they didn't have a packing shed. Farm #2 seemed ambivalent, so I was concerned whether my orders would go out on time.
you're welcome! Thank you for that feedback - I was concerned that it'd come across as a humblebrag.. I just like sharing neat things people can do on great domain names.
My knucklehead friend, who I grew up with, keeps insisting I ship the onions in a heavy wooden crate, for aesthetic value. He says I could upsell that "value-add". I've yet to implement that idea.
These days, the farmer and I are equally devoted to this. If the farm goes away, the farmer and I will start again somewhere else. Highly unlikely the farm goes away though.. The farm could possibly change names down the road.. small things like that.
Typically older demo.. over 35 usually.. I only know this cause I speak to so many customers on the phone.. Most customers are folks who are foodies and have read about Vidalias, or are already familiar with..
if you're referring to that 360-degree photo, you can make the same kind of image through the Google 'Street View' app.. you'll then upload to your Google account and share..
We're about as close to organic without putting the label on it. But we are test growing some 100% organics now, trying to determine next steps with that..
A lot of different ways. A lot through word of mouth now. Some paid search, some organic search, some through other farms pointing customers our way, some though our billboard on i-95, and some through the magnets I have stuck on my car.
The taste is very subjective. Most folks simply say that the Vidalia is the sweetest/mildest of them all. The Walla Walla, Texas 1015, the Peru, the Maui sweet are all legit sweet onions, and are all quite good (I now buy & taste onions cause I'm curious).. Some sweet onions might have a slight bite on the front end, others might have a little burn on the back end. Then some are smooth the entire time you chew.. I'd say Vidalias tend to be mild the entire time you chew. That being said, Mother Nature is mother nature, and she's gonna do what she wants to do, taste wise.
Honestly, I don't want to build an amazon size business, so there's no tension. Too complicated. I sorta follow the same path at Paul Jarvis, and his book https://ofone.co/ . Right now, from a product standpoint, I focus on one thing, Vidalias. But I'll have to note that we also own the domain name 'Onions.com', so there's possible opportunity for growth down the road. Not right now, though.
1. Right now, we're concentrating on just Vidalias. We continue to grow at a pace I'm happy with, so there's no need to get complicated.
2. We learned it as we went along, really. ie, "Oh crap, X happened.. what do we do?" And then we figure out what's best for the customer, and do that.
3. We listen, and empathize. I want all our customers to get the onion they're expecting. If they don't, I'll cover the cost to get them more that meet their needs.
4. The logistic changed the most, by far. Our second year, we added order tracking, and that helped a lot too. (Our first season, the customers would call me and ask where their order was, and I'd manually look it up)
5. We're profitable. I have no interest in raising money or taking direction from a VC.
6. Tech stack (if I even understand what that means).. Wordpress, Shopify
Peter here (author).. happy to share a little more. I oddly enjoy the customer relations side the most. It's so old school - alot of my customers are surprised when a real human picks up the phone to take their order. The hardest thing to get right (and we continue to refine) is the logistics part. The pitfalls I encounter are the very tight margins. If I take my eyes off of operations, I could quickly go under water.
Peter here (author).. They didn't have a need, desire, or employee to run that type of operation. The farm didn't have a website when we started, so my sales pitch to them at the start was 'Even if we miserably fail in this project, at least you'll get a free website out of it'..
no kidding, here was the first negotiation. I'm at the shed, in the front office with the farmer. We talk about whether this could work. We realize it might. I then bring up how to split money. From my side, it seemed fair to pay him more, so I suggested they keep 60% of profit, and I keep 40%. He nodded, and agreed. So we went with that. We changed it slightly over the years, but it still falls around that range. You wanna know funny thing? UPS makes the most on the entire transaction (as we roll in shipping costs on all our orders).