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Episode Summary
When you want to expand your farm business, how do you go about it? Do you add more land and grow more produce? Do you niche down and switch to growing only high-profit crops? Or maybe you expand your farm’s offering by creating value-added products to the mix.
In this episode of Carrot Cashflow, we’re talking to farmer Jenny Quiner about how she was able to expand their farm’s operations by adding salad dressing to their product offering. She shares where she got the idea, how she executed it, and how she’s managing to produce enough salad dressings for many big grocery store accounts.
Today’s Guest: Jenny Quiner
Jenny Quiner is the owner and founder of Dogpatch Urban Gardens in Des Moines, Iowa. With the help of her husband Eric, she grows nutrient-dense food to promote health, nutrition, and environmental conservation. Since starting the farm in 2015, Dogpatch Urban Gardens has since grown and expanded its operations, providing employment to the local community, all the while sticking to its values of community and healthy living.
Relevant Links
Dogpatch Urban Gardens – Website | Facebook | Instagram
In this episode of Carrot Cashflow
- Diego introduces the episode’s guest, Jenny Quiner (00:36)
- Starting the farm business one way and evolving it (02:19)
- Customer-driven vs internal-driven changes (02:51)
- Why some farmers may be reluctant to expand beyond growing and selling vegetables (04:48)
- The challenge of looking for a growth opportunity (06:58)
- Jenny’s Ideas for growth opportunities (07:58)
- Taking on the risk of creating a salad dressing (and other products) (09:10)
- What it was like launching a new product (10:49)
- Getting big accounts and becoming a question of how much product you can move (11:52)
- When Dogpatch started selling salad dressings (14:02)
- Try it and see where it goes strategy (14:51)
- The initial idea behind creating salad dressings (16:16)
- Creating a branding to go along with a higher-end salad dressing (18:05)
- How to get your product into a local chain (19:28)
- Cutting through the noise when pitching to a new buyer (21:17)
- Managing the first few months selling to a big chain (22:31)
- Shifting workloads when you have distributors (24:22)
- Shelf placement in stores (25:20)
- Communicating the brand and product’s story on the salad dressing bottle (27:08)
- Current growth and the impact of further growth (29:01)
- Growing through diversifying for long-term business sustainability (30:49)
- From planning to execution to success (34:58)
- Looking at a product idea and deciding if it fits or not (37:25)
- What you need to know if you want to create a salad dressing (40:06)
- What profit margins look like for salad dressings (41:21)
- Making a salad subscription more attractive with a dressing (45:09)
- Keeping things exciting by offering new products every now and then (46:34)
- Where to check out Jenny Quiner, Dogpath Farm, and the Dogpatch salad dressing line (48:37)
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