The Site. I know that many of you hate surprises. You have gotten used to our sometimes quirky web site over the years. It is imperfect but you have learned how to deal with it. You are not thrilled with it, but it works. But amigos, we have a huge facelift coming your way. This is not just an aesthetic change but a complete restructuring to keep up with the technological advances that we are seeing in home delivery.
What’s In the Harvest Box Next Week?
Friends of the Farm Members Savings This Week: $796
Here is a quick story to help put this new web page into perspective. I got my first cell phone when I started the farm in 2003. I needed to answer calls and I was literally a man who was out standing in his field. So a landline would no longer be sufficient to keep in touch with our members. That was only 13 years ago. Fast forward to today and many of our members our using their phones to place orders for their food to be delivered to their doorstep. Times change quickly!
This kind of technological change is only going to accelerate in the coming years. More and more companies are going to be entering the home delivery marketplace and we need to be ready for whatever comes around the bend. I used to think that we were on the cutting-edge of the marketplace with our home delivery of farm freshness.
I have to tell you that now I feel like there is a window that is closing and if we do not make necessary steps to get inside that window soon, we will be locked out. I have mentioned many times this year that we are in the midst of a seriously competitive state in the grocery industry. It is taking a bite out of farmers and farmers’ markets across our nation. So complacency at this point could be the death knoll for many.
For our farm and business, we will avoid that complacency by remaining diligent in keeping up to speed with technological advances, as well as keeping the quality coming your way.
So I preface all of that to lead into this new web site that we will be launching in less than 2 weeks. We will walk you through every step of the transition, but for this week, I want to put it (and keep it) on your radar that we have some amazing changes coming and I don’t want any shocked folks.
The Gap. When I was younger and less of a fur ball, I had the fortune of spending a semester in the alleyway of the London School of Economics. I learned two very important things there that I still remember clearly to this day. First was that there has never been a famine in this world due to a lack of food, only a lack of distribution. I had no idea at the time that much of my life’s passion would end up being around the distribution of amazing foods. Second was the voice that came over the speakers boarding the trains on the Tube. The voice did not want you to catch a toe and trip getting on the train so they would always say, “Mind the gap please.”
This idea of the “gap” is what we now use to talk about and visualize as the difference between taking a good idea and turning it into good execution. Because without the proper execution of a plan, an idea is a pretty pointless thing to have.
I bring that up because we have had some pretty lofty ideas around here like trying to bring dozens of suppliers together to sell under one tent, and oh yes, offer same-day delivery to many of our customers. Those goals would be cute and all, but we have to execute for the ideas to be useful.
And good was no longer good enough. We have to be great in order for folks to stop going to the grocery store and let us bring food to you. Think about how ingrained going to the grocery store is in our society. We do very little now the same way that our grandparents did them…but we shop the same. I mean we have gone from Ford’s model T to self-driving cars in 100 years, but we still shop the same way. So to break this grocery umbilical cord, we have to be perfect for you.
This was the challenge put to our warehouse manager, Edward, and all of our pack crew, Jon, Brian, Ryan, Fonz, James and Kyle. Good is not good enough; we have to be perfect to shift the paradigm. And I have to tell you that they have all been incredible. We have brought our pack accuracy rate to 99.75%. Pretty awesome to see and it makes me very proud of our entire crew. These kind of numbers could not be obtained without everyone working together. Makes for a happy papa bear I tell you. Have a great week, Farmer Monte