Go where your customers are: Digital

Since the shelter-in-place orders for flattening the curve of COVID-19, many Bay Area food producers, which once were more dependent on restaurants, have been shifting their outreach to the market and where they sell their products.

Within the wine industry, many small wineries focus their efforts on direct to consumer (DTC), selling the majority of their wines through their wine club, in the tasting room, and through their telemarketing or email lists.

But only a few food producers in the area have honed in on this sales model. Hog Island Oyster Co. sells over 6 million oysters a year, with the majority of inventory going to its own restaurants in Marshall, Napa, San Francisco and Larkspur. About 25% goes to outside restaurants.

When all California restaurants were barred from doing sit-down table service, many did more delivery or curbside pickup. Hog Island Oysters pivoted to making its website as easy as possible for customers to order directly from them.

“We had the framework for selling oysters online already set up with Shopify since we typically do mail order oysters for the holidays," said Hog Island Oyster digital media specialist Remy Hale. "When our restaurants closed, we immediately reopened our web store to get business going through there again. We have added an alert bar to our homepage, directing people to our online shop and other current offerings, and we changed the homepage hero image to direct our customers to the online store.”

Being able to quickly transform the call to action on a website homepage during a crisis (a pandemic, fire, etc.) allows customers easy access to information and directs them to where purchases can be made.

In fact, “Farmher” Tiffany Holbrook, the full-time farmer behind Wise Acre Farm in Windsor, ended up recreating a whole new website for her poultry farm in just three days.

Pre-pandemic, the family-owned pasture-raised-poultry farm sold roughly 60% of the eggs from the 1,100 laying hens to local restaurants like The Pharmacy and Noble Folk in Santa Rosa and BurtoNZ Bakery in Windsor.

The other 40% of the eggs were sold directly to consumers through a vending machine, at which customers could purchase farm-fresh eggs. Since the shelter order went through, one of the restaurants Wise Acre Farm worked with temporarily closed. The other two that are still open for takeout and delivery have ordered fewer eggs from them.

Since eggs were some of the first edible products that started selling out in grocery stores, word of mouth about the egg vending machine spread across social media, and Wise Acre Farm pivoted their business to focus on consumers.

The farm's website traffic rose by 971% in March, and questions via email and social media (especially on their Instagram channel) have increased dramatically. Tiffany tries to answer everyone back, and she decided to recreate the website.

She has started sending monthly email newsletters to make it easy for customers to find information on how they can purchase from her farm. (Your best bet is to visit the farm at 631 Arata Lane, Windsor. Since the start of COVID-19 they have been selling out daily. Stocking is done every evening by 8 p.m. with the eggs laid that same day.)

Anna's Seafood in Petaluma also made changes to its website to make it easier for customers to buy online (for pick-up and delivery). It also offers free deliveries of fresh seafood within 50 miles of the Petaluma store. They also share daily behind the scenes videos and specials on their Facebook page.

Epicurean Connection in Sonoma wears many different hats on any given day. Founder and culinary educator, Sheana Davis, held cheese-making classes, hosted popup shops at her Sonoma location where she sold provisions (including her homemade cheese), worked catering gigs, and delivered goods to local businesses.

Eighty percent of her sales were comprised of wholesale for her provisions and her Delice de la Vallee, a triple-cream blend of cow's and goat's milk, which she delivered to Sonoma and Napa chefs, including Kendall-Jackson, John Ash & Co., Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, Andaz Hotel, and Silverado Resort.

As she told the Business Journal in a story in its May 4 edition, having to pivot her business to focus exclusively on the final customer as opposed to her wholesale restaurants, wineries, and hotels, she closed Epicurean Connection for a month to recalibrate. When her culinary company came back, she simplified her list of provisions to homemade soups, pestos, moles, and cheeses. She shares a new menu every Sunday through her email list (which you can sign up for at the bottom of her homepage: theepicureanconnection.com) and social media channels, and delivers twice a week to Sonoma and Napa.

In addition to food delivery, Sheana hosts a complimentary cheese-making Zoom culinary class every Wednesday at 11 a.m.

Life in the hospitality-driven Bay Area will not go back to “normal” any time soon. As businesses start to pivot to focus on the individual consumer, developing new tactics for transparently interacting with customers and embracing flexibility becomes even more essential.