Episode 89: Talking Farm to Table with Alexis Burnham

Main Topics Covered

1. Customer Engagement and Feedback: Alexis discusses the three-pronged approach to understanding customer needs through social media polls, direct feedback, and regular customer interactions.
2. Marketing Strategies: The shift from static posts to interactive social media marketing, leveraging trends, and maintaining authenticity in their campaigns.
3. Local Sourcing and Partnerships: Burnham Orchards collaborates with local farms for produce, emphasizing the importance of local sourcing and community support.
4. Expansion into Restaurant Business: Alexis talks about Freight House Tavern, a restaurant focused on farm-to-table dining using locally sourced ingredients.
5. Advice for New Farmers: Emphasizing authenticity in marketing and the importance of transparency and storytelling in connecting with customers.
6. Cider Production: The journey of starting Redhead Cider House and expanding their cider distribution, including a partnership with Giant Eagle.
7. Future Plans: Alexis outlines plans for integrating AI technology, creating accessible pick-your-own fields, and establishing a nonprofit for education and emotional well-being.

Transcription

Speaker 1 (00:08):Welcome to AgCredit Said It, your go-to podcast for insights on farm finance and maximizing your return on investment. Join us as we talk to industry leaders, financial experts, and area farmers, bringing you skillful advice and strategies to grow your farm's financial future AgCredit Said It, where farm finance goes beyond the balance sheet.

Kendra Heffelfinger (00:38):Welcome back to AgCredit Said It, where we take you beyond the balance sheet of farm finance. I'm guest host Kendra Heffelfinger, and today we are talking with Alexis Burnham of Burnham Orchards. Welcome Alexis.

Alexis Burnham (00:48):Hello

Kendra Heffelfinger (00:50):Alexis spoke at our Emerge conference back in March and shared some of the successes she's had in increasing sales for Burnham Orchards Today. We're going to dive into that a little bit and get some advice from her. To start off, Alexis, can you give us a little background about yourself and your role with Burnham Orchards?

Alexis Burnham (01:05):Absolutely. I'm Alexis Burnham. Thanks for the great introduction. And I serve as the Vice President of Operations at Burnham Orchards, our family owned farm in Berlin Heights, Ohio. We've been in business for over 210 years. This year is actually our 211th year, and I'm a part of the seventh generation. I manage everything from marketing and sales to customer experience, product development and community engagement. We also run Redhead Cider House, which is a full service bakery and a tap room that's on site.

Kendra Heffelfinger (01:32):Awesome. And you guys have been here for seven generations? Yes, ma'am. Pretty amazing. All in the same location,

Alexis Burnham (01:40):All in the same location. All we've done is expand where we're planting and otherwise even the original farmhouse is the original farmhouse.

Kendra Heffelfinger (01:50):That's really cool. With the specialty market you here at Burnham Orchards, how do you determine the needs of your customers? Because you guys are a retail market, you're full service retail, so how do you determine what your customers want?

Alexis Burnham (02:04):Yeah, that's a great question. So we approach it in a three-pronged way. Typically, one of the things we do is run polls on social media. Our latest one has been on a cookie recipe. We make all of our cookies in-house at the bakery, and so we were toying with different types of oats and different toppings. So we literally had what we called the cookie showdown that we posted on Facebook. If you bought this cookie, let us know what you thought. And then in here we had signs when people were purchasing their cookie to let us know what they voted for as they were trying different things. So that's one of the ways. The other way is customers have no problem approaching us and giving us their opinion or things that they think that we need in the market. So I'm really listening to patterns of products.

(02:50):So we take that three-prong approach by interviewing customers, asking them. Customers are very open to giving us unsolicited feedback, which is great. And then we also post signage. Let us know what you're thinking and we have a lot of regulars. So over the last seven generations, there's lots of people who have been coming to us regularly for their couple of generations. We are able to really lean on them. We started doing our own stru soul, which was a really big deal in the bakery, and we asked all of our regulars, did you like it before? Do you like it now? And so leaning on the regulars, doing polls on social media and actually having signage up and asking directly for opinions on specific items is how we stay in tune to the market.

Kendra Heffelfinger (03:35):Well, not just stay in tune, but you're actually staying ahead of the market.

Alexis Burnham (03:38):We try to

Kendra Heffelfinger (03:40):In that direct customer feedback, you can't get much quicker than that. Right,

Alexis Burnham (03:43):Exactly.

Kendra Heffelfinger (03:45):With that, how do you incorporate that feedback into marketing campaigns, into your advertising? What channels do you use? How do you get that customer feedback so that it becomes a marketing channel for you?

Alexis Burnham (04:00):Yeah, that's a great question. So when I took over social media marketing, we went from static posts to trying to be as interactive as we could be, really following some of the notes that the algorithm is pushing towards us, meaning that if I am trying to come up with a campaign for picking your own peaches, I'm on TikTok trying to figure out what are the big sounds Right now I'm on Instagram and I'm on Reddit trying to find out what it's meaning, what's happening, is there anything that we can lean into this? And it's really light work. You're talking maybe like an hour or two every two days to see what's popping up because people are chronically online. You don't really have to die further than that. You will see what's popping, I promise. And so leaning into those sorts of trends as we can, our biggest challenge in channeling feedback from customers into social media marketing is not over promising because if you ask any farmer, when's this crop going to be ready?

(05:03):We're not telling you to the day before. We know for sure, and we might not even say until the day of because there's so many different factors when it comes to things like that. So we follow the trends by making sure we're spending a little bit of time every couple of days seeing that. We try not to over promise, but we will tease. If you looked at our Facebook today or yesterday, it'll say, we're picking peaches soon. Be ready because they're not ready yet, but they could be ready tomorrow. So my dad, sixth generation Joe goes out on the farm every morning and he checks on the fruit and we get an in real time live update on if we'll be able to pick today and let's say today we were able to pick, he would have to make sure tomorrow we're still able to pick because different crops are going to be ready in different parts of our orchard at different times, and they're not all available to the public. So there's a lot of thinking into how are we presenting what customers are asking for? When is picking your own peaches together, keeping ourselves as honest as we can and following the law of farming, which is we're ready when the farmer says we're ready.

Kendra Heffelfinger (06:06):Well, and with the products that you grow here at Burnham Orchards, that can be tough. Everything's perishable, right? And so as that harvest happens, you want to market as soon as you can so that you can get it off the shelf

Alexis Burnham (06:19):Too. Yes, exactly.

Kendra Heffelfinger (06:21):Majority of the products that you sell here at Berger Orchards are they grown right here on the farm?

Alexis Burnham (06:26):The majority of fruit is grown here on the farm. We do partner with Groves from Groves and Farm Elyria to get their sweet corn. We partner with a farmer down in Tennessee to bring his tomatoes up before it's tomato season up here. There's a gentleman named Paul in Norwalk, about five minutes from Great House who we get produce from. So if it's something that we have carried historically, we're either sourcing it from Shiloh and where they're bringing it in from other states or when it's available locally, then we rechange all of our supply chain management basically and get it from farmers locally. But anything that we grow ourselves is definitely in our market. We do some of our own salsas, our own Apple butter, but Honey is always going to be from Stein's. So that's kind of how we operate. A little bit of ours, a little bit of theirs,

Kendra Heffelfinger (07:21):But it's a great network for your local community too, for sure, right. It gives them a retail house to maybe sell their products through. You mentioned Freight House. Let's talk a little bit about that. So not only are you helping run orchards and the marketing and servicing of the retail store, but you have also embarked on a restaurant.

Alexis Burnham (07:40):Yes, ma'am. So

Kendra Heffelfinger (07:41):Taking the farm completely to the table, can you tell us a little bit about Freight House?

Alexis Burnham (07:45):Yeah, so it's located in Norwalk 50 North Prospect Street. It's actually a 200 year old building that was a train depot that was renovated for a catering company and then a restaurant, and it was Freight House Pub and Grill for 10 years. We took it over May 9th and it is now Freight House Tavern. And my whole initiative is to put farmers on plates on tables because it does make a big difference having Steins in here using Marvin's produce, using Paul"s produce, using groves. All of our corn specials are coming from Groves, and it makes a big difference. It not only gives them more visibility, but there's this push that I morely stand behind to be more aware of where your food comes from. The industry has been calling it neo localism, and it's something that people are really getting behind at Prairie House. So we get our beef from Dalton Farms.

(08:36):All of our burgers pretty soon are going to be adding their beef sticks to our Bloody Mary's. That was a suggestion from Rebecca and I loved it. We use Stein's honey in our pizzas that have the honey glaze on them. We're using Burnham orchards, peaches, Burnham orchards, apples Burnham orchards, blackberries we're using. A gentleman does hydroponic lettuce greenhouses in Avon, Ohio or Oberlin, Ohio. I mean, and we're using that on all of our burgers. So a lot of the stuff we're making in house, I have prep cooks there seven days a week at 6:30 AM getting all the food ready. We do all of our own breading. We introduce gluten-free items to the menu. We have one vegan item on there. It's a black bean burger. It's delicious. But it's really exciting because I see the farmers coming in and the farmers' families coming in and the pride is visible, the impact on their families is visible, and then the taste, there's a big difference.

Kendra Heffelfinger (09:31):Well, we had the opportunity to not only visit Freight House and have one of those burgers, but we actually were out at Dalton Farms prior to that, so we actually got to see it from full gamut as well.

Alexis Burnham (09:42):I love that. Great family

Kendra Heffelfinger (09:42):Locally sourced and great opportunity for local farmers.

Alexis Burnham (09:46):Yeah.

Kendra Heffelfinger (09:48):Let's talk a little bit about what advice would you have for somebody who's just starting out or maybe is taking a look at their own operation and saying, here's the assets that we have. What could we do?

Alexis Burnham (10:00):Yeah, my biggest advice is probably going to be shocking. And this is something that I found shocking in the last year. So I've been doing a lot of AB testing, which is basically putting two types of content on there and seeing what is getting engaged with the most. It could be that I'm changing just the copy. It could be that I'm changing the graphics, but what I've been really hyperfocused on is interaction on our more authentic posting. And this was actually, I call, I think in my speech back in March, I called it the Dalton Farms approach because she does it so well, but it's showing up and not putting a Canva beautiful. Worked really hard on post-op. It's more taking all of that out and just using your raw photos because, and this is something that I've seen change very recently in the last six months from the consumer.

(10:49):They're engaging less with more professional graphic looking posts and more with a picture of peaches sitting in a bin, a picture of the farm dog sitting in grass. There's this need for authenticity that we've been seeing socially as a country, but we're starting to really see in marketing as well. People don't want just the polished version of, we don't want the version of, wow, that's perfect. You guys look great. This is beautiful and amazing. They want to see the raw behind the footage, behind the scenes type of footage to really feel a part of what you're going through day to day. The best comparison I've seen in the marketing world is the behind the scenes so many people were doing behind the scenes, behind the scenes, and it just really skyrocketed. And it was a really great campaign. It still is a good campaign. If you go to Burnham's Facebook, probably once a quarter, we'll do a get ready with us, like open the market with us, which is that behind the scenes vibe and it's well received because of the authenticity push that people are needing and seeing. And that would be my biggest advice. You do not need to get Canva Pro. You don't need to make it perfect. You just need to start somewhere and starting authentically and having misspellings in your posts. If that's where you are, start there. People are going to love it. And then every time someone comments and said, you spelled peach wrong, or whatever the situation is, that's another engagement, that sign of almost no bad publicity sort of thinking on that.

Kendra Heffelfinger (12:17):Well, you mentioned transparency, right? I mean, that's what people are looking for. That authenticity becomes transparency and how can people see the farm and its raw edges. Part of it also is connecting with people, and that's where the feeling comes in. And so if you are authentic, if you show your day to day show the sweat on the brow of your dad out there when he is checking the peaches, then it becomes real for people. And it's not just to market, but it's to tell your story. So Alexis not only farm to table through the restaurant, but you guys have also started your own canning of hard cider. So what made you guys decide to go that avenue?

Alexis Burnham (12:55):Yeah, it's actually an interesting story. So maybe in the 1980s or early 1990s, a gentleman came in. He was a Berlin Heights local, and he worked at the farm. He picked peaches. He worked under my grandpa's tenure, which is funny, I can't imagine working from my grandpa, but he worked under my grandpa's management. And then about 2015, he came into Burnham's. I was actually here that day. I was visiting home from college, and he was looking around for my dad. And whenever someone's asking for Joe Jr, I'm like, what do you want? Because everyone wants something. And he said, I just have this idea. I brought in some hard cider. I would like him to try. He had it in this homemade brew jug. And my dad and him met. My dad remembered that Josh had worked here when my dad was a little kid and Josh was a teenager, and they got to talking and the product was really good.

(13:48):He had used our apples to ferment it. And so my dad said, let's try this. And so in 2015, they started redhead cider house. It was named after Josh's mom who had passed away that year. So in memory of her. And she was a beautiful redhead, very high-spirited, and they started off with our original apple pie and hot chick flavors, which apple pie tastes literally like your grandma's apple pie that happens to be 7% original is your crisp, fresh cider. Hot chick is actually jalapeno based. It's not spicy, but it tastes like you're getting a fresh bite of a good pepper. And then which be gone is pumpkin seasonal feature that we bring out during Prime Harvest. Now we have seven different flavors that we carry, and at that time he was fermenting everything at Burnham Orchards. Obviously we're using our own apples. In the last four years, we've actually built a new cider house because we're seeing more of a demand.

(14:52):You can find our cider in 163 different restaurants, bars, or stores in northeast Ohio. The local ones that come to mind, the office bar carries us, Charlie's carries us in cans. We offer in six stools and in cans outside of Burnhams, and we can on site, which is to your question. So we started off in Growler and hollers, which are 64 ounces and 18 ounces. And what we heard from the industry is that we're more likely to be in someone's fridge if we offer cans. And so we really shifted to that about six years ago. And a company called Ironheart comes out here, they bring their whole mobile canner. They're here from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM and we can about four or 5,000 cans in those. And so right now I'm working on all of our harvest flavors just so that when harvest comes, I'm not like, ah, we need to can. And some really big exciting news for us this year is that we actually got picked up by Giant Eagle. You can find us in all northeast Ohio giant Eagles right now and hopefully continued in the future.

Kendra Heffelfinger (16:03):So Alexis, you guys have a lot going on here at Burnham Orchards, but ever changing, ever adapting. So what's coming down the future for the orchard?

Alexis Burnham (16:14):So I'm one of four Burnham children, and luckily my siblings trust me to kind of spearhead the direction that Burnhams is going into. More importantly, my dad has been trusting me to kind of steer where I would like to see our future, and it's really focused on creating more opportunity for those who don't have equal access to fresh fruit, who don't know that apples come off a tree. We work with so many schools and young kids, third grade and aunt who come in here and have no idea literally that apples are coming from a tree or how they're grown or how they start as a seed and what they come up or that a bee needs to pollinate in order for us to yield our fruit. And so I'm really trying to focus our future on how we can continue to educate so important. And I also don't want to see a decline in the interest of farming because without farmers, we literally wouldn't have a country here today.

(17:13):We need to eat. And so what we're really focused on is how can we continue to innovate? One of the things I'm super excited about is the pieces of ai. So in 2024, we were the first orchard in the whole entire country on the East coast to integrate AI into our packing line. We integrated this camera that allows us to see the external features of apples or any products, meaning that if there should be number twos that they're imperfect, cosmetically if they're only a certain size and a client has asked for a bigger size than what they're coming out, it'll sort via size. It'll sort via quality, which is amazing and has improved the customer experience that we've been able to offer local grocery stores. But we also just got a grant through the USDA. It was delayed for about a year and now everything is back on track.

(18:11):So I just signed the contract last week. But that grant is actually going to allow us to integrate a second piece of ai, and that piece of AI is going to allow us to look at the inside of our fruit as we're processing it, because there's a lot of things that you cannot see in the fruit, but when you bite into, it could be detrimental to you taking a pet comb and having a great experience from Burnhams like water cores, which means that the core of the apple is literally water. It's not very fruitful. It could mean internal browning, which would obviously really deteriorate the quality of the product. So that is a piece of technology that we're getting in this year. Big major stores like Walmart Meijer have predicted that by 2027, they're actually going to require these two pieces of technology, which for a farmer, that full initial investment is equivalent to purchasing a combine just to give some perspective.

(19:07):So that's not something that everyone has availability to do. And so we're really anticipating being able to be packed for local growers who have big contracts or distribution with stores. And so that's one of the ways I want to continue to grow being a northeast Ohio hub for packing, which would be fantastic because it's much easier to pack than to grow. So it'll be a really great way to grow. In the second piece, tying back to really integrating ourselves into community, we want a second grant by Erie Shores and Islands that is going to allow us to put some money into an accessible, pick your own field for blackberries that will be on a rotating trellis. And then also for raspberries and for peaches as well, because of how we're going to prune and plant, it'll keep everything in a level that is easier to pick, as well as having paved pathways so people in wheelchairs or who need rollers can participate as well.

(20:09):That grant's going to allow us to have a pick your own wildflower field over there. In addition to that, it'll be its own little store. We'll have solar panels so people can just go over their pick. And in the fall time, in the peach season, it is crazy packed in the market. So it'll allow those who are like, I'm a local. I don't need to go in and get my donut. I'm going to come back on Monday when it is not chaotic to come in, have the experience that they need and leave, which I'm very excited about. And then the third thing, which my whole entire life, I've either been a camp counselor, I'm the eldest of five siblings. I've always been someone who wants to nurture and take care for good, and spending eight years as a camp counselor through four H and Mtac.

(20:57):Outside of that, I fell in love with day camps and overnight camps. They're amazing. And so I've been talking about creating a nonprofit called a LB sanctuaries where people from any place can come in and not only can they learn about where your food comes from, how to grow your own food as there's more interest in sort of a cottage or farm lifestyle socially, but also how do we manage our emotions as people, teaching kids how to label their emotions, how to journal, how to look at physical exercise as brain health and not cosmetic, or not that you need to look a certain way, but literally as I'm going on this 30 minute walk, because I know it's going to bring my stress down, I know I'm going to feel better after. I think if we can teach kids that in a fun way, we're starting off with labeling our emotions.

(21:51):How do you feel today? Happy, sad. Alright, everyone. Now we're going to go and we're going to walk around the orchard and pick out every apple. How did that walk feel? And subconsciously priming them like, wow, when I do work out, this feels really good. When I am upset and I can say I'm upset, I feel better after. Or there's so much science behind journaling. So three habits that I want to start integrating and teaching people in a fun and camp style way, I think will actually create not only a better future for all of us, but it'll create healthier adults who know how to live in a healthier way. So we have a barn we're building. It is going to be for storage. I'm hoping I can get maybe a wedding in there, maybe if I ever get married, whatever, whatever. But I also really want to use it for acro education and this sort of mission that I've been secretly moving towards since I was 20 years old.

(22:49):And I read this book called The Body Keeps Score, and that was really, really impactful on what your body can do and how adults, because you go to the grocery store and there's someone checking you out and they're having a very bad day, and you're like, I hope your day gets better. Some people have that experience, they're like, wow, they hate me and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. But if we can teach these habits I'm speaking on, then we can all kind of look at that as, I hope you have a better day, and I know this wasn't personal and I'm going to happily move along, and I think that's just going to really change society, or that's what my prayers have been about.

Kendra Heffelfinger (23:26):Well, taking passion to mission, it definitely comes through in talking with you, Alexis. And with that, I would like to thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your time. We know you're very busy with all the endeavors that you have going on here at Burnham Orchards. But thank you to all of our listeners as well for tuning into another episode of AgCredit Said It.

Speaker 1 (23:54):Thank you for listening to AgCredit Said It. Be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast app or join us through our website at AgCredit.net so you never miss an episode.