I REALLY want to have products in the store that you like. The new hotdogs we started carrying have absolutely been a hit with everyone. So much so that we ran out almost immediately.
I’ve tried to politely nudge our processor, asking if please, PLEASE, PLEASE! can we have some hotdogs? Just a few packs, anything?! But despite my gentle prodding, we haven’t been able to get our hotdogs which have been on order for over a month. I’m not upset with them, this is just a matter of learning their cycle and planning for it. I worked in a business where we had to commit to our orders, in a VERY cyclical industry, nine months in advance. These were non-cancellable and totaled in the millions. I understand lead times.
However Saturday I received no less than 6 personal requests for hotdogs from customers. Some were phone calls from customers asking if they were back in. Some were texts. Some were people in the store. The 7th request was from Lucy. The 8th was from SWMBO herself.
Now I love my customers. I hate saying no to them. It breaks my heart. It breaks my wallet. But I’m not afraid of my customers. SWMBO? That’s a different story.
This isn’t actually my darling Mrs. But….
SWMBO REALLY likes the hot dogs. As do the kids. In fact, of our initial order, I think she used half of it. As soon as she started raving about how awesome they were, I sent another hog to the butcher. When they didn’t show for a couple of weeks and she gently prompted that she’d prefer it if I produced some hotdogs, like right now, I sent another two whole hogs to the butcher (that’s about 800 lbs of meat just for hotdogs).
Now she’s at the point of politely expressing her displeasure in my inability to manage the flow of hotdogs. That maybe I should take this farming thing, and the whole providing food for the family thing, a little more seriously.
I sent another whole hog to the processor, just for hotdogs.
Still none have arrived. She may have suggested that I should plan better if I knew what was good for me. Or maybe I should drive to the outer banks and pick up some hot dogs personally. You know, do something to solve this problem, like NOW!
“You know Honey, it would have been smart to have hot dogs for the 4th of July. Hot dogs and the 4th go together.”
That’s special marriage code words for, you’ve really screwed up, and you should expect your imminent demise at any point.
So I’ll be going on a special diet of Things-I-know-she-cannot-have-poisoned. It’s all the rage with people trying to stay alive till the hot dogs show up on Friday. You’ll probably hear about it trending on Twitter.
For those of you not at the beach, we’ve finally heard back from the processor and they think they will have hotdogs for us on Friday. “There is a strong chance it will be Friday” they said. If not, you’ll find me in my office, sleeping on the couch and eating saltines.
But rest assured, if they show up Friday morning, you all will be the second to know.
Thank you to everyone who came out Saturday and helped us with our pork sale. We had a GREAT day. The girls had their tongues hanging out by the end of the day and SWMBO went to bed before the sun went down. We will continue our sale through to this coming weekend, then evaluate what we’ll do next. Maybe continue, maybe switch it up. You never know.
We are normally closed on Monday and Tuesday anyway, but this was too good not to share. Happy Independence day everyone!
We are trying to bring our pig numbers down on the farm. This winter we were at about 130 pigs. We are currently at about 100 pigs, and we need to be down to 60-70 by fall, which is quickly approaching. It doesn’t seem like a big deal but that’s actually 30 pigs in three months. Since each pig weighs about 350 lbs, that’s 3500 pounds of pork per month, for the next three months. That’s a tall order. To get where I need to be, I can take pigs to the processor and sell them live. I can call other farmers and see if they need any pigs. I can go to restaurants and see what they will take. Or I can continue to take care of my customers first and last! Guess which one I chose.
From now till July 8th, we are having a sale of nearly all of our pork (minus bacon, because come on, it’s bacon. And a couple other things listed below) Basically everything porky will be 20% off of our normal price. This is a straight, off the top sale. All you have to do to qualify is to purchase three pork sale items. So a couple of packs of pork chops, and one breakfast sausage qualifies. Or since one pack of breakfast sausage barely lasts one meal, get two packs and then some kielbasa or bratwurst. Or come and stock up on pork across the board. Whatever works for you.
We may continue the sale till later in the season, I don’t know at this point. For now, it’s on like Donkey Kong from now till basically after 4th of July week. Help us make some room in the freezers, and help us make some room on the farm.
Sale excludes bacon, bacon pieces, jowl bacon, ribs, and all items from Weeping Radish. Sale items may (and probably will at some point) be out of stock.
Since I’m a famous internet blogger now, I think that makes me an expert so let me give you a genius level class on marketing and customer loyalty programs.
Step 1. Purchase a new point of sale (POS) system in March 2017.
Step 2. Throw out all the marketing that was already working quite nicely with the existing POS. It’s old and tired.
Step 3. Make “plans” to read all the instructions on the new POS for how to setup marketing, customer thank you emails, sales, etc.
Step 4. Realize it is June and you haven’t done anything yet. (It’s called procrastination. It’s a fancy college word. Try to keep up.)
Step 5. Turn on the new POS customer loyalty program, after fiddling with the settings for about an hour and mostly understanding it.
Step 6. This is the most important part, especially for a customer loyalty program.
Don’t tell anybody you have a loyalty program
That’s right. Once you’ve mastered procrastination, and believe me, I am world class, then the truly genius part of marketing your loyalty program is to not say a word to anyone. What if people found out about it, saw how easy it is to earn cash discounts, and then started shopping more? What if they discovered that by simply swiping their credit card, they could earn automatic cash discounts on their next purchase? It would be chaos! People coming back weekly, skipping that trip to Harris Teeter and instead buying our products.
Nope, I’ve combined my master level procrastination with my genius marketing for the ultimate in secret customer loyalty programs, which have been quietly running for a month already. That means that if you look at your receipt, you should see something that says “Congratulations, you’ve earned X points. Only Y points till you earn a $10 off discount.”
So what is a genius marketer to do next, having so successfully launched this top tier loyalty program. Why ignore your family while on vacation and finally sit down and announce the program, of course. Nothing brings a family together like dad staying behind and staring at a computer while they go have fun. You are taking notes on how to be dad of the year aren’t you? I mean you won’t be. I will be. But you can aspire to second place. It’s important to have goals.
So in summary. If you shop with us and use a credit card, you are already part of the program. If you pay cash, we need to enter your name or email address in the POS so it tracks you. That’s why we ask for your info at checkout.
For each dollar you spend, you get one point. When you have 500 points, you get $10 off at checkout. No loyalty cards (I hate them), no secret passwords, no special handshake. Just something as simple as I could possibly make it, as a thank you to our regular customers. Just look on your receipt for your points balance at each checkout. When you hit 500 points, it will tell you, and us, you are due $10 off.
Lots going on at the farm today. We have an update on the baby piggies and a new product in the store that is already a hit.
What’s better on a hot day than a cool natural sweet treat?
This week we received in a new product that SWMBO has been chasing for a while. SWMBO is a lot like our customers. She has a gaggle of kids that she wants to:
Have fun
Learn something
Eat healthy.
Not necessarily in that order and not always all three at the same time, but as often as possible. So she understands what mom’s want when they come to the farm with their kids. That’s why when she said she’d like to bring Locopops into the store I didn’t really even question it. We did take a quick run over to Pullen Park to try a few different flavors (no, my job isn’t bad) and declared they were perfect.
This week we received our first order and the picture you see above is the first kids who came into the store after their arrival. Every single kid walked out with one and the smiles are obvious. I’d call this a success.
Locopops aren’t like the sugary mess that we call popsicles here in the US. These are Mexican style, which means real fruit juice and not nearly as sweet or sticky. My comment after I tried the first one?
“Meh, it tastes like what mine do when I make them at home.”
At the time I thought that was kinda of a bad comment. But then I realized that when I make popsicles I make them out of 100% real ingredients without added sugar. Find that combination in the grocery store.
Now onto the piggies. First the cuteness.
Stripe and Rue sleeping
We have two stories on the piggies we are hand raising. One is Stripe, pictured above. Basically it’s about how it looks. Totally pampered, getting away with murder, having breakfast cooked (yes cooked) for her. Play time in the yard. Getting fatter and bigger but still a runt. It’s about as good as it gets. Big smiles on this one.
Then we have Eeyore. Eeyore is the piglet that was stepped on by mom. She wasn’t able to walk, or really get around at all. She had maybe a broken pelvis and surely one broken leg, maybe two. We’ve been nursing Eeyore for weeks, hand feeding her every few hours, medicating her, and holding her up and letting her walk with basically no weight on her legs. She had even gotten her up to the point of short hobbles on three legs on occasion.
Then things took a turn for the worse. She started throwing up and had diarrhea. This went on for several days. We were able to get fluids into her but she was slowly fading. Last night I had to pull the plug on her because at this point all she would do is suffer. Could we have gone to the vet, spent $2000, and she lived? Maybe. IV drips, constant monitoring, maybe a surgery or two?
At some point you have to realize that she was a farm animal and this is a business. She’s not our pet poodle. Frankly, it sucks but it’s part of being a farmer.
A sad day
Eeyore received a farm animals funeral in our compost pile. That means that she will return to the earth, and become part of a future project on the farm. We did the best we could by her, more than she’d ever have received at any commercial farm. We’ll have to take solace in that.
It’s been a little while since I’ve updated you on the baby piglets. Last everyone saw them we had them out for our pig petting event. We have two currently living at the house, or with Lucy depending on what is going on at the time. They will be in the house until they are back on their feet in one case figuratively, in the other literally. We have Stripe, pictured above, who is a true runt but otherwise healthy. And we have Eeyore who is the one who was stepped on by her 700 lb momma.
Stripe is just going to need food and care until she is big enough to eat solid food. Cute to do the first couple times, annoying after a week or two, but no big deal regardless. Then Stripe will be able to fend for herself with the other piglets. It’s just a time thing for her so there isn’t a lot to worry about there.
Eeyore on the other hand has problems. We think she may have broken her pelvis. I’m pretty sure she broke one front leg. Regardless if they are broken or not, she cannot really walk much at all. That means we are having to care for her more than Stripe. Fortunately piglets grow very quickly so even broken, her bones should be knitting and getting stronger fairly quickly. Hopefully we’ll have her back on her feet in a few weeks. I really don’t want to contemplate what will happen otherwise.
Piglets outside in the planter
So overall the little piglets are doing well. They’ve readily taken to eating baby food from us and they much enjoy their time outside and in the planter where they can play and root and get some sunshine.
We’ve been waiting for this to show up for more than a month now. Pastrami, deli ham, and bologna, made with our meats by The Weeping Radish are here! Fortunately it was the day that I was in charge of making lunch for the kids so lunch was a no brainer. I thawed out some pastrami and ham and made a sandwich from each of them. But not before I made a test sandwich for the chef! Pastrami, fresh tomatoes, lettuce, and Lusty Monk mustard, all wrapped in a tortilla (no bread, watching my girlish figure). Ohh, lunch is gonna be awesome from now on.
The meats come in 1/2 pound packs and they are as good as I’d hoped they’d be. We should have stock for a while, depending on how quickly they fly out of here (remember the hot dogs?) so next time you stop by, grab some sandwich meats for your next Dagwood sandwich.
Speaking of hot dogs, we do have more coming. I hope they show up Friday. I’m getting calls and emails, and texts from people asking if they are here yet. Don’t worry, I’m also getting poked by SWMBO and the kids constantly asking the same question. I sent two huge hogs to be made into hotdogs so we have plenty coming. It just takes a while to get them here. As soon as they show, I’ll do a post about it.
It’s a great day to visit the farm. We have Alarita here with samples of their products.
With the rain, lack of pettable piglets, and general normalcy it hasn’t been non-stop people. The girls, never to be bored, decided to go get a game to play. This is what they came up with.
Crystal dealing out the next hand of Apples to Apples
I know I probably played it at some point but I don’t really remember how it works. However with Alarita here, it must be a hoot because I can hear them screaming with laughter in between customers and it’s big smiles all around when I get into the store. You never really know how it will go with vendors in the store but I can say that between how good the products are and how good the people are, Alarita will always be welcome at our store.
I know this post is late in the day. While the girls were a bit bored, I certainly haven’t been. But we are open till 5pm so if you can stop by, it’s a great day to visit and stock up. We still have father’s days baskets available as well.
Me – But why can’t I just use a generic picture? Like this?
Gift basket available for sale
SWMBO – What?! It’s sitting on top of the freezer and you just snapped an iPhone pic of it. There are probably cobwebs on it. Did you even look?!
Me – Sure…maybe. It’ll be fine, what’s the big deal?
SWMBO – Get out here and hold the stupid thing. It’s father’s day and you are a father.
Me – But I don’t want to. Doesn’t being father’s day mean I can do what I want?
SWMBO – Shutup and hold the basket. No not there, come outside.
Me – Shuffle, shuffle, grumble, grumble.
SWMBO – Ok! Pretend you’re happy.
SWMBO – You look constipated! And there is a squirrel in the background! Can’t you just pretend you are happy for 2 seconds?
Me – I thought I was happy. I can’t fake this. Can’t we just use my picture?
SWMBO – Just one more.
Me – There, that’s as happy as I can be. Can we go home so I can eat this stuff rather than holding it?
SWMBO – Fine, go put the basket back. Some poor wife is going to need something for her husband on father’s day and you have paw prints all over that one.
So… we have gift baskets for sale. The way it works is you only pay normal pricing for the goodies in the basket. The basket, bow, wrap, etc is free (no really, it’s not a scam) so in reality you’re getting a cool present for dad for the cost of the stuff he’s gonna eat anyway. Plus if he’s a cool dad he’ll use the stuff in the basket to make your dinner because that’s what dad’s do so it’s a win-win.
You can wander around the store and pick whatever you want for the basket so you can really get dad what he likes. We have different sizes and SWMBO makes them for you to order. Swing by the store tomorrow 2-6 and pick one up for dad, or come on Saturday and you can sample Alarita products with their folks on site to answer questions and get a goodie basket.
This is a long one. I’m trying to get all the details written down while it’s still fresh. I’m also, as I normally do, trying not to pull punches. Some of these subjects are touchy and I really am not comfortable with all this but we’ve strived to be transparent since we started this blog and people generally like to hear the unvarnished truth. We’ll see on this one.
This past Saturday we had our free pig event. In comparison to our Open Barn Day, we strived to make this event as small as possible. This entire event started because of a comment that Gran-SWMBO made after barn day that she really loved seeing the kids faces light up when they interacted with the piglet she was holding. The thought was that we could have some kids out to play with the piglet and have Gran-SWMBO happy, the kids happy, and the piglets happy.
SWMBO posted one event on Facebook. No boosting the post. No advertising, no flyers around town. I made one post on our website, purposefully at the last minute. That’s it. We did this to keep the event as small as possible because we were dealing with baby piglets and they can only be handled so much.
In response to our barely whispering about the event, we had a major group in NC contact us and inquire about posting our event on their site. We said no. It’s a peculiar thing to tell someone no, you don’t want free advertising. But our intention was to only have a small event where people could pet and maybe hold a baby piglet. The limitation for us was the piglets themselves. They can only take so much.
For open barn day, we had only one little piglet. For this event, since the piglets were the focus, we felt good that we had two piglets. Once the day started, I immediately went and grabbed another piglet from a momma (no small feat) so that we ended up with three piglets. About an hour into the event, I tried to go back and get a fourth piglet. The 700 lb now severally pissed off momma sow was having none of it and I left empty handed. Three piglets were all we had to work with. Two of them were runts who we were taking care of. One was literally pulled off of his mom’s teat and shoved into service.
For this event, we made a point to count cars so we’d know how many people we had come through. At the end of the event, we had 150 cars. If you add in the 10-15 cars that came after the event then we were around 165 cars. If you figure 4 people average per car that is 660 people on the farm for our event.
The line of folks waiting to see the piglet waiting in the garden
Most of those people showed up before lunch so we had quite the line of people trying to get into see the piglet.
At barn day, we were able to hold the piglet outside as it was a relatively cool day. Quickly we realized that it was a bit warmer than we expected and the piglets were becoming overheated. We had to call an audible and the decision was made to move the event inside into our stock room which is air-conditioned. Once again we were making this up as we went, we’d not planned on having to move inside for A/C. Rain yes, A/C, no. There aren’t that many places where we have both enough room and A/C. In fact there was only one, our stock room.
The line to get inside to see the piglet. Everyone was very accommodating.
The downside for us was the stockroom was a disaster of empty boxes and whatnot from all the stock we’d just put into the store so some emergency cleaning was needed. But in about 15 minutes we had everything moved and we were back in business. It was in the nick of time too because one of the piglets was just laying there he was so hot. We were minutes away from just shutting down to protect the piglets health. Luckily the combination of water, milk, and A/C revived the piglets and things moved forward. The A/C had only been installed a few weeks, in fact I haven’t even paid the bill on it yet so this was a big win for installing such a nice A/C system for our store.
Another plus of this change is that everyone was able to stand in the shade rather than in the sun like they’d done in the garden. Just a few days prior the forecast had been for cooler weather and partly sunny so the warmer weather and clear blue skies had been a bit of a surprise.
Lynn and her daughters at our event.
One special treat we had was that Lee’s produce showed up to display and sell their fresh produce. I know I scarfed up some of the blackberries as I happened by. They were delicious! I saw a good number of customers leave with produce so I think they were happy to have the choice. We don’t charge Lee’s for coming and we don’t make anything off their sales so it really is just a bonus for our customers. Once again Lee’s said they were happy with their results from our day so hopefully we can continue to offer their produce for our events going forward.
So what went right on our day?
We made a lot of people really happy. I never knew there were so many people so enamored with pigs. Everyone was able to pet the piglets and many of them were able to hold them. Many people said this was their lifelong dream, to hold a piglet. Who knew?
Despite trying to downplay our event, we still had a tremendous response. There is definitely an opportunity to bring new customers into the farm by having family friendly events. Had we actually advertised the event, it could have rivaled Barn Day.
We are getting good at parking and directing traffic. We have our radios pretty much sorted out. We know how many people it takes to park and direct traffic. We have a system for handling the one way road and it works well. And we’ve proven, again, that we can get hundreds if not thousands of people on and off of the farm with no crashes and no anger. That’s no small feat for a farm with a one way road.
Towards the end of the event, a few families had a special treat
I was not giving tours on this event. By combining tour groups, Spork was able to handle all the tours by himself, freeing me to be anywhere I needed to be which was everywhere. That made a tremendous difference. Combined tour groups is working well and we are adopting it as standard practice going forward. We had several no shows for booked tours (I still need to address that) but a few people who were here for tours took impromptu tours so it all worked out.
We saw 165 cars come into the farm for our event. The event was free so obviously we’d hope people would at least look in the store and maybe try something, anything. Heaven knows we have tons of really good stuff in the store. For the day, including our regulars who came by, we did 107 transactions. Lee’s did about 30 transactions for a grand total of 137 transactions. If we deduct our regulars from the totals, that would leave us about 107 transactions, total, from the event. That means roughly 2/3 of the people who attended bought something. Had we been giving out samples, I’m sure we’d have sold some more. I think a 2/3 hit rate is pretty good. I know some people will just come and leave without spending any money.
For total top line revenue, we did about 1/2 of what we did on barn day. Considering barn day was all day and this event was 4 hours, barn day had multiple vendors giving samples and this day had none, barn day had advertising and this day had none, that’s actually pretty stellar. If we can run an event like this smoothly, I think this is a win for us.
Now the bad
SWMBO made a special effort to have more signage for the event. We knew this was an issue after barn day so we’d been working on it. However she can only print 8.5×11 signage. We used our two dry erase boards for big signs, but they kept blowing over and people still didn’t see them even if they were up. We need some professionally made signs that are easy to mount so they are plainly visible. I know who will make them and how to get them, I just need to figure out what they should say (it changes from event to event) and get them made before our next event in the fall.
At barn day, we had a crowd control issue because we’d planned on people staying in the yard and in front of the store. We had a physical barrier to delineate the customer areas from the “behind the scenes” areas. But 2000+ people later, overflowing parking blew that plan and people wandered into where the cows were and the food was. They fed the entire days food in just a few minutes. That caused some ruckus later in the day when the cows refused to eat and people were disappointed.
This time we had the gates closed and signs saying nobody past this point. However when the piglets got too hot, we had to open the gate for people to get into the store-room and sure enough, people wandered over and started handing out the food as fast as they could despite the sign saying that feeding the cows was part of the paid tour. Fortunately I saw it this time and broke it up so it wasn’t an issue but I learned later that other employees has seen it and “didn’t have the heart to tell them no.” Trying to be nice can cause problems as it did on barn day. Sometimes you have to be mean to be nice.
Despite multiple inquiries about taking a tour, hardly anybody actually signed up for a paid tour . Frankly, people were quite interested until they found out there was a charge, then the interest immediately died. I don’t know if it’s because they were already seeing enough of the farm for free or they were simply unwilling to spend money. Since we had staff dedicated to tours all day, this was disappointing.
A more sedate pace, after lunch
Of the 660 people we saw throughout the day, I’d say better than half were there from 9:45 – noon. We really had a big surge at that time, and then it tapered down to a good flow the rest of the day. The result of all the people being here at once is it was crazy busy for a few hours and then calm in the afternoon. That’s still a few hundred people after lunch but comparatively it was smooth sailing. We need to control the flow of events going forward, for the customers benefit as well as our own. A steady flow is better than a big surge for everyone involved.
This was the big one of the day. Some people were quite frankly nasty. Several times we had to switch from holding the piglet to only petting the piglet. We explained that the piglets were only 1-2 weeks old and that after non-stop handling for the past several hours, plus getting too hot in the sun, they needed a bit of a break. We never stopped people from seeing and petting the animals, just the constant handling of switching laps so they could rest for a few minutes. Usually after 15 minutes we’d be back to holding again.
I understand being disappointed. It’s unfortunate and we tried our best to avoid it, but we were dealing with live animals and more people than we intended. It had been non-stop since before we opened (people showed at 9:45), and the babies needed a break. Most folks were good about it, but unfortunately some were downright nasty. We tried to accommodate them all and make it up to them. Some by offering return one-on-one trips, some by comping a full tour at another date. We do try to please everyone and make them happy. We don’t have such high reviews by accident.
However what I wanted to do was offer them their money back for the free event. We charged you nothing, opened our home to the public, and did our best to accommodate everyone and you are nasty you only got to pet the pig instead of hold it too? I wanted to ask if they acted this way if their friend had twins and they stopped by to see the babies. Did they get mad if the babies were napping when they showed and demanded the mom go wake them up? We ended up having to closely monitor the piglets after the event to ensure the stress had not damaged them. They were obviously overtired and overworked. Again, MOST people were understanding but as with anything, a few bad apples ruin the bunch. I heard the comment from our folks multiple times, “Now I know why other farms don’t do events like this.”
When we moved the piglets to the stock room to get into the A/C, we opened the “no customers beyond this point” door so that folks could flow right out of the stock room and into the store. This kept the flow going one direction and made foot traffic work much better than trying to reverse and walk against traffic. If you wanted to exit the store immediately, you were free to do so. Or you could look around. Whatever. This was all an audible we called because of weather not a plan to trick people into the store. We heard several comments about “being forced to go into the store.” This comment is just a combination of the ugliness and the cheapness we observed with a few folks. We charged nothing for the event and nothing for parking, we staffed up with five extra employees for the day, and we had the entire family working non-stop all day, plus Lucy on her day off. This comment was disappointing to say the least.
We need staff here a bit earlier. On barn day, due to bad communication, they showed up at the event start time. This time they showed up 30 minutes before start. But because people show 15 minutes early for the event, that’s really only 15 minutes before start. I think next time we need staff here 45 minutes before start time.
We’ve always been pretty easy going about tours. We don’t have a check in process. We don’t accept payment up front. We don’t take people coupons for tours if they have them till after. Frankly I’ve always tried to be easy going and welcoming rather than strict. However we gave multiple tours on Saturday and Spork and I told the customers to make sure they told the girls to charge for a tour when they went in the store. At the end of the day we’d given more tours by far than we were paid for. People obviously didn’t tell the girls to charge them. Sadly the honor system doesn’t work. We need to implement a pay first tour system with a check in process.
So should we have an event like this in the future (believe me there is some doubt), what do we need to do differently?
I have to get better signage. We’ve gotten used to handling small groups of people personally. Large groups need signage to direct them. We need a sign that lets you know the store is even there. Plus directional signs, sign that make customer areas and private areas, stuff like that.
This is a big one. We need to charge for parking. We have to staff up with extra help for events like this. By charging for parking we can offset these extra expenses and make it easier to justify doing an event like this. I know we’ll lose some customers because there is paid parking. I will also have to staff an extra person taking money and making change. All I can do is try it one time and see how it goes. I know when I go an event I have to pay for parking so I think people will be ok with it, but I hate doing it.
Staff needs to be here 45 minutes early. That means more pay and more cost. But being prepared before the start makes everything go much more smoothly. It was 10 times better this time. Next time it needs to be 100 times better.
I need to order a lapel mike and a few more radios. I keep borrowing Dustin’s. I need my own complete gear set, not partly mine and partly his for events.
We need to use our appointment system to control the flow. Even for a large event, we can still utilize the appointment system. If we can handle 100 people at a time, then we can have 100 appointments concurrently. That would have flattened out the curve for the pig holding, and given us a better idea of who was coming when. I think I can also make paying for parking pay up front to deal with the no shows so that would be a bonus.
And lastly, we need to make sure we are clear with expectations on our advertisements. When SWMBO put out the original event, she put pet and hold a baby piglet. We thought we’d get 75-100 people for this event. When interest took off, she regretted her choice of wording and sure enough, some people clung to “holding” the baby piglet seemingly caring more about what they wanted than the health of the piglet. Some, patiently waited and were able to hold the piglet a little later. In everything I put out after, I made sure to be careful with the wording to make sure that I put petting the piglet but who knows if people actually went to our website vs. reading on Facebook. On barn day, we had a lady get mad that she couldn’t feed the cows 15 minutes before cut off time. They’d been fed so much by then (remember people feeding when they weren’t supposed to) that they refused to eat. We have to be careful what we promise, especially in our first post.
She may have suggested that I should plan better if I knew what was good for me. Or maybe I should drive to the outer banks and pick up some hot dogs personally. You know, do something to solve this problem, like NOW!
We are normally closed on Monday and Tuesday anyway, but this was too good not to share. Happy Independence day everyone!
