“Shock to the supply chain”
Farm-to-table operations are now taking an online farm-to-public approach
Before the coronavirus outbreak and the restrictions to slow its spread took hold, Clint and Marykay Buckner were supplying about 50 restaurants with meat from their grass-fed, pasture-raised cattle, lambs and hogs.
Since the closure of most dine-in restaurants, those customers have dropped to just a handful, leading to a big slowdown for the Buckners’ farm in northern Boulder County. They’re not sure if they’ll ever see the money they’re due from some of their customers.
“We feel terrible for the people in the restaurant business. They’ve taken a 100 percent hit,” Clint Buckner said.
Although the Buckner Family Farm has been forced to rethink the way it does business, one thing is clear as fears of breakdowns in the food chain spur runs on grocery stores, said Buckner: “Our product is still in demand.”
Big demand, say a Denver butcher shop and a food delivery service. They and Colorado ranchers and producers believe the meat cases and shelves laid bare as supermarkets hurry to keep up might encourage more people to buy locally. Farmers, ranchers and others are collaborating to connect customers with producers.
“It’s a huge shock to the supply chain.
Most people don’t understand when demand triples overnight, this is what happens,” said Craig Taber, the founder and owner of Locavore Delivery.
Taber, who grew up working in his family’s restaurants, started Locavore in 2013 after helping start a technology company that made high-end electric bicycles. Taber, who had his own restaurant for a while, wanted to return to the food business. He wanted to help provide an outlet for small farmers and ranchers and provide consumers access to high-quality, locally produced food.
Since the spread of COVID-19, the highly infectious disease caused by the new coronavirus, Locavore Delivery’s
online orders for its boxes of meat are up. Taber said sales have nearly tripled in two weeks.
“I’m a systems guy. We have a really robust platform system in terms of being able to handle the orders,” Taber said.
He has also filled in as a delivery guy with the rise in orders. The company drops off boxes to customers in the Denver area, the foothills and once a month in Estes Park.
Taber is checking on the supply chains with his 10 or so producers. “We’re good now.”
Locavore is reaching out to producers who had been supplying restaurants. One of those is Buckner Family Farm.
“We’ve seen a lot of first-time customers. My hope is that once a lot of them taste really legitimate pasture-raised beef for the first time, they choose to stick around,” Taber said. “I hope they really see the value in a robust local food system.”
Natalie Allio, a co-owner of Badger Creek Ranch 50 miles west of Cañon City, doesn’t know if convenience will trump interest in buying locally produced food once the coronavirus scare fades and store shelves are full again on a regular basis.
“I do think this has raised our awareness of where our food comes from,” Allio said.
Allio said she was limited to just one package of turkey recently at a City Market grocery store in Cañon City. A spokeswoman for City Market, which along with King Soopers is owned by Kroger, said in an email that the number of certain meat products per customer is limited because of high demand.
“Our warehouse, transportation and store teams continue to work hard to get the food, medicine and cleaning supplies our customers need to our stores and on our shelves as quickly as possible,” spokeswoman Jessica Trowbridge said.
Meanwhile, Allio said Badger Creek’s calls have increased. The ranch is working with others to make sure orders are covered. Many customers typically want just parts of an animal because they don’t have enough freezer space.
“But I was actually surprised. We had a couple of orders for whole cows within the past week,” Allio said.
Denver-area appliance stores have seen a big jump in the sales of freezers since the coronavirus pandemic set off a scurry to stock up on food.
“Producers are coming together to see if we can keep up with demand,” Allio said.
The Colorado Department of Agriculture is working on connecting consumers with producers, said Wendy White, the department’s marketing specialist. She said the agency was planning to add information on the Colorado Proud website to let the public know what kind of produce farmers and ranchers have and how they can buy it.
The department is also starting to check with farmers’ markets to see when they plan to open. Like other agriculture, farmers’ markets and roadside stands are considered essential operations during the pandemic.
In southwest Colorado, Julie James Ott and family members are driving around to pick up products that local farmers and ranchers once sold to restaurants. Ott is adding their green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and other foods to the fresh items for sale at the market on the James Ranch, 10 miles north of Durango.
Ott and her siblings raise cattle and hogs and produce cheese, eggs, milk, vegetables and trees on the farm their parents started in 1961. The animals are fed grass and raised in pastures. The farm doesn’t use chemical fertilizers, pesticides or antibiotics.
Besides the market, the James Ranch also has a restaurant onsite. Under the statewide coronavirus restrictions, the grill is open only for takeout right now.
Despite the restrictions, business is brisk. Ott said about a week ago, the family had a record day in the market.
“We limited four shoppers at a time. There was a line of people waiting to get in,” Ott said. “We limited our fresh eggs to two dozen a shopper.”
While Ott said it’s good to see more people buying from local producers, she doesn’t like the circumstances. However, she hopes that people keep supporting local farmers and ranchers after the crisis passes and after they’ve “seen and experienced and tasted the difference.”
That’s certainly Amanda Demo’s hope. She is the general manager and part owner of Western Daughters Butcher Shoppe in Denver’s Lower Highlands neighborhood. The shop, which buys from small farms and ranches, is doing four times its normal business, Demo said.
Online orders are up and walkin orders have about tripled, Demo said.
“People come off the street and say there was no ground beef in King Soopers. I’ve got thousands of pounds of it,” Demo said.
Western Daughters has hired extra help: laid-off restaurant workers. The shop sells boxes of meat as well as shares of an animal. People can buy a quarter, an eighth or other section of a cow, and the orders are filled when the whole animal is sold.
“About half our clientele right now is new. I think it’s a huge wake-up call,” Demo said. “What’s feeding the people right now is your small, local farmers and ranchers.”
A bison rancher who found himself with $50,000 worth of meat sitting in freezers and no restaurants to sell it to wrote about his plight on his Facebook page recently. The post was shared hundreds and then thousands of times, and Rex Moore, owner of Rock River Ranches, became almost as popular as a grocery store worker filling shelves with toilet paper.
“I was getting five to 10 orders a minute,” Moore said in March. “I have 10,000 unread emails, all requesting order forms.”
Moore was able to hire back a couple of employees. He urged people to keep patronizing local restaurants that are offering takeout service.
The effects of the coronavirus crisis have led Dave Demerling and Roberto Meza to find new ways to market the produce they grow in a greenhouse in Bennett. Their business, Emerald Gardens Microgreens, produces several varieties of microgreens, including radishes, peas and arugula.
Microgreens are tiny, edible plants harvested 10 to 14 days after germination and, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture research, contain several times the level of vitamins and carotenoids, which act as antioxidants, of the fully grown versions.
Demerling and Meza had increased their sales to Lucky’s Market. Then the chain filed for bankruptcy in January and closed most of its stores.
Then the second wave hit, Meza said. Emerald Gardens’ restaurant customers cut back or shut down because of the coronavirus. The two still sell to original Lucky’s Markets that are still open in Boulder and Fort Collins. They’re also building up their online and direct sales.
Meza said Emerald Gardens is getting support from others in the agriculture community as farmers and ranchers look for new ways to connect to customers.
“It’s very ironic that with social distancing and the crisis, we’ve come together,” Meza said.