Need some advice considering setting up organic animal produce business

[Hidden49]

Inspired by Frank Tufanos organic meat business I am curious about setting up my own one in the UK but I am clueless about where I can find farmers who will sell me wholesale high quality grass fed meat if anyone had any suggestions? I have had a look online but most of these organic farms already sell their own organic meat on their own websites. So I'm also wondering if it's even possible or profitable without having my own farm. Frank Tufano has clearly found a way to do it without his own farm but he also is working with some Amish farmers which we don't have in the UK. If anyone has any insights about where or how I could source the suppliers for the organic meat and animal produce from I would be grateful.

 

[Sphagnum]

I don't have a direct answer for you, but I'd still like to mention a few thoughts that came to mind to help you make a decision.

First, I think it would be wise to consider differentiation from your competitors, along with some other specific aspects of your business model

•What will your 'value proposition' be? This means, how are your products going to be different than what's already offered by the other organic meat being sold on the same market you plan to capitalize on?
•How will you market your products? Who are you specifically targeting, and how will you reach this audience? Frank (from what I know) grew his online presence as sort of a 'health guru' first, and then used that built in audience and the trust he fostered to offer a way for people to find the type of food he suggested they eat.
•How do you plan on making your profits? Will you be selling the meat for a higher mark up price because you've marketed it as superior in quality to your competitors enough that people will justify the extra spend? Will you sell bulk at a lower price than competitors so that you make your money on lower margins but higher volume? Will there be a subscription that pads the profits (this is the direction most business models are leaning toward now) that has enough incentives to entice customers to continue shopping with you long term?
•Do you have cost saving measures in mind as you scale up?

Let's say that you had your own farm; would you simply do exactly what the other farms are doing and hope that new customers find you first? That isn't much of a business model. You could, like you suggested, find a farm that has no online presence and sell their stuff at your online store. Again, though, is that all your trying to do is to copy the competitors and hope for some a small piece of the market share to fall your way?
I say all of that to make the point that you could very well buy your meat at wholesale from the organic farms already doing online business, so long as you differentiate yourself enough. Customers are not going to know you bought it from a place that already has an online store. The farm likely won't care that you're reselling their meat online either, unless you really take away more money from customers than they are making off of you directly. To avoid that, you will be needing to 1) reach new customers that the farm wasn't going to have anyway, or 2)take their customers that weren't going to stick with them anyway because it isn't quite what the customer was looking for. An example of that #2 point would be if the farm is selling bulk raw steaks but the customers is wanting pre-seasoned or pre-cooked/heat-and-serve meat. They value organic meat so they're buying what's available, but would leave the farm store if someone offered what they really wanted.

Now if these farms aren't going to sell to you anyway, and you need another farm no matter what, then I don't have any way to help you find one (other than maybe looking up farmer coalitions in small towns and making some calls/emails,) but you're going to have to have a strong differentiation no matter what, so keep that in mind.

I hope this helped.

 

[Hidden49]

I don't have a direct answer for you, but I'd still like to mention a few thoughts that came to mind to help you make a decision.

First, I think it would be wise to consider differentiation from your competitors, along with some other specific aspects of your business model

•What will your 'value proposition' be? This means, how are your products going to be different than what's already offered by the other organic meat being sold on the same market you plan to capitalize on?
•How will you market your products? Who are you specifically targeting, and how will you reach this audience? Frank (from what I know) grew his online presence as sort of a 'health guru' first, and then used that built in audience and the trust he fostered to offer a way for people to find the type of food he suggested they eat.
•How do you plan on making your profits? Will you be selling the meat for a higher mark up price because you've marketed it as superior in quality to your competitors enough that people will justify the extra spend? Will you sell bulk at a lower price than competitors so that you make your money on lower margins but higher volume? Will there be a subscription that pads the profits (this is the direction most business models are leaning toward now) that has enough incentives to entice customers to continue shopping with you long term?
•Do you have cost saving measures in mind as you scale up?

Let's say that you had your own farm; would you simply do exactly what the other farms are doing and hope that new customers find you first? That isn't much of a business model. You could, like you suggested, find a farm that has no online presence and sell their stuff at your online store. Again, though, is that all your trying to do is to copy the competitors and hope for some a small piece of the market share to fall your way?
I say all of that to make the point that you could very well buy your meat at wholesale from the organic farms already doing online business, so long as you differentiate yourself enough. Customers are not going to know you bought it from a place that already has an online store. The farm likely won't care that you're reselling their meat online either, unless you really take away more money from customers than they are making off of you directly. To avoid that, you will be needing to 1) reach new customers that the farm wasn't going to have anyway, or 2)take their customers that weren't going to stick with them anyway because it isn't quite what the customer was looking for. An example of that #2 point would be if the farm is selling bulk raw steaks but the customers is wanting pre-seasoned or pre-cooked/heat-and-serve meat. They value organic meat so they're buying what's available, but would leave the farm store if someone offered what they really wanted.

Now if these farms aren't going to sell to you anyway, and you need another farm no matter what, then I don't have any way to help you find one (other than maybe looking up farmer coalitions in small towns and making some calls/emails,) but you're going to have to have a strong differentiation no matter what, so keep that in mind.

I hope this helped.

Thanks for this reply it's helpful. I would say my value proposition will be the branding and marketing, I want to call my brand Grass fed & Co and heavily empathise that to the consumer that it is a grass fed product in the labelling. I also want to source meat which is 100% grass fed so that would be another value proposition, in the groceries stores here in the UK they sell grass fed meat but it's not 100% grass fed meat in most places. I could then possibly try and get organic produce stores and supermarkets to sell my product which might be a better idea than setting up my own website and store.

Currently the anti seed oil movement and grass fed produce crowd are becoming very popular on social media. However no one is really taking advantage of this trend here in the UK compared to how American companies are eg: there is this Seed oil scout app which shows all the seed oil free restaurants, and you will see a lot of restaurants in America have stopped using seed oils on this app where as in London UK there is just one or two restaurants that don't use seed oils. With grass fed products in the stores in the UK there isn't really any emphasis that is grass fed in the branding and I think I could make it a lot more clearer and obvious to the consumer.

I would market my products through social media such as tikotok, fb ads, google ads, send freebies to instagram health influencers for promotion. Again the competition for this market in the UK isn't really doing this much especially with things like tiktok (they are not using that for marketing) so I think I could take advantage of that.

Profits I am not sure what strategy I would go for yet, but your post has highlighted a lot things to me that I haven't considered yet. I was speaking to my dad about the business idea today and he was mentioning I would need to get a food license if I wanted to sell animal produce on my own webstore. The packaging and delivery service would also have to be carefully considered so that the product stays cold. I found out my cousins husband is a beef farmer, so I am going to have a chat with him about the idea, which would be a good place to start. They also suggested me a farming festival that focuses on organic food and apparently is a good place to meet suppliers, that is in April though. My dad was suggesting it would be a better idea for me to act as a middle man and get the farmer to ship rather than have my own warehouse and freezer where I ship the meat but not sure if he's right.

The other idea I have is to set up a webstore that sells supplements from popular brands, this idea would definitely be less risky than the meat business idea and easier to execute.

 

[ThinPicking]

The other idea I have is to set up a webstore that sells supplements from popular brands, this idea would definitely be less risky than the meat business idea and easier to execute.

It probably wouldn't be but you'd have a lot more control over the outcome. We're in dire need of disruptive entrants in the area and if you had any success you'd be making some enemies. Just make them famous.

British Supplements - Premium Clean High Strength Supplements UK Made - scroll down.

 

[Logan-]

Thanks for this reply it's helpful. I would say my value proposition will be the branding and marketing, I want to call my brand Grass fed & Co and heavily empathise that to the consumer that it is a grass fed product in the labelling. I also want to source meat which is 100% grass fed so that would be another value proposition, in the groceries stores here in the UK they sell grass fed meat but it's not 100% grass fed meat in most places. I could then possibly try and get organic produce stores and supermarkets to sell my product which might be a better idea than setting up my own website and store.

Currently the anti seed oil movement and grass fed produce crowd are becoming very popular on social media. However no one is really taking advantage of this trend here in the UK compared to how American companies are eg: there is this Seed oil scout app which shows all the seed oil free restaurants, and you will see a lot of restaurants in America have stopped using seed oils on this app where as in London UK there is just one or two restaurants that don't use seed oils. With grass fed products in the stores in the UK there isn't really any emphasis that is grass fed in the branding and I think I could make it a lot more clearer and obvious to the consumer.

I would market my products through social media such as tikotok, fb ads, google ads, send freebies to instagram health influencers for promotion. Again the competition for this market in the UK isn't really doing this much especially with things like tiktok (they are not using that for marketing) so I think I could take advantage of that.

Profits I am not sure what strategy I would go for yet, but your post has highlighted a lot things to me that I haven't considered yet. I was speaking to my dad about the business idea today and he was mentioning I would need to get a food license if I wanted to sell animal produce on my own webstore. The packaging and delivery service would also have to be carefully considered so that the product stays cold. I found out my cousins husband is a beef farmer, so I am going to have a chat with him about the idea, which would be a good place to start. They also suggested me a farming festival that focuses on organic food and apparently is a good place to meet suppliers, that is in April though. My dad was suggesting it would be a better idea for me to act as a middle man and get the farmer to ship rather than have my own warehouse and freezer where I ship the meat but not sure if he's right.

Suppose it worked, and you are making real good money, and your products are everywhere. People will sooner or later pick up on the trend and do as you do, find the same limited sources that you buy the grass fed meat, offer them a better price, and then you are out of business, or have a very hard time finding good sources for profitable prices; because you profit not when you are selling, but buying.

If you are not ready to produce your own grass fed meat, have land and trustworthy employees that understand this work, then I don’t think this model will be a robust one. Producing your own grass fed meat on your own land gives you great protection against the ups and downs of the sector and the economy: and you can also use that for advertisement. That has much more chance to be a long term business.

 

[Logan-]

I would rather produce organic fruits and vegetables than meat. Meat is risky business and to do it right with cold chain storage and transportation you need capital.
Instead, I would research buying good land from Portuguese, Spain, Italy; and produce organic wine for example. You still need knowledge and men, but if it is much easier on your pocket, it’s worth a try. You could sell those organic certified wines to any country you want. You would need to do lots of market research before though, talk to people in business if you can find them, join online groups of this sort, go to one of these countries if necessary and talk to the producers etc.