103 – Building an Award Winning Caramel Brand with Calley Hastings of Fat Toad Farm

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Hi, there it's Sue and welcome to the gift biz on

wrapped podcast,

whether you own a brick and mortar shop sell our mind,

or are just getting started,

you'll discover new insight to gain traction and to grow your

business. And today I have joining us Kelly Hastings of fat

toad farm.

Kelly is the owner of fat toad farm,

which is located in Brookfield.

Vermont. That to a farm is a family run business that

produces a traditional caramel sauce.

They're award-winning sauces are based on the Mexicans infection and are

meticulously and stirred velvety perfection.

Telly has spent the last nine years mastering the art of

goat's milk,

caramel making,

focusing on traditional cooking methods and using a small number of

simple all natural ingredients.

The result of this process is a rich and creamy,

not too sweet Carmel that delivers an irresistibly complex.

Welcome to the show.

Kelly, thanks for having me as we get started our listeners.

And I like to get to know you in a little

bit of a different way,

and that is by having you describe your ideal motivational candle.

So if you were to portray a candle that speaks you,

what color would it be and what would be the quote

on your candle?

So I just had to think about what I actually have

for candles in my house and the candles.

I are these beautiful bees wax candles that my neighbor has

made. Actually they have bees and beehives all around where I

grew up,

which is where the farm is and where our business is

out of.

And they make just beautiful products.

They have honey,

they had beeswax candles,

they make soaps.

So those are the candles I have around my house.

And the color is just that beautiful kind of deep yellow

honey Brown color.

And the quote is actually the quote I had in my

yearbook in high school,

which was nothing is impossible in this life,

except for skiing through a revolving door.

I liked that,

that was just cracked me up when I was that age,

because it was the sense of going out and doing things

and trying whatever,

but also kind of a sense of humor around it of,

well, you can do anything,

but it's really hard to ski through a revolving door.

So that's always kind of been in the back of my

mind That,

and you know,

that speaks to the idea of continuing to move forward and

not just go in circles.

Just get going,

move forward.

Yeah. Yep.

All right.

So fat toad farm,

super interesting name.

I want you to start and talk a little bit about

the farm and then let's progress into the caramel sauces.

So tell us about fat toad farm.

Sure. So we started almost,

I think,

10 years ago now,

and it was kind of a convergence of family members.

It was my sister and my parents and I,

and we just all kind of came to the same place

at the same time with the same goals,

which was,

I was a year out of college.

I had been studying agriculture and environmental studies at the university

of Vermont.

My sister had been living off and on in Mexico for

many years and had a small ecotourism business there.

And my parents were looking for a new profession,

interested in homesteading and farming,

and we all decided to do it together in the location

where I grew up,

which is in Brookfield,

Vermont Around a dinner table or at a holiday celebration.

And all of a sudden,

you just decided you were going to do this.

Oh, something like that.

I think it was more my sister and I decided to

move back to Brookfield.

At that time,

we were both really interested in homesteading and kind of living

off the grid,

sustainable principles.

And my parents products of the sixties and seventies timeframe were

very drawn to that as well.

And I think we're pretty interested that this new generation was

getting involved in this as well.

And so we just decided to give it a shot.

We didn't necessarily decide we were going to have a business.

We just wanted to start growing our own food.

So it really started super small,

like literally one little seed as everything starts in the garden,

planting and growing our own food,

which is something,

you know,

most people do around here to a certain extent anyway,

just homesteading because people have the land and like growing their

own food.

So we had grown up with gardens,

but we had never done it with the kind of deliberate

intention that we had at this point.

We started off by actually delivering veggies to people's doorsteps.

It was kind of like a little mini CSA,

but it was a little bit before CSS had become so

popular. I think we did that for about a summer.

And that was actually when we came up with the name

fat toad farm,

because there were just toads everywhere around here.

You know,

they're a really good sign in terms of biological diversity and

the health of the ecosystem.

And that was so much of what we were about that

we just felt like they were a great omen.

So we had jolly toad farm,

in fact,

toad farm and silly toad farm.

And we had,

I remember sitting at the table and doing all these sketches

of these toads and we finally landed on fat toad farm

and our neighbor who's a cartoonist for the new Yorker actually

offered to do the drawing for us.

So now we have this great iconic toad free kind of

fuzzy toad that he drew for us,

but he actually got sadder over time.

He was skinnier back when he started and he got Sadder

as the business developed.

Right. Exactly.

The more caramel he ate,

the fatter he got,

There you go.

Well, I want to back up for a second.

I'm not sure all of our listeners understand what a CSA

is. So can you review that real quick?

Sure. A CSA is community supported agriculture.

It's become very common where a customer pre purchases food from

a farm and then receives that food throughout the season,

usually on a weekly basis.

So what we were doing is we had neighbors who are

ordering food for the week and we would put together a

box of vegetables and then we would drop it off at

their house for them to consume for the week.

So You were kind of like a personalized farmer's Market.

Yeah, exactly.

That's what you were doing.

And then you also came up around this awesome name,

fat toad farm.

And then how did that progress to caramel?

I see no connection between the two Then either.

I will tell you it was never the life plan to

become a caramel maker.

I, you know,

I was a really big chocolate person,

so caramel was a stretch for me,

but now I'm a convert really well together.

You know,

that's my favorite.

We have a topic caramel,

which is my favorite flavor,

but yeah,

so the way it kind of moved into the caramel is

that we started with the vegetable growing and we also started

getting animals.

We started raising sheep and we had a Lama as a

garden animal named Dalai Lama.

We had meat,

birds, we had laying hands.

We just loved it.

We loved growing our own food.

We love being out and working on the land.

And my stepdad had historically raised sheep promotes of his life.

So he was really excited about getting animals and he was

interested in the dairy part.

He wanted goats to milk.

Cows are great,

obviously for milk,

but they're much bigger animals.

They require a lot more infrastructure.

So we weren't ready to take that leap because we had

to like build from scratch here.

We are old farmhouse,

but we didn't have like a bunch of barns in place.

So, So you and your sister both came back to the

area where your parents already were.

Did you already have this land and you developed it or

did you buy it because now you had this vision of

the homesteading.

So we only owned,

or I should say my parents only own five acres of

land around the farmhouse.

So, and they still do what we actually were able to

do was lease land or use many pieces of land from

our neighbors.

So they were very generous and very supportive of what we

were doing.

So everything that we were was basically our five acres plus

another 20 acres of neighboring land.

I live right on the farm then too.

Or you go to the farm each day,

I go to the farm each day to work.

I live about three miles up the road.

Yeah. It's a rough commute.

You know,

It's a tough life.

My favorite parts I live right in this area.

I love this area.

I grew up here,

but I never imagined that I'd be able to actually make

a living here and be able to be in this community.

Long-term but I have been able to,

which for me is,

it's hard to do in rural Vermont.

There's not a lot of job opportunities.

It's hard for young people to live here.

So I feel very,

very grateful that I've been able to do that.

So Steve,

my stepdad was interested in the goats and wanting to have

some milking animals.

So we went with goats instead of cows.

And we just started with four goats compass,

North star,

where two of them,

they were sweet,

sweet little animals.

And we were hand milking.

We would share that,

but he was the main milker morning and night,

just like cows.

Goats are basically the same in terms of their needs for

being milked.

They're just smaller animals and they give less milk.

They give about a gallon a day is the average.

So he loved that.

And it was kind of out of that,

you know,

you end up with four goats and a gallon a day

from each go.

That's a lot of milk for,

for people to consume.

So we started making fresh goat cheese.

We started drinking raw milk.

Of course we started making yogurt.

And my sister who had been in Mexico had learned about,

which is the goat's milk,

caramel sauce.

When she was down there,

it's a traditional confection that the roots are in Mexico.

Basically the history is that when ranchers had excess milk from

the goats,

they were milking and they didn't have refrigeration one way to

preserve it was to cook the fresh milk down with sugar

and you just cook and cook and cook and you'd end

up with a caramel and oftentimes much thicker than the kind

that we make.

But then you can put it in a box and it

would store without refrigeration.

And it could be in later in time.

So the hate,

the roots are in Mexico.

There's also the dulcet LAJ,

which is cows milk,

very similar in terms of process and history.

But that's more from Argentina,

Uruguay and Brazil.

And I had actually lived in Brazil when I was in

high school for a year.

And so I had been very used to eating dulcet LAJ

so this was very close to that,

except it was just with goat's milk.

So she kind of came back with this idea and was

like, we should try making this,

like this be interesting.

And we just tested it out in the kitchen and it

was delicious.

And we're like,

Whoa, okay.

Right off the bat.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

It was delicious.

It really,

I mean,

yeah. We,

I mean,

we had really never had it because we didn't grow up

with my traditional Mexican cooking or anything.

And so it was very new to us,

but we tasted it.

We gave the,

to our neighbors and friends and they were blown away and

we were just like,

wow, this is awesome.

So we started making that as well,

but really we were making quite a bit of cheese,

quite a bit of caramel selling milk and getting a couple

more goats at a time.

And you know,

you reach that point where you're like,

huh, I guess like,

this is very expensive for a hobby,

right? Maybe we should think about turning this into a business.

And that was a key moment in time where we said,

we either need to really cut back on everything we were

doing. Because at that point we were meat,

birds laying hands,

deep, big gardens,

milking goats,

pigs. We were just doing everything small scale,

which is super labor intensive.

And we just needed to decide a direction to go in.

So we said,

let's start a business.

Why not?

Sounds like a great idea.

So we decided to focus on the goat dairy and the

goat milk products that came from that.

So we actually invested in a cheese room,

a milk house,

a goat barn.

We had to build everything from scratch.

So we did that right next to the homestead,

the house where I grew up and we started buying more

goats. So I think every year we doubled that least,

and we were making cheese maybe three to four times a

week and caramel once or twice a week.

And really cheese was our bread and butter in the beginning.

And we would make it fresh and we would make it

in one day.

And then the next day we would drive to all the

local stores we had about 40 stores that we would deliver

to, and we'd deliver them their freshest cheese.

You can get they'd sell out.

And then,

you know,

we'd replenish their stock that next week or in two weeks.

And we sold the caramel as well,

but really the cheese was what we were focused on.

We would do farmer's markets and lots of events.

And then a couple,

I would say we did that for maybe three or four

years, both the cheese and the caramel.

And then we just realized that with the cheese we were

going to need to really up our game and invest in

like a cheese cave and kind of go to the next

level of doing more types of cheeses and not just this

fresh cheese cause that was limiting.

Like we couldn't drive to more than these 40 stores and

we couldn't easily ship it.

And there was just tons of competition.

I mean,

many other places were doing it amazingly.

So there wasn't a huge need for it in the market.

And frankly,

I didn't really like me,

Just a side note there,

You know,

they said at the beginning,

she's making is 90% cleaning and that was true.

So right there I'm with you,

It was five o'clock in the morning.

We'd start,

we'd be done at seven or eight at night.

It was tons of planning,

long, long days along with milking,

all the animals and everything else.

And so it was wonderful.

But I think at that time we also just realized,

you know,

there's a lot of potential with the caramel business because no

one was doing it to any scale in the U S

when we started.

And we just thought,

wouldn't it be interesting if we actually focused on that business

and let go of the cheese and redirected the business growth.

So we didn't,

so we just dropped the cheese.

And So were you all in favor of making that move?

Yes, generally It took,

you know,

obviously some conversations,

I think it's hard to drop anything once you put so

much time and energy and money into building it.

Sure. And you built all the facilities around to,

to support it.

Correct. But the good news was while we had the cheese

facility that could be used for caramel production.

And in fact it was best case scenario because when you

build for cheese,

you have to build to the highest regulations.

And so that was built and ready to go for cheese

or caramel.

So we were able to just redirect all our energies into

caramel and still use that same space too.

Did you shut down one entirely or did you kind of

do some type of an overlap caramel ramping up and then

the goat cheese going down?

No, we basically,

at the end of that year stopped the cheese line and

then started putting all of that milk into the caramel and

growing that,

which was interesting because one of the benefits we had from

cheese and caramel was cheese,

a quick product.

We could make it quickly sell it quickly and get cashflow

quickly from it.

Whereas the caramel tended to be,

we made it,

it had a longer shelf life,

so we didn't have to sell it right away and people

don't buy caramel every week,

whereas they could buy cheese every week.

And so that was one of the issues or like the

unexpected issues that came with dropping the cheese is we didn't

have that really quick turnaround on production and cashflow as much.

That's something we've had to adjust to in terms of our

product type.

Okay. So going back to talking about the caramel,

you knew how to make it obviously,

cause you already were,

you had pretty much perfected a recipe you liked,

even though you were doing it on the side for a

long time.

So you're set with that.

How do you go about how are you going to package

it? How are you going to do you're labeling it,

turning it into a saleable product that's ready for shelves or

trade shows.

As you know,

I've seen you at a show,

how did that happen?

Well, I think we realized that we had been doing things

a certain way with a caramel based on farmer's market sales.

So our look was kind of based on a farmer's market.

Look, our general image branding and everything was still all I

can say is kind of small scale of Vermont rustic.

And my sister actually came a different sister,

moved back from San Francisco and she joined our team and

she actually really helped rebrand us and get us to the

next level of,

I guess I would say professionalism and gearing us up for

a market outside of Vermont,

a much kind of cleaner,

more finished look while still maintaining the authenticity of the farm

and that story,

but making it more approachable for the New York city consumer

or a Boston consumer.

So she helped a lot with that in terms of branding.

We also got trained by a photographer from New York city

on food photography and product photography.

So I had always been passionate about photography and had experience

doing that in the past.

And then we decided to invest in doing that in-house and

developing a photo studio.

So as of several years ago,

we now do all that in house basically.

Well, I'm looking at your brochure right now and I would

have anticipated that you had a professional come in,

so you guys are doing a great job.

Yeah. I mean,

we've had a lot of like,

we just decided it's very important for us to have the

creative piece to it.

Like that's something that we love doing.

And so that's something we've invested in,

but yeah,

we reached out to the right people.

We have food scientists that we work with.

You know,

we work with Cornell university to help with packaging,

food, safety,

branding, labels,

et cetera.

But our has changed very much over the years for sure.

And I think that's one of the biggest challenges as a

small business growing when you have to change every year and

your labels have to change your packaging changes.

Sometimes it's hard to keep up.

What was the trigger that made you decide you needed to

change? I understand the point of being able to sell to

people outside of your local area or the New York market,

et cetera.

But you're saying that you're changing every year,

Changing every year.

It's often small things.

Like we have a label that we have,

we get a food award and we want to add it

to the label or gotcha.

Yeah. So little things or ingredients change,

you know,

our recipe has changed a little bit over the years and

so we have to tweak that on the label and stuff

like that.

I see.

Yeah. Or adding new flavors,

new color schemes.

Okay. So gift biz listeners.

I want to just bring up a couple of things that

Kelly has been talking about.

First off,

you keep hearing this progression of change within the business.

You know,

one thing led to another and they finally analyzed,

looked at some costs,

looked at I'd probably all of the labor you were putting

in and ended up doing the caramel sauce.

And then they also reached out where there were areas that

they may not know as well,

such as photography.

And then now even going to specialists for product development,

label development,

that type of thing.

As a business owner,

you don't have to know everything and going out and getting

experts in certain areas makes total sense.

And I would also say Cali because your logo and the

field is still a little bit more rustic,

just like you said,

to keep the story intact.

It's also the beauty of your product,

right? Because there's such a story in such a field behind

it, but professional photography.

And I really point this out for a lot of you

who are listening is so important because it's one of the

first impressions that people get about your business.

If you were to go on the website,

we're going to talk about this a little bit later,

Kelly, I'm sure there's photos there,

but you'll see the level and the quality that they're producing.

And somehow there's that correlation with,

especially if it's a food product.

Well, that then represents also how they're handling the product,

making the product and developing the product.

If you have less than quality photography,

people might also relate that to well,

you know,

if it's a little sloppy there,

how are they doing on the manufacturing end of their product?

So photography again,

long-winded here,

but really important for first impressions.

Specially. Now people go and see you for the first time

online wanted to make that aside.

Cali continue.

Let's continue on.

So, all right,

so you have the product you you're talking about how the

labels are changing because of ingredients and awards.

Yay. And actually,

let's talk about that a little bit.

I'm giving you bragging rights.

Tell us about an award that you've won,

but bring it back to,

how did you apply yourself?

Did someone see it?

How does that happen?

We have consistently submitted product for awards over the years in

particular, the national association for specialty food.

They have a SoFi award program that goes with the fancy

food show in New York city.

So that when we have consistently submitted two in one or

been in the running for winning several years in a row,

our biggest award was with them actually.

And that was two years ago,

we won gold or whatever it was for the best product

line. And that was awesome because it was very different than

just winning for one flavor that we had.

It was,

they looked at our entire product line because we have spots

of flavors,

lots of sizes.

We have gift options as well.

And they looked at that among everyone else.

And we went for the product line.

So I think for us,

that was kind of the height of winning with the specialty

food. That was really great.

I think also the good food award is another place that

we've submitted to in one,

two years in a row and the good food award,

they are meticulous,

they are detail oriented,

they care so much about process,

ingredient sourcing.

They ask a million questions about what you're doing and a

great way,

like they are committed to,

they're not just like,

Oh, it's organic.

It's great.

You win.

It's like,

no, what does that mean?

How are the animals being treated where your vanilla beans from,

they want to know everything.

And so winning that award for us is also just like

one of the highest awards that we can get in terms

of recognition.

So that's been really awesome.

And then several years ago we won a small business grant

from FedEx and that was a national contest and we submitted

our story,

send them our products and we won that.

And they actually though they give us $20,000

for that,

which is amazing.

That's awesome.

Yeah. And like an award brand page Thing,

it's been really wonderful one after Another.

So obviously it's great for credibility.

What else has that done for your business when you're winning

a war?

Oh, FedEx is a great example.

It was amazing to get grant money from them,

but really one of the best things that came out of

that is that they came and did a video of our

business and they were here for a couple of days shooting

and now that's a video that's out there and people see

and we get comments on it all the time.

And they just did a beautiful job of telling our story

in a way that we hadn't up until that point.

So that's been incredibly effective.

Sure. To give me that link,

I'll put it in the show notes so people can go

and look at that video.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'd love to sure.

But yeah,

I mean,

all those things have been great for credibility.

You know,

if you're in the specialty food world,

people know those awards,

they look to them for new products and credibility.

And so it puts you on the map,

which has been great for us.

Let's talk a little bit about trade shows now,

how do you decide where you're going to go?

And let's talk through a little bit about your booth,

how you work your shows and maybe some tips for success

as we move on.

Good question.

Always something we're talking about as we're evolving as a business

and trying to allocate our resources and time wisely,

they're expensive.

These shows are very extensive.

And historically what we've done is we've focused on food shows,

particularly the fancy food show,

as well as the good food show,

good food awards,

mercantile. That's been great.

It's absolutely foodies it's stores.

It's the retailers,

it's online food people,

et cetera.

We've often done a year,

then skipped a year,

then done a year and skipped a year.

Just so we're there when we have something new to present

and where it's really gonna benefit us.

This is the first year that we did the New York

now gift show.

That was a little bit of a,

I guess we were like putting our toe in the water

for the gift market because we know historically our product has

done really well and gift and holiday in the fourth quarter.

And that's been amazing.

It just happened naturally,

but we've never made a concerted effort to really approach that

market. And so this was our concerted effort to do that.

And it was awesome.

It was so well received and I felt like it was

a really good match for the company.

It was great because it was all new companies.

It was people we just literally never heard of or talked

to before.

So it just helped us enter a market that we haven't

even touched yet.

We'll hopefully continue to do that and go to the gift

shows as well.

And we just started those relationships a month ago.

So our goal is really to maintain those relationships and cultivate

them because the whole business is about relationships.

Sure. And this is a really interesting point too,

because I was in a way surprised to see you there

because there aren't as many consumables at that show,

but that's the value of it too.

You know,

you're not in with all these other people where people are

going and tasting after tasting,

after tasting,

as you do in the fancy food show,

right? So you are seeing a lot of gift shops who

many times carry perishable line,

you know,

edible type products.

So I'm so thrilled to hear that it was a success

for you and you saw a lot of people.

And I just want to bring out to our listeners that

might be something for you to consider if you do craft

shows or some of these larger shows stretch out and maybe

try something that is not a direct link with your product,

because you might experience something like Kelly seen here where she's

entering into and getting visibility to an entirely different group of

people. I also like that.

You're talking about the fact that you're not really worried about

what you sold there.

You're saying,

you know,

you're just now starting to work with these people and developing

relationships. And I think that's really important in terms of judging

the success of a show.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's so key to our general approach is that relationships throughout

your whole business,

they take a lot of time and you often don't see

an actual conversion to a sale right away.

Like there's so many soft versus hard sells.

The soft is really the relationship building,

getting to know your market and really understand like,

okay, what do people want?

And the gift world and are we offering it?

And I think it's interesting too,

to just think if consumers usually tell you things that you

don't even think of.

Like, we were never like,

we want to make a gift product,

but we just kept hearing again and again,

like, Oh,

why did you buy our product?

Or how did you get,

Oh, I got it for a gift for my brother and

my sister.

Oh, I got a gift for Christmas.

I got it.

My socking,

you hear it enough from your consumers.

They're telling you,

like, here's where you're going to be successful.

You are a great gift item.

And so it's like,

okay, like that,

wasn't our original plan,

but we're being successful in that way.

So let's leverage that.

And like,

let's go to that market and see if we can do

more of that Excellent point,

making sure you're listening to the feedback of your product all

the way along.

And your packaging really relates to it too.

Your packaging is beautiful,

simple. It's colorful,

but you still have your tone.

Do you have your cute Towed along with you?

For sure.

Yes. He's been good to us.

He at least people curious.

So our farm was originally called Apple Hill farm back in

the day.

Like historically it was an Apple farm before my parents moved

here and I grew up here.

So we originally were going to choose that as a name.

And then we looked it up and someone already had it.

And I'm so happy because,

well, that's a beautiful name.

It sounds like many other farms.

And I don't think we would have stood out in the

same way and the fat toad farm.

Well, it confuses people.

It makes them curious.

They want to know more.

They want to know the story and they usually remember it.

And that's one of the most important things is just to

stand out and be remembered.

You are exactly right.

I don't even have to say anything else about that.

You landed it totally agree with you.

Give us an example of something that might've been a challenge

along the way.

We've been making a product that no one else was making

in the U S to any scale.

And so we really had in terms of equipment and recipe,

and just like the standard things you would run into,

as you scale up a product,

it was very hard for us to have mentors or coaches

that we could rely on to help us.

It's one of those pros and cons,

because in some ways it's like,

great, no one else is doing it.

So there's innovation and we're trying to things and it pushes

you to places.

You probably wouldn't go otherwise.

And at the same time when you're struggling with the same

recipe issue or the same stove issue again,

and again,

it can be very hard to have breakthroughs because you have

to learn the hard way often.

And it takes longer too.

It takes longer and it's expensive.

It's expensive.

So we've had to do a lot of like our stoves

are actually a combination of things that we've had to come

up from scratch to make it fit our stoves.

Our recipe is a similar situation.

So we've had to do a lot of customization for our

product, I guess,

as we've grown it.

And we've found like so much pressure,

I guess,

is one of the big challenges and the food industry on

preservatives, stabilizers,

artificial colorings.

I think I have gained a true appreciation for why people

start putting those things in their products.

For example,

it takes us five hours to cook our caramel.

That's very expensive.

It's great because it's an artisanal process and it's beautiful from

a business numbers perspective.

It has its challenges because of the expense of it.

And so that's like a standard issue that caramel makers would

face. And so you can shortcut it and decrease the cook

time, but then you don't get the beautiful Browning and labor

development. And so what do you do?

Like you just add caramel coloring at the end and then

hold the no one knows the difference.

And so I began to understand,

Oh, that's why people start taking shortcuts.

And then those are the ways that you add stuff to

cover it up.

And it's been very difficult,

but also like the most important thing for us to stick

to our process and stick to our ingredient profile so that

we never added any of that stuff.

Because then why are we doing this?

Because the point for us is to offer something different and

offer something relatively healthy speaking,

in terms of a caramel sauce,

it's 80%,

goat's milk.

You know,

we never even had to think about consciously sourcing it.

Cause it's just,

we never thought of not doing that.

We don't add vanilla extract.

We add whole vanilla beans.

We don't add cinnamon flavor.

We cook it with cinnamon sticks,

the whole process.

So those have been challenges in the food industry,

the pressure of being different than who you are,

I guess.

So how does that then relate to the price that you

have to charge for your product versus your competition?

Yeah, I think that's the key challenge is you have to

account for those costs in your product.

And you know,

I think there's been points in time where we've felt like,

Oh God,

I mean,

we get feedback that our product is too expensive.

And we understand that.

And I think that has made us feel like,

okay, well,

how could we do this differently to make it less expensive?

Sometimes in our minds,

we've been pressured to try to be everything to everybody and

then we've had chemo.

So we've been like,

no, we're not everything to everybody.

That's not the kind of product we're making.

We're not a Smucker's jar on the shelf.

We want to be different.

We want to hold true to our ingredients and our values

around the production of food.

And that may mean a higher price point.

And we have to be able to stand by that and

not compromise on those other things to become what everyone wants.

And just to understand too,

that you're always going to be pressured on your price by

literally everyone along the road.

And you have to really hold firm and have a strategy

around your pricing.

It's not that we're never flexible on our pricing,

but if we are it's with a very specific intention and

a very specific plan,

Right. And your intention is not to match a competitor and

then be yet another brand.

I mean,

you stand out because you're more the gourmet brand in that

sector, right?

Yes, absolutely.

And it sounds like that is your conscious choice to stay

that way.

So when you talk about,

you've got to have a strategy,

your strategy is to be the higher priced,

higher quality,

all natural ingredients,

traditional production method product.

Absolutely. Yes,

absolutely. I can tell that you've said this before,

because you speak it with such passion,

you know,

as you're describing how you make it in the value and

how committed you are not to start adding coloring or anything

else in shorten the production process.

So that was spectacular.

Well, I think the contrary point too,

is we're also not going to be inefficient just to be

inefficient. For example,

we used to do a tag on our jars.

It was like a little tag that explained our story.

And we had a string that went around the jar.

Those took for forever to make,

to hole punch,

to cut the string,

to tie around.

And in my opinion,

as a consumer,

I don't want to pay a producer to do tags and

hand hole punch things.

And I don't want to pay for that.

And your pricing for me,

that's not a good business decision,

but if what you're sticking to is your traditional way of

cooking, then that's something I want to pay for.

But if you're being inefficient just to be inefficient or because

you haven't figured a way to innovate,

or if you haven't found the key places to have automation

or equipment,

then I don't think that's good either.

If that makes sense,

Right. You pick the best return you get for your whole

production cycle.

Like you're talking about with the tags.

Yeah. Let's turn now into our reflection section Kelly,

and talk a little bit about you and how you've been

able to continue making the decisions that you have leading to

all of these awards that you guys have.

And I realized that when we're speaking,

you're speaking with about,

you know,

your whole family,

the whole group,

but you in particular here,

what is a natural trait that you have,

and maybe you've had to call on it just because you

are in a family environment and that presents some challenges as

well. I'm sure.

But what is a trait that you would bring up and

share with people that has helped you to be successful with

your product?

I would say age uncompromising commitment to quality.

And with that attention to detail,

I, you know,

I was thinking when you mentioned the photography,

if you have a sloppy photograph,

it's a reflection of how you're going to do everything else

in business potentially,

or it can be perceived that way.

And I think it's so true,

whether it's how we label a jar or whether it's how

organized our calendar is or how we present ourselves at a

food show or,

you know,

a new flavor that we put out.

We don't ever want it to be.

Ho-hum like,

that was kind of good or kind of,

okay. We literally want it to be of the highest quality

throughout everything we do.

Absolutely. Especially if you're demanding a price that you are exactly

To stand behind that.

Absolutely. And give biz listeners,

we talked about brand a lot in past shows and this

is all part of your branding.

It's not just the visual what's on the label.

It's how you conduct yourself,

how you work with customers,

everything that Kelly's just talked about in terms of any interaction,

any touch point,

how your displays look at shows,

even if you're out at farmer's market,

all of that represents a feeling and a belief that people

are going to form about you and your business.

So you want to make sure that you're present and it

might be casual.

You know,

I mean,

here Kelly's product is upscale.

It's more expensive quality and production,

everything she's already been talking about.

So all of her labeling and interaction should go along with

that, maybe your opposite,

that maybe you're super casual,

relaxed. Down-home if you have the product,

when they want it,

you have it,

you know,

that may be your style and you'll have people who will

love you and follow you for that as well.

And then everything follows along in that manner,

not sloppy,

but more casual.

So I heard Kelly talking about,

we needed to define what we are and then continue living

by that.

So I wanted to just underline that and bring in the

whole branding conversation here real quick,

too. Okay.

And then thinking about your day and how you work,

because you have such a commute,

you know,

what tools do you use for more the business side of

it, not production,

but to either stay productive and moving forward,

or to create some type of balance.

I'm a huge proponent of quality of life in balance.

And I say that having us have run a farm for

nine years.

And so what,

just as another piece of information,

what we actually did is we ran the farm end of

things, with the goats and milking them for,

I think it was nine years total up until basically not

this past fall,

but the fall before.

And then we actually sold our goats to Vermont Creamery,

which is another Vermont business that makes just incredible cheese and

butter. And so we sold them,

our goats,

just down the road there at their farm down there.

And now we buy milk back from them and continue to

make the caramel here.

But that was a reflection also of a choice that was

related to quality of life and balance.

That's very hard to do when you're running your own business.

It's also very hard to do when you have a farm

in addition to that.

So I've always been a big proponent since day one on

our team of always saying,

how are we meeting our quality of life?

When is somebody getting a vacation day?

We used to joke in the beginning when it was a

farm, we would have a 20 minute break in the middle

of a day in the seven-day workweek,

where we would go for a swim at the local pond.

And we would be like,

Oh, it's our 20 minute vacation.

This was amazing.

But it really was We had all week.

So every year I'm always saying,

okay, what's our next thing that we're adding.

Now. We actually have eight to five schedules Monday through Friday,

which is a miracle for everyone here and making sure we're

getting that much closer to health insurance and making sure everyone's

paid fairly and sick days and all that.

So as a business,

well, we can't be there on day one with every single

thing we want to be able to offer ourselves and our

employees. We're always working towards those goals every step of the

way, as much as we can.

So I think for me,

that's a big,

just kind of bigger picture.

I'm always trying to make sure quality of life is attended

to, and then just like practical tools,

running Exercise,

that's important,

getting out and moving.

Although on the farm,

you probably have a lot of that still anyway,

even if you don't have the goats anymore.

Yeah, There definitely was.

But I think even to have the time to run now

for me is like a miracle I've had that for years.

And so for me,

just mental health running is totally essential for me and has

been for several years.

And then something as simple as a physical calendar is probably

my number one organizational tool.

It's easy to get caught up.

I think in all the internet systems and the phone calendars

and all that.

And I'm a very visual person.

I like to have things in front of me keeping my

to-do list fresh and clean every day,

having a calendar where everything is that I can go to

all the time,

basic tools like that for me are really essential to staying

organized. And on top of things,

You'd be surprised how many people say that physical calendar.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't have to go after the newest thing just because

everyone's talking about it.

And I thinking think a lot of people are finally recognizing,

you know,

that technology is great,

but it's great if it's working for you.

And if the apps are all these different things that they

have fit in with the way you intuitively work.

So yeah,

it's actually pretty surprising if I were to weight.

It I'd say more people are doing in our industry now,

people who are makers and creators a way more the physical

calendar. Yeah.

It's like such a minor detail,

but I would literally see it 40% of whether I say

organized or I don't.

I get it.

So let's talk about a book or possibly a podcast apart

from this one,

of course.

But is there something that you listened to regularly that you

would share with our listeners?

Sure. So one book I read recently,

it's called sprint.

It's a book about businesses and ways of managing innovation in

a productive way.

So like how you get ideas and how you test them

quickly to see whether they're going to work out or not

without dedicating years of time and energy into them.

And there was a lot of just like really great examples

of businesses doing that and just very interesting stories.

So that's what I would recommend or at least that I,

you know,

I found inspirational and just led to new thinking.

The podcast I have found most interesting recently around business has

been how I built this.

They interviewed different business owners,

like Patagonia was one crate and barrel was another,

the woman who invented Spanx.

And they're just fascinating.

I love hearing how people approach their businesses and what they

value and things that people say that are like,

so anti what you've heard your whole life.

And you're like,

Oh, you didn't want business growth.

Okay. That's the thing you don't hear in business.

So that for me has been very inspirational as well.

Give biz listeners just as you're listening to the podcast today,

you can also listen to audio books with ease.

I've teamed up with audible for you to be able to

get an audio book for free on me.

If you haven't done so already,

sprint may be one of those books available for audio.

I'm just not quite sure,

but you can check it out or select a book of

your choice.

All you need to do is go to gift biz,

book.com and make your selection.

Okay. Kelly,

it's time for me to invite you to dare to dream.

I'd like to present you with a virtual gift.

It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.

So this is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable

Heights that you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift in our presence and open it up.

What is inside your box?

So in some of my box,

I imagine just opening it.

And the first color is green.

That kind of comes out of it and sunlight and people

and animals.

It's basically a vision for an active working landscape around me

of pastures and forest and dirt roads and families and kids.

And it's a physical manifestation for me of why I got

into this business in the first place,

which is trying to have a business with my,

that was based on the land.

And that could create a quality of life and support ourselves,

but also other people in a positive way.

It's so core to my roots,

having grown up in Vermont,

in a rural economy with agriculture in all of our history

here, and my grandfather spent his years documenting the agricultural life

that was kind of going distinct.

And it's a struggle in Vermont to see farms dying basically,

and not being able to survive.

And I want that future,

not just Vermont,

but in other places as well for that to be a

viable future for people.

And I want to be a part of supporting that and

making that happen Really well said too,

if there was one single place where we could direct people

to come and see what fat toad farm is all about

online, where would that be?

Fat toad,

farm.com. Just our website is great.

And I would say for more of a inner look at

the life and the business and more of kind of the

day-to-day moments are Instagram,

as well As listeners on the show notes page,

we will have links to all social media accounts.

Also the link that you'll get me,

right, Kelly for the video.

So all of that will be over on the show notes

page, which is at gift biz,

unwrapped.com. Kelly,

thank you so much for joining me and sharing so much

about the development.

This is kind of a life that a lot of our

listeners, I don't think are as well acquainted with in terms

of the farming and how it evolves and all of the

production that you go through.

It was really exciting for me personally,

to hear how you are staying true to the product,

the content,

the quality of your product,

even though you're higher priced and positioning in that form of

the market.

I think it's a good learning for everybody.

And just to stay true to what you initially were doing

and not succumb to some of these challenges or stresses that

people want to put on you,

you guys stayed true to what you truly believed in.

I look forward to this pasture and this whole vision that

you've given us in your dream to continue to come true

because it's already here true for you right now.

And may your candle always burn bright.

Thank you.

Where are you in your business building journey,

whether you're just starting out or already running a business and

you want to know your setup for success.

Find out by taking the gift biz quiz,

access the quiz from your computer at fit dot L Y

slash gift biz quiz or from your phone by texting gift

biz quiz to four four two,

two, two.

Thanks for listening and be sure to join us for the

next episode.

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