How to be a Coordinator

Step by step instructions

We are looking for two things from a coordinator

  1. A person to reach out in your neighborhood area, usually through social media but can be to groups you are part of, to find new people who are interested in healthy meats. Usually once someone has found us they remain loyal customers until they move, stop cooking at home or stop eating meat.
  2.  A person we can be in touch with to make sure that people get their orders when we deliver.

 

To request to be a Coordinator click the button below.

REACHING OUT:

How it works and what it takes.

With the internet nearly ubiquitous, people are barraged with advertising communications. Most people tune it out, get ad blockers and generally try and reduce the amount of communication they see.

Communication that comes from someone who is known to them as a person is much more listened to. Even if it is just a neighbor, someone who lives nearby, somebody who has the same kind of house, somebody who has kids the same age, etc, etc

 

  1. We send the blast emails out to all customers two weeks before the next delivery.
  2. You post things on FaceBook and NextDoor.com. You can use your own postings or you can use postings that we provide. Whatever you feel works best.
  3. We have found that NextDoor.com is by FAR the best way to let people know about our availability. NextDoor.com is about 100 times as effective as FaceBook. A VERY simple post once per day for a week can create tremendous response depending on demographics, location, etc.
  4. If you JUST do NextDoor and friends and family, you should be good. FaceBook groups if you are active in them already also work to a certain extent.
  5. Once there are customers established for your drop you can also send out your own emails to your previous customers. Steve will provide a list for you on request.

 Here are some more things that a successful coordinator submitted to us. You can do these as you see fit.

  1. Post emails to your regulars weekly with photos of food, pets, recipes and ask them for the same.
  2. Nextdoor wont let me on as it is animal killing. I advertise soaps at least monthly. 
  3. Offer to hold food a day or two if needed. I always send an email out three days before the last chance to order reminding them I can hold orders x hours for late pick up. 
  4. Know your community. Dirty Rice is a popular item here and uses gizzards. Advertise that. And I show my cat eating gizzards.
  5. Make sure to forward Steve's Instagram videos to everyone. 
  6. Bring your product to family events. 
  7. Promote the product you love most in whatever you are posting.
  8. Photos on Instagram are big. Make sure you tag @North Pasture Farms to get them to home page.
  9. Give bacon and brats as gifts. No one turns bacon down.
  10. Give a NF magnet to new clients. Magnets are free to order from the website.
  11. Greet customers each time and establish rapport. I am going to send previous clients an email asking what we could do better.
  12. If you have Canva or other video creator and are feeling adventurous do a video.

A very valuable thing you can do for the planet and your neighbors is to use North Pasture Farms to get more food that is grown with Regenerative Agriculture out there and well thought of. You don’t need to be a healthy food evangelist, but it does help…

New customers routinely say how happy they are to have found us. I find this pretty gratifying and think you will also.

To request to be a Coordinator click the button below.

DELIVERY

  1. Steve will email you the ‘drop sheet’ the Thursday night before delivery. The drop sheet has the list of people who will be getting orders, their weight, number of bags and value. With that email is also included the time for our arrival. 
  2. Steve may email you a 'pre-drop sheet' a day or six before delivery just to you know where you stand as far as the upcoming delivery goes. This will give you a chance to rush around and do something about it if you aren't looking too good.
  3. You can contact your customers and let them know to come by when we get there, or come by later, as you desire.
  4. On delivery day, we show up with our truck and unload your orders. We try to be pretty much on time. Sometimes we are early, sometimes late. Mostly on time.
  5. You can be there to greet us or not, depends on what works best for you. We sometimes have excruciatingly early drops and the coordinator leaves out coolers which we fill and leave. You just make sure they get handed out within a few hours.
  6. Coolers on the porch are a good thing if you have them. We have 150qt coolers left over from when we were doing deliveries with the pickup truck, so we can give you one of those if you need one.
  7. Caroline checks off the orders as they come out of the truck. Since she started doing that, we don’t make nearly the amount of drop off screw-ups as we used to.
  8. The meat either goes into your coolers or in the shade or wherever.
  9.  If the customer is there, they can get their meat right then.
  10. We usually say howdy and leave. We are at each drop spot about 7 minutes. Bigger drop spots more time, smaller drop spots less time.
  11.  You give out the meat to customers, or let them pick up from the cooler / shade or whatever you arrange.
  12.  You come back out and check on things a bit later and see who hasn’t showed up yet. Send them a text to find out what is happening.
  13.  Let us know if there are any problems. There are a few from time to time. We have always been able to work things out one way or another.

 

 The things you will need to have at your drop spot are:

 

  1.  A cooler or bunch of coolers where the meat can hang out until people come by and pick it up. We have 150 qt coolers we are giving coordinators if needed. 
  2. Some deep shade will be enough if you are home and can keep an eye on everything.
  3. A blanket on the floor in the garage works well. You can flip the blanket over the bags of meat and that helps keep it cool.
  4.  One enterprising coordinator went on craigslist and got a $25 little chest freezer that she plugs in to her garage and leaves outside the door. That works well. That way she doesn’t have to be there to make sure nothing melts.
  5. Ideally you are there when we get there so you know what we are dropping off, you are there to greet any people coming to pick up and you can help carry bags etc. If you cannot be there or it is excruciatingly early in the morning, we (like Santa) will drop off in the coolers and move on in the firm conviction that you will get up, check the coolers and call us if there are any orders left after several hours. We do post the delivery times and most people come get their meat or call us or you about delays etc. If for some reason there is an order that is not picked up after an hour or so and calls to the person go unanswered then you contact us and we figure out what to do.

 

If for some reason you know you cannot be there contact Steve right away and we will work something out either coolers and we contact the people to not be late or we get one of them to hold the fort until its picked up or arrange for them to pick up at the next drop. We do need to know a day or so in advance so we can make these arrangements and let people know.

 

 If someone doesn’t pick up their order and you cannot reach them, contact us and we will try ourselves or give you the meat. This has only happened a few times in the past several years so it is not something you need to be unduly worried about.

 

You are moving out of the area. Just let me know, we will work something out. If  you have an idea of who would be a good coordinator in your place let me know, if not, no worries.  


If you get questions from a customer, answer it if you can. If not, either get them to email me or email me yourself. I usually answer emails within hours of getting them unless we are off doing a delivery. In which case I respond really fast to texts and phone calls. I handle the emails either at night or when we get back home.



To request to be a Coordinator click the button below.

PERKS

The coordinator gets a percentage of the value of the drop. If the drop is small, the percentage can be as low as 3%. If the drop is large, the percentage gets as high at 5%. The percentage gets put on the coordinator’s credit account and is used for future orders, or the order that is currently outstanding, whichever.

 

There is also a commission for new people. If the new person orders, the coordinator gets 8 bucks credit. Some coordinators like to use their referral link (you can find that on the website under ‘my account’). Others like to just tell people to go to the website and order. Before every delivery I go through and see who the new people are and award the 8 bucks for every new person one way or another.


We also play a 'High Steaks Game' amoung coordinators for a given route. You will be playing against othere coordinators in your route. There is a new guys game and a raw production game. Awards vary from around 50 bucks added to credit accounts for impressive winners down to 10 bucks to second and third place. If a coordinator does something truly impressive, they get the 50 bucks, if it is not so impressive, less.

 

The other, less talked about perk is you get to be part of a group that is actually working on regenerative agriculture. If you don’t’ know what that is  A very good video that covers what I am really about is a Ted Talk called “It’s Not the Cow, It’s the How”.

 

If we can get regenerative agriculture to take hold and be more mainstream, we can use it to sequester carbon out of the air and into the soil where it belongs. Regenerative Agriculture can go a long way toward mitigating climate change. So let’s handle climate change by getting people to eat GrassFed Beef.



To request to be a Coordinator click the button below.

FAQs

  •  What are the perks for being a coordinator?

o  Between 3% and 5% of the value of the drop. Paid in credits for meat. If you build up more than 500 bucks credit, we can send a check.

o  8 bucks per new guy. Paid in credits for meat.


  • ·        How close can a new drop spot be to another drop spot?

o  As long as the two drop spots are in different zip codes, it should work. Depending on population density and distance apart. I am the decider on that. Most times there is room for a new coordinator.


  • ·        Can I have a list of people picking up? 

o  Yep. Just email me and I will send you the list with email addresses and phone numbers.

o  Quite often customers contact us without contacting you so asking for this list from time to time is a good idea.


  • ·        Is there a minimum number of orders?

o  Nope.

o  But there is a minimum amount of drop. It costs money to make a stop, drive to your place, take the time to stop there, etc. If you have a smaller drop than 500 bucks on a consistent basis, you have a good chance of not being a coordinator very long. BUT, if your location is very close to our existing route, your minimum will be less. If your location is way out in the boonies, your minimum will be more.


  • ·        Do I need a freezer to hold meat for customers?

o  Nope. It is their responsibility to pick up before the meat thaws out.

o  That being said, it is awful nice if you have a cooler, some deep shade, even a big cardboard box works as a cooler.

o  The main thing about holding meat is to be in communication with the customer. If you can’t do it, no worries, have them contact me, we will work something else out. Maybe they can pick up at someone else’s drop that time, maybe they will have to cancel their order. Something can be worked out with communication.

o  An extra freezer in the garage would be an awful nice thing though. One coordinator got a small freezer on craigslist, paid 25 bucks for it. She keeps it on a piano dolly in her garage. On pickup day she wheels it outside, runs an extension cord to it and the meat goes in there. No worries. I should note that this is coordinator-ship well above and beyond the call of duty.


To request to be a Coordinator click the button below.

The Games

The main game we are playing right now is called the High Steaks Game.

 

The coordinator of a given route who has the best three trip trend wins 50 bucks credit. We keep graphs of the different area drops

 

I look at the last three dots on each drop spot’s graph: two lines, three dots. If the trend line is going up, you are in the running for the 50 bucks. I look for the steepest uptrend among the drop spots of a given route. If a bunch of coordinators do well, I at least mention them in the Coordinator Newsletter which goes out every two weeks.

 

Other emails:

·        I have taken to sending out a ‘Where do we stand” email a night or three before delivery day.

o  This goes to the coordinators on a given route.

o  It tells how many orders each spot has and might have a final posting suggestion.

·        I may send out more than one “Where do we stand” email.


To request to be a Coordinator click the button below.

Just had my first pick-up in Appleton. How slick! You've got this process down! Very punctual and organized. Thanks so much for driving it all the way over to us - can't wait to try my goodies.
Amber F. (Appleton, WI)
Fabulous Quality, GrassFed beef – pastured chicken and pork. Non GMO. Farm fresh is best!
Cindy (Excelsior, MN)
North Pasture Farms BBB Business Review