NEWPORT, Va. (WDBJ) – A couple in Newport is preparing to launch an app they say will help small-scale farmers like themselves by making it easier to sell products directly to consumers. The Red Hen app will connect farmers directly with consumers.
“Think Airbnb but for small farms. Farmers upload their inventory, customers search, I would like 20 pounds of ground pork here’s the person, I want delivery only within 20 miles, here it is,” said Lauren Lovejoy, Co-Founder, and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hen.
Lovejoy and Eric Canfield have operated a 65-acre regenerative farm in Newport for six years. They said one of the biggest challenges for smaller farms is finding customers for their products. Options are usually limited to word of mouth, local farmers markets, or creating an independent website.
“If you’re farming full-time, you don’t have time to also sit there and figure out a marketing plan for your farm because you’re focused on: I’ve got fences down, I’ve got a sick animal that needs to get taken care of. You’re not going, ‘Ok what’s the best way to pitch this?’,” said Canfield.
While larger-scale farms work with wholesalers to sell their products to major food companies and grocers, that usually isn’t a viable option for smaller farms.
“Small-scale operations can get into that middleman area but you lose so much at this level, you lose so much financially, that it’s not worth it,” said Canfield.
Canfield and Lovejoy came up with the idea for the Red Hen app last year when they were looking to buy quality local beef.
“We were talking to somebody, and they sounded great. So they were like ok ‘I’ll drive an hour to Wytheville, and you drive an hour to Wytheville, and you can get it from me for a delivery fee.’ I was like, that is bananas that the nearest quality beef we can find online is two hours away,” said Canfield. “We were joking, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was an app for that?’ Then she went, ‘What if there was an app for that?’ That’s where it snowballed.”
Lovejoy works with small farms around the country and said that finding customers is a major burden for them.
“We want to farm. We don’t want to become marketing geniuses. As I started working with small farms across the country, they also didn’t want to become marketing geniuses. So that was part of the conversation with the app. How great would it be if there already was an audience of people excited to buy,” she said.
Canfield said the app will make life easier for farmers by giving them more options when selling products and saving them time.
“An app like this is going to give me the opportunity to post my product, and people from Roanoke to Boston can get online, look, and go, ‘Hey this guy has pasture-raised pork I’d love to try that’ and they can order it from me. It widens the playing field,” he said.
The Red Hen app will have an interface for both farmers and consumers. Lovejoy said she believes Red Hen will help more farmers stay afloat.
“Aside from saving time and energy and sanity for farmers, we think it will just help put people back into farmland. We lose, I believe it’s 200,000 farms a year, and we could stop losing those farms because they wouldn’t be going out of business,” she said.
Lovejoy said she hopes the farm will help people get connected with farmers in their area to buy quality locally produced food.
“My dream is that when you go into the app, no matter where you are in the United States, you can find some small special farmer close to you,” she said. “I’m hoping that we can connect these people with these really special farms in every area of the country.
Over 300 farms around the country have already signed up for the app. It will launch in April.
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