By Kristen Thompson
Read parts one, two, and three.
It’s early March of 2022, and after a long hiatus during the height of COVID-19, the Food Connects Sales Team is finally hitting the road with producers. I meet Beth Lewand, Food Connects Food Hub Sales Associate, and Linda Rubin, the woman behind Frisky Cow Gelato, at Linda’s house in Keene, NH. We’re driving out to meet potential customers in the Bradford and Southeast New Hampshire service area—one of our Thursday delivery routes.
(Left to right) Food Connects Food Hub Sales Associate Beth Lewand, Frisky Cow Gelato Owner Linda Rubin, and Food Connects Marketing Coordinator Kristen Thompson are your guides on this “day in the life” making sales trips for the Food Connects Food Hub.
Everyone is excited to be back on the road. We’ve barely started the drive, and Beth and Linda are already discussing plans for the next road trip.
Beth has been working hard to prepare us for this trip. She tries to make connections with every potential customer before driving to meet them. For larger retailers, Beth has worked to make connections with every department we could be selling to. Personal connections can be crucial for getting in the door with larger customers. Linda has been doing outreach, too.
Beth and Linda in Hinsdale, NH, during a sales trip visiting potential customers in the region.
We’re also ready with materials and samples. Yesterday, I helped Beth organize sell sheets and introduction materials into folders for each potential customer we’re driving to meet today. Linda has an impressive cooler in her trunk, full of gelato samples.
As we drive to a potential customer in New London and then to Concord, Linda tells us about watching the sunset with her aunt growing up, her aunt’s work to start a farm in New Jersey, and how her aunt influenced her environmental activism. Linda brings that passion to her gelato-making. Frisky Cow Gelato went through the rigorous process of becoming a B-Corporation, and Linda’s worked hard to find a dairy farm to source from whose approach to farming she could get behind.
The farmers at Contoocook Creamery. Photo from contoocookcreamery.com.
After running into complicated regulations around using raw milk shipped across the Vermont-New Hampshire border, Linda found a small, local creamery in New Hampshire called Contoocook Creamery at Bohanon Farm. The creamery sells pasteurized milk, cream, flavored milk, ice cream mix, and egg nog (both retail and wholesale) to hundreds of customers in New Hampshire and Massachusetts to diversify their product offerings and revenue streams. Now, one of their customers is Linda, who uses their pasteurized milk and cream in her gelato. It’s just one of many examples of how small to mid-sized local and regional food businesses can lift each other up.
The Concord Food Co-op. Photo from concordfoodcoop.coop.
In Concord, we stop at the Concord Food Co-op. Centrally located in downtown Concord, NH, the co-op describes itself as a democratic grocery store, bakery, and café collectively owned by customers. We’re optimistic that this co-op, focused on selling quality natural, local, organic, and fair-trade foods that are ethically sourced, will see the value in working with a food hub with regionally-produced, source-identified foods. Beth and Linda have promising discussions with the staff and then peruse the shelves, looking at their local offerings and the gaps our Food Hub could fill.
One of the interesting things about making sales trips is that we can’t be sure which potential customers we’ll end up onboarding until Beth is back in the office in the weeks after, following up with them. A promising conversation doesn’t always result in the new customers we’re hoping for. But sometimes, it makes all the difference.
It isn’t until I start working on this blog post, many months later, that I reach out to Beth and hear the good news—Concord Food Co-op was one of Food Connects’ new customers in 2022.
After leaving the Concord Food Co-op, we eat our lunch in the car and make a few more stops around town before heading to Hooksett, NH.
Johnson Golden Harvest, a farmstand in Hooksett, NH. Photo from johnsongoldenharvest.com.
Hooksett is home to Johnson Golden Harvest, a family-owned farmstand that provides locally grown produce and pasture-raised meats year-round. The farmstand is a cozy stop with a delightful variety of local goods. Inside, we’re greeted by a friendly little dog in a sweater. While the owner is out of town, the person staffing the market calls him for us, and we leave samples for them to try.
Of the farmstands we’ve visited today, this one will also be one of Food Connects’ new customers in 2022.
From Hooksett, we drive to a farmstand in Litchfield that Beth and Linda checked to verify would be open today. Alas! Despite their due diligence, we arrive at a stand closed for the winter season. We redirect our course to Amherst and talk about everything from neighborhoods we drive past that remind us of films we’ve seen to knitting projects and foraging mushrooms.
At our next stops, Linda and Beth make compelling pitches for working with Food Connects—and buying Linda’s delicious gelato—before we finally head back to Keene.
A yummy Coffeehouse Chip Frisky Cow Gelato sample.
It’s been a long day on the road, and my mouth is watering from hearing about Linda’s homemade coffee syrup—made from Terra Nova Coffee Roasters’ coffee and espresso—and the stracciatella (chocolate chips) she makes by freezing chocolate over gelato, cracking it, and mixing it in. I simply must try her Coffeehouse Chip gelato. It does not disappoint!
Clearly, sales trips can be crucial in connecting with potential customers, but requests from customers for products sold by Food Connects can also increase our impact. For example, the City Market outlets in Burlington, VT, became interested in Grateful Greens’ products, and the Grateful Greens team put us in touch with them. City Market has become a regular Grateful Greens buyer through Food Connects and has also been ordering other local produce through our Food Hub from producers such as Pete’s Stand and Side Hill Cider Mill.
As I reflect on this adventure, I’m humbled by the hard work our sales team does to ensure the fantastic food from our producers makes it into as many corners of our region as possible. After diligently researching and reaching out to businesses, spending a full day on the road visiting each one, and following up with those businesses, Beth has onboarded two new New Hampshire customers. Those new customers are vital partners who share our mission to bring more local foods to the region.