Jenny (00:30)
Today, my heart is swelling with pride since I have a one of a kind, incredible friend of mine on the podcast who also just happens to be a business mastermind and also my husband's boss, funnily enough. But today I am chatting with Dale Wickham from Wickham Farms, which is an agritourism farm based in Penfield, New York. And we've known the Wickham farm for a long time, so this is gonna be super fun for me to pick Dale's brain today.
And I'm really passionate about the conversation you're about to listen to because when I meet a lot of new flower farmers or even a lot of experienced ones, it's apparent that a lot of them don't believe in a very big business vision or sort of struggle with having that big business vision. And I get it because I used to be there, but what changed for me is that I kept continuously getting in rooms with people who had way bigger farms than me.
way bigger dreams than goals than me. And it just really helped me a lot. So today you get the chance to jump into the room with Dale and we are going to be going over all kinds of different things based around his agritourism farm. So they do, you pick pumpkins, apples, flowers, they have a corn maze. Plus they have all these other concepts and food that they offer at their farm. And Dale is going to be giving us all a lesson in thinking bigger.
being customer focused in order to have a successful business, like different mindset shifts to make in order to win and generally just great business advice. So I cannot stress how much of an inspiration Dale and the Wickham Farms is to me personally, and I know that he will be a massive inspiration to you as well. So without further ado, let's meet Dale.
Jenny (02:13)
So hey, Dale, thanks for joining me today. I'm really excited to have you here.
Dale Wickham (02:17)
Yeah, of course. Really, really glad you had me out. Appreciate it.
Jenny (02:21)
Yeah,
you're like a one of, I would say like Matt and I, my husband and I always talk about other businesses that we're always so impressed by and little known fact to people who are listening, my husband actually works for Dale. And so we always talk about other businesses that we love seeing and like he goes with you to a bunch of other agritourism farms and stuff. like you guys are just what we look up to. And so we're so excited to have you as a big part of our lives. So thanks for being for such an inspiration to everyone.
Dale Wickham (02:51)
I appreciate that. As you know, it takes a team to make it happen. So yeah, and I have a lot of fun together.
Jenny (02:58)
Yeah, so could you just tell us a little bit about you and Wickham Farms, what you guys do, and a little bit about your operation?
Dale Wickham (03:06)
Yep. So yeah, I so I grew up, we had a farm, you know, pumpkin patch, you know, since I was very little, you know, so my earliest memories of farming are, you know, picking pumpkins out of the field with my dad and my grandpa upon a five years old. And then, you know, we had little roadside stands that we sold pumpkins out of. And then pretty early on in my childhood, we started adding a few things like a corn maze.
like straw bale mazes, kiddie train ride. It's like those are like kind of the early, you know, memories I have of, you know, growing up with my family, the business, etc. So my dad actually grew up on a large, I mean, relatively large, about 1000 acres vegetable farm. And, you know, he had always kind of, you know, wanted to be a, he was a farmer through and through with the farm. He went to, went off to college.
Um, in the eighties with plans to always be a farmer after college went to learn about farming and business. Um, but by the time he got out of school, um, interest rates and, you know, a lot of economic factors were not good for a lot of farmers. So, um, my grandfather who owned the farm and my grandma, um, where they were, they had sold off pretty much all their land. Um, so they had a little bit of, uh, you know, equipment, tractors, and obviously some know-how.
for making things grow, which is important. And they, you know, have the idea, well, how can we kind of keep this alive somehow? And, you know, my dad and my grandpa started a different business in the travel agency together, you go from farmer to travel agency. But then they also, you know, started, you know, weekend warrioring it, I would say, guess, and growing pumpkins, renting land and just growing pumpkins, selling them out of roadside stands. So,
You know, the reason I say I was just kind of gives a little context for kind of where where the roots were. And that was in the 1980s that you know they my parents allowed to help. know, again, help just from my grandpa. I think it was fun. Started growing pumpkins and you know, went again when I was little. I was born in 96, so I'm just a little under 30 now, but we were, you know, still renting land and just.
roadside pumpkin stands and that so that was early and then it was the early 2000s when you know, my parents bought that They bought eight acres of land just eight acres in Penfield, New York And that's when you know, we kind of had our first home location to where you know, we would you know, roll the pumpkins there and also able to like provide a place for people to come out and start to actually have a fall experience and that was you know, I just remember it being
Being fun, know, little kid, you know, learning how to make change. Take collecting $5 for a family to go into the corn maze and stuff like that. I learned to cut corn mazes when I was a little kid. that was kind of my. That was, uh, so I'm like I have two siblings and so the three of us would kind of be in charge of the corn maze. So we had a four acre maze that we would plant and then.
Usually I would design a maze, maybe not when I was five, but probably by the time I was 10, I was drawing out the maze on graph paper and designing it and having it cut with a lawnmower and making it all happen. But that was essentially, we didn't have an allowance growing up. We would get a third of the maze profits, which was great as a kid. And yeah, so that was fun.
Eventually, the Mays, the fall experience got popular. Our parents had to cap off our earnings, which I don't know about that.
Jenny (07:05)
They're
like, enough for you.
Dale Wickham (07:08)
Yeah,
you know, and that was kind of, yeah, you know, how things kind of started and our family as far as, you know, to getting to where we are now. And again, I can keep talking, keep talking and going for a while and that's the way because, you know, essentially we added a barn and ice cream and then we added mini golf. And again, it was also around, you know, we had just eight acres. So we were bringing people out trying to
Jenny (07:26)
You
Dale Wickham (07:36)
do what we could to bring people out to our farm. We had some success, eventually got to a point where eight acres just wasn't really viable long-term for what we needed. that was in the late 2017s, by 2017, 2018 for sure, we kind of knew that the business that we had was pretty much tapped out.
And that was also kind of the point where starting to look at generational transfer of, know, mom and dad has been, you know, working on the farm, you know, all the time we were growing up while my mom also had another full-time job. I'm sure that's the case with many, you know, aspiring and farmers is, you know, you got to do what you got to do to make it all work. you know, I say, and my dad always says the best way to...
Jenny (08:29)
Yeah.
Dale Wickham (08:34)
make a small fortune in farming is to start with a big fund.
Jenny (08:38)
Yep, I've heard that many times.
Dale Wickham (08:43)
Yeah, so you so yeah go ahead
Jenny (08:44)
So.
I was just gonna say that...
First of all, just want to say I didn't realize that you guys did so many pumpkins growing up. That's what my family did. I grew up with just like pumpkins every single fall. had a far that if I could talk fall farm stand. And so that's really cool. I didn't know that you guys did so much of that when you were young. But one thing that you said that I want to come back to you is that you started adding all these concepts to get people to come in. So you had the pumpkins and then you added ice cream and you added a bunch of other things. And over the years you guys have just
been adding and adding and adding. And I think that's something that I want to come back to and talk about more in our conversation because where you're at now is that you have, how many acres is Wickham Farms now? Yeah. And then you have.
Dale Wickham (09:32)
about 120.
Jenny (09:36)
this huge agritourism farm and you have all these different concepts where you have pick your own apples, pumpkins, flowers, plus you have food, ice cream, a bakery. I mean, there's so many things I can't even like go off of how many are there. Yeah. So do you feel like that is part of your like strategy now is just adding things to get people out there? Cause I know anytime I've been to Wickham Farms, which has been a lot.
Dale Wickham (09:51)
Yeah.
Jenny (10:06)
There's so much to do there that I feel like one person can't possibly do everything in one time. So it's kind of like, well, we have to come back. So I'm curious about what kind of has led to that decision of where you guys are now, because when I first met you and your parents, you were just like a CSA farm doing.
Dale Wickham (10:06)
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (10:28)
vegetables and then I think you had like pick your own flowers too and then you guys did like the fall concept stuff but how did you end up where you are now?
Dale Wickham (10:28)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, know, step by, it was a stepwise thing for sure. But I think, you know, the more we the more things we kind of added to our business model, the more we kind of started to focus on our guests experience on our farm. And just the more I think we saw, you know, the the legs, the legs of that type of business and that it could
it really could make a difference in bringing out more people to our farm. And really is only, you know, it became, you know, the only way to make our operation truly viable. know, commodity agriculture is hard in, you know, for a lot of reasons, especially on, you know, 120 acres for us, like, right, it's great for our business model. But, you know, we can't make a living growing corn. you know, so we tried to do the vegetables.
And we did that very successfully with a CSA program for I think 11 years. So that would be that era that you were talking about. And we were feeding about 450 families a week in that program. And that was about like the max that our land could really handle and maintain good rotation and stuff like that, while also having the space that we'd already committed to the pumpkin patch.
you know, it's more the experiential side of the business. And it just, again, we're stubborn, we're farmers. And I feel like we really, we worked so hard for so many years to make that CSA work. Because it was important. it's like, that's our roots, right? Is making things grow. And it just got to the point where I think...
that part of our business was not growing anymore. And our margins were kind of, were compressing a lot, especially as, you know, labor rates have gone up. And we'd also, you know, and then again, so that was kind of stagnant, but this other business is really, really growing fast because it seemed like there's just, that's what people wanted. And I think we were doing a good job. Yeah, the agritourism part of the business was really,
Jenny (12:57)
the agritourism part of the business.
Dale Wickham (13:01)
growing so fast. And so we kind of were at this point where because people demanded that and we're so excited about it. We got to a point where we couldn't make both businesses work in terms of our time and our money. So we tried to, you know, hire, you know, more of a full time, you know, farm farm manager and this was hard for us to be able to keep that CSA going. And so
You know, we just made this decision. Well, you know, we have this one business that's really fun. People are coming out to the farm, which was awesome. And it was growing so fast that we just went all in on it. And so now today, like our mission is more centered around, know, we want to bring out, you know, families to, you know, make memories through interactive activities on our farm. You know, we want to stay true to our agricultural roots and bring like that's essential to all the experiences we offer.
But getting people to the farm is essential and that experiential business is the possibilities are endless.
Jenny (14:09)
Yeah, I love that you say that. So probably a lot of people listening to this right now.
A lot of them might have you pick flower operations and some of them have other things going on at their farm, like maybe pumpkins or corn mazes or something like that. But there's some people who are just doing flowers. And I think that it's important for people to hear what you just said, that you just got to give people what they want. And if you are finding that people are asking for things or there's demand for something, it's okay to be flexible with your business vision and just kind of like go in the direction that.
Dale Wickham (14:24)
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (14:42)
seems to be working, right? I mean, that hasn't led you astray.
Dale Wickham (14:47)
Yeah, no, for sure. you know, think having that flexibility is important. I think it is important though, like the, you know, having that passion to still like, again, for me, like my earliest met, like I have memories of that. And like, that's so deeply coded into who I am with like the corn maze when I was six years old and, you know, seeing people come out to our farm. that's like, that passion was there for it. And so it's like, once you saw that, you know,
Jenny (14:56)
Yeah, of course.
Dale Wickham (15:16)
there's actually an opportunity to match my passion, you know, with a viable business that's growing. Then it was like, okay, I'm all in. I think that was really important to going so far all in is that like, it was a mix of passion and opportunity.
Jenny (15:23)
Yeah.
Yeah, and I love that because people sometimes say like, if you just follow your passion, you will always be successful. like sometimes that's not necessarily true to the point where you may have to just tweak that. So your passion aligns with whatever opportunity is presenting itself. So I love that you said that. And something else that you said earlier was really making sure that your customer experience is exceptional. And this is something I talk about a lot with my students when I go to conferences and stuff,
Dale Wickham (15:45)
Okay.
Jenny (16:02)
because I think it's something that kind of gets missed when people are just starting a business. They feel really passionate about what they're doing and they're really creating something for themselves, which of course, if you're passionate in doing that, you will attract people because there's shared values there. But tell us a little bit about how centered around your customer experience you are and...
Dale Wickham (16:16)
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (16:25)
I know that you guys just focus on that so much and it has made you so successful. So could you tell us just a little bit more about your thoughts behind that?
Dale Wickham (16:34)
It's the number one thing we factor in in any decision we're ever making is the guest's experience. So, you know, if we're looking at any sustainable way to increase our attendance or, you know, hopefully, you know, as visitors come out to, whether it's our farm or some of the listeners' farms, you know, we want to increase our attendance.
people coming to the farms and we want to increase their you know, how much they're spending on the farm, right? We want them to find a lot of value there and for me and what we've talked to our team Matt knows this your husband knows this it's always the only way to influence attendance or that you know what people spend long term is by Focusing on the guest experience like do you want more people to come? Okay, give them a better experience and
Jenny (17:31)
Yeah, love that. All about the customer.
Dale Wickham (17:34)
Yeah, and they'll let you know.
Jenny (17:37)
Whether
you want to be told or not.
Dale Wickham (17:39)
Yeah,
yeah, it's the only thing that matters is how we take care of them.
Jenny (17:47)
Yeah, I love that. when, let's talk a little bit about, obviously you are creating this amazing customer experience, which you guys really do excel at. But from the business standpoint, obviously you are a business, you are here to earn a profit. So not only can you have a sustainable business, but to make that customer experience better, what are some key statistics that you track that let you know that you are doing things right in your business?
Dale Wickham (18:17)
Yeah, again, the T scorecards, mean, obviously, you know, we want to hear guest feedback. We do get it, you know, whether it's in person or online and reviews. But for us, like we're at the point too, where, you know, we have enough data of, you know, people coming in the door where, you know, if attendance is growing, you know, then that generally means that's a positive thing. Because for our business, we're not really
You know, we do, we do so a lot of social media marketing, but we don't really put much into anything paid and stuff like that. So a lot of our growth comes from the idea of, what I would consider like a net promoter score, right? If your, your families come, come to the farm, they have a really good time and hopefully they advocate for us in the community. And then that brings more people. So yeah, we're definitely looking at, you know, again, if we're
we're meeting the needs of our guests. want rave reviews on the farm. We want to minimize all those points of friction of where experiences can get soured and stuff like that. And if we do those things, we want to see our attendance going up. And then we want to see that spend per guest also going up in the areas that we're tracking. And we track it very well.
Jenny (19:38)
And do you track everything through your point of sale system? And that's just like everything goes through there. So you can just use that for all the analytics, right?
Dale Wickham (19:48)
Yeah, we do having it all, you know all having one point of sale we use Shopify for all of our point of sale our website and and everything like that and our and our ticketing So like all three of those touch points for the guests are all integrated at one point of sale Which has been really really good for us in that We have all the data. It's in one place and it then it becomes easy We then you know take it off from there and we have you know, a few other templates
that we track on a daily basis that have paid a lot of dividends for our business. that's, know, basically I have someone look at Shopify every single day where our farm is open and record the weather. That's just literally, because that's the, know, whether you're a flower farm, a pumpkin patch or anything, I think the weather, if we're in the experience business of trying to get people to come to the farm, the weather is going to be a huge factor in how many people show up that day.
And then we're recording how many people are showing up, whether they're a seasoned pass holder or a ticketed guest just buying a single day ticket, or they're on a field trip or a group. So we know who's coming in the door every day. And then we also record what the spend is in every single point of sale location on our farm. And it seems like a big task, but again, it's all in the
It's all coded in Shopify. you know, we can have, we can have, you know, 30 point of sale iPads on a busy fall day, you know, all going, but it's very easy to see, well, here was the revenue that day at in the Apple orchard. Here was the revenue at our bakery and stuff like that. And that's been really helpful too, to also identify like when you have an issue with guest experience, at least for us, because, you know, if you start to see, you know,
Jenny (21:19)
It's all automated.
Dale Wickham (21:46)
some of those, you know, what we call like direct or your per cap spend go down in a certain concept. might be that you got to start asking you then you can easily see us. You start asking questions like, we not delivering a good product or do we not have the capacity to meet the demand that comes on a busy day for us? That's really important to keep up with scale.
Jenny (22:09)
And just to clarify for people who are listening, when you say per cap spend, you are meaning like the average earned per person that walks in your door, correct? Okay, thanks. Average revenue, yep.
Dale Wickham (22:19)
Yes, average revenue per person.
Jenny (22:24)
And I think something else that might be helpful for people listening is to get a better idea of how you actually do your ticketing and how your farm actually runs. So when people come to your farm, they pay a fee for a ticket to just walk in the door. So you have a flat attendance, I guess attendance fee, I don't know what you would call it, for anybody who walks onto the farm.
And then you also have people who can buy season passes that can come a certain number of times or multiple, or I don't know, why don't you tell everyone just how that works? Yeah.
Dale Wickham (22:56)
Sure, yes,
so I think you're right on. You can either purchase an admission ticket, that's a one day admission, and that includes, we have all these activities, so that gives you that full day access to enjoy our entire farm. Or you can purchase a season pass, we offer, that's for people who want to come back again and again, that's unlimited admissions for a season. So for local families, know, they're...
they're coming five or six times in a season, sometimes more. We have people that we see multiple times a week with that.
Jenny (23:31)
Yeah, and your season is, when are you open?
Dale Wickham (23:34)
We open the end of June and we are open through Halloween.
Jenny (23:41)
So people are buying those admission tickets to get in the door. But then once they're in the door, they have all these things that they can do. They don't have to pay extra for it. However, you do have things that people pay for once they're in the door as sort of like, I don't want to call them add-ons, but just so for everyone listening, they're kind of getting a better understanding of how your farm works. So I think that's going to be helpful for everyone.
Dale Wickham (23:59)
For sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the model,
you know, essentially, again, the first important thing is that people come when they come, you know, when they come, you know, there's an admission. And then that'll include pretty much all their activities. But while they're there, you know, people are spending three to five hours sometimes on the farm, especially in the fall. So they're going to we have a lot of food. We do a lot of food. So people are going to spend on food. They can pick apples and pumpkins and flowers. So there's all those sales.
Jenny (24:14)
Yeah.
Dale Wickham (24:37)
as well. And then, you know, we've got a country store where we have, you know, gift items and, you know, t-shirts, sweatshirts, stuff like that. So that's really how the revenue, you know, comes in. But it all is predicated on the fact first that people show up.
Jenny (24:54)
Yes, absolutely. So I'm curious about what kind of systems, like obviously you have to have so many systems on your farm. You have a lot of people that work for you. I think mostly part-time people during your busy season.
You have all these different concepts. You have the food. You have the bakery. You have the flowers. What kind of systems have you implemented on your farm, either with just like regular work or maybe with your people that you feel have really made a difference in how well-oiled your operation feels? Does anything come to mind for you?
Dale Wickham (25:31)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's been
the every year you get we we learn trial by fire a lot. So we have I think we have gotten to a good spot with a lot of systems. So I think the first one that we kind of already touched on that's been really important has been the point of sale because the point of sale has. Allows us to build a lot of systems on top of that. Like I said, you know, having someone be able to then take the point of sale information and.
you know, have a consistent template for a spreadsheet that tracks all that revenue and who's coming to the farm. What the weather is has been really good to have systems to analyze, you know, our growth and our revenue. But also like to forecast ordering for, cause we have food that we have to order in for massive amounts of people. And you know, knowing whether having an idea whether, you know, 10,000 people are going to show up.
on the farm in a given week or, you know, 5,000 people that week is a big spread in terms of ordering when you're, when you have, when you have perishables and stuff like that. So again, that point of sale allowed us to have the data to then be able to forecast, you know, how to order food, how to staff, you know, if we know it's the first weekend in October and attendance is going to be, it's traditionally 2X what it was the weekend before. If weather was good, well,
we can again make better decisions that way. Just the scheduling, having a rhythm on scheduling software, we've been using when to work as a scheduling software for our employees for years and for us it's very consistent, but we have a schedule that needs to get published every single week. I mean, there's endless, endless, endless systems. mean, are there any specific ones that you're...
really curious about.
Jenny (27:30)
I just always like to ask people about the ones that come to mind that have been the biggest for them because I know for a lot of business owners, when you're starting out and you're scaling up, you're sometimes scrambling to put systems in place as issues arise. so for example, something for me,
Probably the biggest life-changing system we had was like task management, a task management software. Cause like I didn't have that before I started hiring employees and I just kind of was like doing things on the fly. And so I think that that's making those data-driven decisions.
from your systems is so important. This is something that anybody who's listened to the podcast before knows that we talk about all the time, but that record keeping in order to do that forecasting, like maybe whoever is listening to this, might not be forecasting food or like a large staff like Dale is, but it's probably going to look something like forecasting your farmer's market attendance, like what you're going to be bringing to that market that day based on past year's experience or just like your crop planning.
and what people are liking, what's selling, and that kind of stuff. Now, something that you came back to that I'm actually really curious about is this doesn't really have to do with systems per se, but the weather. So obviously for you, if you have a whole season of rain, which I know you had, not this past season, but the season before,
that can be really disappointing for your attendance and for other traditional farming where the weather obviously can affect your yields and everything, it's really hard to forecast and plan for that. So I'm curious about how you guys sort of just take that into account when you're doing your planning and if you have any systems in place for planning for that.
Dale Wickham (29:25)
Yeah, good, good question. mean, that's like the one thing we can't control is the weather. so, we've expanded the time of year from, know, originally when I was young and just making money really in October to, you know, now we're open from the end of June through Halloween. So as always, like, you know, there's ways to hedge.
Jenny (29:30)
Can't control.
Dale Wickham (29:48)
some weather risk by expanding that season, right? Like if we get really rainy October, while September, since we have an apple orchard, we have five acres of high density, you pick apples. And that's been huge for building a legitimate September business. mean, there's, September's not October.
But it's really a strong business. And I can remember back from when I was growing up, we didn't have an orchard, we just had the pumpkins. so, you know, it would be September 30th and like, no one's there. And then the first weekend of October, everyone's out because it's like October's pumpkin season. So I think adding the orchard was huge for us. You know, at the end of the day, like adding the...
Jenny (30:32)
Mm-hmm.
Dale Wickham (30:42)
you know, having the flower business in the summer, where we have a lot of people that come out for our Sunflower Festival. We've been doing it for like, and doing it in my opinion, a pretty really good job for the last seven years. So like that also helps edge that weather risk so that, you know, yeah, we had a totally rainy October last year. And yes, that takes off like, you know, that changes.
That changes a lot as far as our year end, our profitability snapshot for a year. If October's raining right now, that hurts. But we've got a strong enough business around it where it's not the end of the world.
Jenny (31:24)
Yeah. So you're diversified enough where you're really mitigating your risk from just depending on one singular event in like one month out of the year. So that's great. now you guys have a lot of, well, at least used to have a lot of events. feel like you still do, cause you do the sunflower fast in the summer. You also used to do the lavender fast. Plus I know you guys have weekends throughout the fall that sort of have like a theme or like an event to them. And does that really help get people out to the farm?
Dale Wickham (31:55)
It does. For us, it's not as big of a part of the businesses that as it probably used to be, as far as because, you know, for us, it's really about scale, like for just for our business in particular, like that's what makes it all work. So for us, the different events is like more of a way
Jenny (32:13)
Mm-hmm.
Dale Wickham (32:17)
you know, to showcase different parts of the experience or maybe bring different people to the farm. But the difference between, you know, some of those events and like the scale, what I would call the scale of it, I would consider like the whole whole fall, right, is an event. Every day is an event. And so we've gone more to that model of like where we, you know, every day should feel special to the guests that are coming.
Jenny (32:21)
I love that.
Yeah. Yep.
that.
Dale Wickham (32:44)
that are coming to the farm. so like we look at that season as an event versus, you know, a one-off way to market to certain people. Again, that's more of like bringing different people. I would say it can be different.
Jenny (32:59)
Yeah, I love that.
So it's so interesting and really inspiring to hear how, like you can tell how passionate you are about your customer experience and just making this such a super special place for people and for families to come. And I think that for anybody who has an agritourism type farm or a UPEC operation, that's what's really gonna get people to talk about you and get you to come back. So I see that as like a theme that kind of keeps coming up through our conversation. And back to, I kind of want
Dale Wickham (33:28)
For sure.
Jenny (33:30)
to
go back to you as a business owner. Obviously, you run the farm with your family and everything, but a lot of entrepreneurs or new farmers or even experienced farmers that are trying to start up a new business or new operation, I find this theme a lot of times where
it can be very easy to get intimidated by scale and by big dreams and by big revenue numbers. so like me personally, I mean, you know, my farm, we're like super small, teeny tiny. That's what works for us. But within like my small business model, I feel like I really had to think big and think way beyond what I thought was even possible for me to make my business viable. And so I think that's something that you guys do really well as you have those mindset shifts of like really
thinking big and knowing that you're capable of doing it. And so I'm just curious for you as a person, is that something that you feel like you've always had or was it really hard to make some decisions based on the scale that you were targeting or trying to get to? Just curious about that.
Dale Wickham (34:39)
Mm-hmm.
Good question. So I am a very competitive person for sure. think that's self self-awareness thing. A lot of entrepreneurs probably are. So, you know, growing up my outlet for being competitive was sports, right? know, baseball was my thing, played all through high school, played in college. And then it's like, you know, I had this, you know, and I loved working with on the farm with my family, but then, you know,
Jenny (34:48)
I'm
Dale Wickham (35:12)
getting out of college is like, okay, like probably a pretty high intensity person generally. it's like anything we do, we're going to do the best we can. but the other thing that I always think, I think that kind of, for me has been a good mindset to not be afraid of scale and not be afraid to like start small. that like, grew up, you know, you know, playing, again, playing baseball again, these guys, my reference, my dad would always say, like, whenever you get to the next level, like you go from being big fish in a small pond.
to small fish in a big ocean. like, so I kind of had that mindset, like every step, whether it's, know, modified baseball in seventh grade to being on varsity, then to playing division one at college, like you always are leveling up to be, you're always a small fish. And so I think playing that forward into business, being comfortable, like that there's always a bigger fish. And, you know, so we started, we, in 2019, when I came back to the farm,
college, we had this 120 acres, nothing built out on it as far as infrastructure to accommodate people. had an apple orchard there, five acres of apples, but there was no infrastructure. So we had a blank slate. And so one of the really good things for me, and I think our business and our family is like, we are part of these organizations that
there's other people in our business. There's a lot of bigger fish. So when in 2019 perspective, it's like everyone's a bigger fish, right? Like we had nothing, but we had people that we could talk to and like, you know, it's like, well, all right, we have this plan and I see this guy doing this in Des Moines, Iowa. And there's these people doing it in California and in Pennsylvania and you know, in all these other areas. Well,
And it's going to work for us too. We just have to do a good job. Right. So like there, the templates were there and was able to form relationships with people and travel. Like I think you mentioned earlier that, you know, Matt and I traveled to other farms and I talked to him a week ago or so. I was like, we got to go out. We got to get out again a little bit this year. I don't want to get us too comfortable. Um, cause like, you know, we're sure we've grown like crazy in five years, but there's a lot more bigger, stronger, faster fish.
So let's go learn from them and see how they're doing it and take what we like and make it ours. But I think, you know, just understanding that mindset that there's always someone out there doing it. So you just got to be persistent enough to find them and then take their brains, get in the room. you know, yeah, that's been huge.
Jenny (37:58)
Yeah, so I love that you said get in the room because I feel like that's super important for like any kind of business owners to just get in the room with people who are.
maybe not smarter than you, like you said, they're kind of setting the template and you can go learn from them. And I know that you guys always go to the NAFTA conference and that's coming up or maybe happening in February of this year, 2025. So would you say that that's been a really helpful place for you to find inspiration and get to learn things from other people?
Dale Wickham (38:20)
Yeah.
Yeah.
For sure, and again, in addition to the conference, but then being able to form those relationships and get out and visit people. It is amazing when you're talking to other business owners. think every business owner wants to grow their business. Maybe not grow, sorry, I shouldn't say grow, but improve. It's amazing how open a lot of people will be because
you never know who you're going to learn from. like, think the best people in business are generally, you know, very open. want, they want to help you grow or give you their perspective. And because then, you know, that pays it forward for them. Like, you know, they might get something from you. So just seeing how welcoming and accommodating people are who are, know, and again, in this, in a lot of these industries, like farming, you know, flower farming, you know,
It's agritourism with pumpkin patches and apple orchards. There's people in the business and it's not necessarily like we're not all competing for the same customers all the time. it's like, and even if we are, people want a good experience. So high tide raises all boats. So being open to that I think has been a really good thing to help us grow and really make sure we're getting the best ideas.
Jenny (39:53)
Yeah, I love that. think that for some people though, they find it really challenging to find and connect with other people like them or people that they aspire to be like. And so I think it is hard.
I know for me, I felt like this when I was first starting out. I felt very lonely. Like didn't know anyone else that was really on my journey. And I went to conferences and I joined associations. And just over time was the only way that I was able to form really positive relationships with other people. And...
learn from them. So for anyone that might be listening that might feel like, I don't really know how to do that. Like you just kind of have to put yourself out there and show up to things, find places like conferences and associations that you can go to, just like go meet whoever you can. You can learn something from everyone. I think that's an important lesson in that Dale's imparting here. So.
Dale Wickham (40:50)
Yeah. Yeah.
And don't be afraid to travel and just show up, you know.
Jenny (40:55)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Just go show up somewhere. Love that.
Dale Wickham (41:01)
Yeah, I mean,
lot of times if people find out like, you know, I've shown up to farms just on a way more on a planned trip, but I don't know the owner or anything. And like you're walking around and you know, you start having a conversation and they realize you're in the same business. again, then boom, it's like they roll out the right carpet and you're talking and you're best friends. So you never know. You just never know.
Jenny (41:26)
Yeah, awesome. So I kind of want to change the tide with our conversation right now.
I think that we are probably going to come back to the same thing we've kind of been talking about this whole time, but so many people, the number one question that I get asked is about marketing. And they're always like, well, how do I market my business? How do I get more customers? How do I get in contact with people? And I feel like you have already been saying it this whole time is make your customer experience so unbelievably amazing that they have no choice but to talk about you and to come back and tell other people about that.
But I'm curious if there's other things that you find are helpful to spread the word about what you're doing and help make positive first impressions to people who may not know about you yet and other things that you have in your strategy when you're trying to get that attendance number up.
Dale Wickham (42:24)
Yeah, again, yeah, so for us, like our overall marketing budget per se is very, very, very small. And that's just the truth. And yeah, that strategy has been focusing on the guest experience and a lot of like, I think we use social media a lot. I think that's really helped us grow a lot. And what has helped us is that things like signature,
Jenny (42:37)
Love that.
Dale Wickham (42:53)
Signature foods and stuff like that, you know finding like we want to make our guests Yeah, yeah, so, you know, for example, we have you know Hit item is called it's called a shake up a fall shake up on our farm and it's got apple cider slushy No ice cream cider slushy and a fresh doughnut on top of it and it comes in a really, you know Nice mason jar mug people can kind of see the different layers of this thing and it's really really popular
Jenny (42:57)
Tell us more about that.
Yeah.
Dale Wickham (43:24)
and so, okay, back to our other conversation. I actually got this idea on a trip in, I was in Iowa at another farm who had something kind of similar, and this was in 2020. and I came back and was like, Hey, we got to try and do something kind of like this. Here's the, here's the general concept. And, know, a couple of people on our team, Judy, our operations manager and one of our high school employees.
kind of whipped up this thing called ShakeOut and they showed it to me and I was like, oh, that's really good. The next day, I posted on social media and it gets a thousand shares, thousand plus comments and it just ripped and our phones ringing off the hook. like, hey, can I come get the drink? Like, and since then it just like, it's crazy. Everyone wants to buy it. And then, you know, people come out and they take a picture with it and then post it and you know, and so
you know, again, in our job, our job on the farm is to make, you know, one, we want our farm to be like, when people come to be an expression of our values and our, and what we think, you know, looks good and is good and all that. But, you know, also like when, you know, when our guests buy our food or on the farm, we want them to look good to their audiences on social media. So we pay a lot of attention to how we, how the farm looks.
how the food presents, making it signature, something that people want to share and talk about. We don't want a, yeah, it was okay. People are coming once a year. And so we really have to be really focused on making it special. And so when they do that, a lot of times they share it on social media. So that's created a really good organic social media presence, I would say. And then being consistent.
through the years too, like I said, that kind of like that idea of like that, promoter store, like it only works if you're consistent. And it's a long process, right? Like we had, and you know, we had a business in the early 2000s where, you know, again, corn maze, stuff like that. People were coming steadily, you know, and then we have, again, 2019, we kind of had an opportunity to move from eight acres to 120 acres and explode the growth. But, you know, all that foundation for the 20 years prior, like,
helps that right. And yeah, so yeah, I mean, there's no I would say one thing I believe in marketing, there's no hack to marketing. Right? You know, you can do something. From my perspective, I feel like social media, whether it's a paid campaign, or you know, emails, or campaigns, like is all, you know, it's all it's all good. But like sometimes what works one year
Jenny (45:49)
Yeah.
Right.
Dale Wickham (46:15)
might not work the next and it's always changing. like while it works, people who are good at it are really good at it. For me and for us, it's like to be able to keep up with all everything that changes is a monumental undertaking, right? And I'm sure you have a lot of really good experience and you could probably like someone like you who actually knows how to do it could probably help the business like ours tremendously. But for us, it's like rather than learn how to
Jenny (46:16)
Yeah.
So much.
Dale Wickham (46:42)
figure out their Facebook algorithms and how to spend money and create a good marketing funnel that way. We've already got a lot of people coming, so we need to just blow people's minds with what they see on the farm.
Jenny (46:55)
Yeah, and I...
I want to just like capture everything you're saying and like put it in a bottle so I can sprinkle it all over everyone who comes to talk to me about this stuff all the time because I don't know really fancy marketing techniques. I don't really focus on social media. mean, we do social media and I think that it's really helpful. Like you're saying, especially because what I think social media does is it just accelerates word of mouth. Like back in the day before social media, if someone loved your farm, they would tell their friends and their family, but like now,
Dale Wickham (47:24)
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (47:28)
they tell the whole universe in like one click. And so it just accelerates word of mouth. And so I think that marketing, the whole basis of it is word of mouth and referrals. And so that is like, like when I teach people about this stuff, that's like the very basis of what we do. And then the rest of it is just sort of like keeping them engaged. And there's various ways to do that. Like we do a lot of like email marketing just to like keep people engaged and keep us like top of mind, but like,
Dale Wickham (47:33)
I agree.
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (47:56)
the whole basis of it is just like them having an awesome, awesome experience and then telling other people about it. That's all it really is. Yeah.
Dale Wickham (48:05)
Yeah, no, I
think that's a really good point. Like social media is an accelerator and that can be good and bad, right? So like it, agree. I agree with that for sure.
Jenny (48:11)
Yes.
A quick funny story about that not being great is we at one day...
random story, but I think people might appreciate this who are listening. I had this great idea that I was gonna put review cards in all of our bouquets for a couple of weeks at the Farmers Market one year. So was like, I wanna get some more reviews. People are raving about us. So it was just like a little business card that was like, if you loved our flowers, leave us a five-star review on Google, whatever. And this, we have the most beautiful flowers, right? But this lady took the worst photo of our flowers I've ever seen.
Dale Wickham (48:35)
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (48:51)
God
awful, she took them and arranged them terribly, the lighting was awful, put it right up on Google and I was like, no. It's probably still there, but I was like, she met really well, she's like, these are so beautiful, but it such a terrible picture, I cringed a little bit. So it was a good review, but if you do something that's so great, they're gonna tell.
Dale Wickham (48:56)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Jenny (49:15)
everyone about it. Actually, I I read a statistic once that if, I'm not going to remember the exact statistic, but something like if someone has a good experience with you, they tell on average like two to three people. But if they have a bad experience with you, they tell an average of like seven to 10 people or something like that. So anyways, going off on a tangent about that, but yeah.
Dale Wickham (49:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
No, there's
a lot of changes you could go about from guest feedback. You know, the whole, yeah, I think it's, you know, it's important though to pay attention to when people do have complaints. because I think one of the things, one of the realizations like I've had and trying to be better about, really focused on it last year is that, like when we're working hard on creating a great guest experience, sometimes that you take it personally when someone says what you did wrong, right?
Jenny (49:38)
thing. Yeah.
Mm-hmm, absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Dale Wickham (50:05)
But the reality is like, we really need to be thankful that that person said that because, and the other statistic is that like for every one person that actually points out the thing that is wrong that they didn't like in their experience, there's like five times as many people that had that same experience, but just didn't say anything. And I think a lot of our guts when we're, we work hard, like it's not, it's not about how hard we work or how much, how
Jenny (50:26)
didn't say anything.
Dale Wickham (50:35)
what kind of a person we are, but we're not perfect. And so when someone points something out, like don't have the gut reaction of like that person is just. They're a jerk. Like, you know, like maybe take what they say seriously. Now I caveat that of like, you know, you don't want to be, know, when someone has like, when someone's personally attacking an employee about their facial, you know, appearance, like that person's ugly and they have a billion misspellings in there.
Jenny (50:48)
Right.
Dale Wickham (51:05)
in their comments and their reviews. Sometimes then you might be like, okay, maybe I don't want this customer, but like, I think it's important always to like, be like, even in those cases, like, wait, was their donut not hot? Like, or was something wrong? Like, you know, yeah, like they're expressing it poorly and we might not want them back as a customer, but they might have a point. there's, and they're definitely not the only one that had that experience. So that was a tangent for marketing.
Jenny (51:07)
Thank
But it helps you.
Right. Yeah.
No, I think that's a great point is that you're
even if it's not the most positive feedback, that's only going to help you get better. And I'm going to point out some of your weaknesses that you can improve on. And that's only going to help your business. So, you know, carefully listening to that negative feedback and some negative feedback is totally valid and can really help you improve your business where, like you said, other times it's just like somebody's being a jerk and you have to just kind of discern between the two of those, but both can be really valuable.
Dale Wickham (52:02)
Yeah. And you
have to choose your priorities as a business too, because not everyone is for you. There's people that will give us feedback, well, you shouldn't charge admission. For us, our whole business is based on that. So we can't necessarily pursue that, but are there ways that we could make our farm feel like
Jenny (52:09)
Yeah. Yes.
Dale Wickham (52:30)
you're getting a good value for your admission. know, is there something else? you know, as with everything, there's no black and white.
Jenny (52:39)
Right, yes, there's never black and white. There's always gray. So, all right, I wanna ask you one last question, Dale. Just a basic question. Are there any resources or places that farmers could go who might be getting started with their agritourism business or you-pick business that want to improve it and get better at it? Is there anything you recommend?
Dale Wickham (53:02)
Yeah, I mean, I think that like you said earlier that NAFTAMA, North America and Farmers Direct Marketing Association, it's a mouthful, but NAFTAMA, if you look it up, NAFDMA, like is a great start because just because there's a lot of people in the network and a lot of them are just starting. And then, you know, a lot of them have been doing it for 25, 30 plus years. So you get that full range. There's other groups, again, for agritourism. I know this group.
Jenny (53:09)
Yep.
Dale Wickham (53:31)
called the maze that a lot of people are a part of.
And yeah, I think that's a good place to start just to at least get some contacts that you know are going to be really welcoming. Indian Map is very welcoming. Everyone in there, again, believes in that high-tie race all-posed philosophy. So that's a good place to start. And then you can kind of look at a member map of, well, here are all these farms that I never knew existed that maybe I could go see. Maybe they're in my area.
Jenny (54:04)
Yeah, all right, awesome. Thanks for sharing that. Anything else you'd like to share that you think would be valuable for somebody kind of starting out?
Dale Wickham (54:13)
There's so many ways you can go. Just got out what works for you.
Jenny (54:15)
And you've said a lot.
I love that. Well, thank you, Dale, so much for coming on. I know you're super busy and I really appreciate you talking with us today. And I think this is going to be really insightful for a lot of people who have been looking at that agritourism sales outlet and thinking about Yupix and making those experiences for people on their farms. So can you just tell everyone where they can find out more about you and how they can visit Wickham Farms?
Dale Wickham (54:46)
Yeah, right on our website, wicchamfarms.com. W-I-C-K-H-A-M, farms.com. you can see all about the farm. Everything's right there. You can email me too, directly, if you have specific questions. my email is also very easy. It's dale, D-A-L-E, at wicchamfarms.com.
Jenny (55:10)
Awesome. Thanks Dale. And if you guys ever do get the chance to come up to Central Western New York State, they're in Penfield, New York, and it is an absolutely amazing farm with an incredible customer experience. So if you're ever in the area, be sure to stop by. So thanks Dale, and we will see everyone next time on the next episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast.
