Vermont Wagyu: Where History Meets E-Commerce
It’s likely Sheila Pantinkin and her family never set out to sell their Wagyu beef nationally. They were, after all, content to sell sides of their Vermont Wagyu beef to chefs in Michelin Star restaurants in New York City, who then fabricated them to their own specifications.
That had advantages, she told around 250 Wagyu breeders attending the 2021 American Wagyu Association annual conference in Fort Collins, Colo. “We had minimal cutting orders. We didn’t have to store any inventory. We didn’t have to have cold storage. We didn’t have to pack anything. We picked it up at the slaughterhouse and we brought it right down to New York City.”
But it also had disadvantages, said Pantinkin, who owns Vermont Wagyu along with her family, headquartered on an historic farm listed in the Parker Hill National Historic District of Rockingham, Vt. And that was, to use a well-worn cliché, putting all their eggs in one basket.
“We had an increasing risk of failure to pre-sell our inventory as our herd grew,” she said. The second disadvantage was they only had a handful of chefs and restaurants they were selling to. “And that’s what hit us with COVID.”
However, Pantinkin and her family began dabbling in e-commerce in late 2018 and 2019, sending emails to around 200 contacts she had in her cell phone, mostly friends and family. But that was a very small part of the business and the operation had 73 steers on feed when restaurants shut down.
Starting small in e-commerce gave Pantinkin a grasp on how to proceed when the operation had to make some hard decisions—sell the steers or pivot quickly into a new way of doing business. They chose to pivot, and Pantinkin used her lessons to provide insight for the Wagyu beef producers attending the conference.
It began when her four sons stepped up and said, “Hey, Mom, we got this.” They were scattered across the country, all living off-farm. One took over the marketing. Another tackled forecasting and financial predictions. All of them began emailing friends and business associates.
The contact list quickly grew from the initial 200. “We spent hundreds of hours on e-commerce processing in terms of just trying to figure it all out between packaging, shipping and fulfillment,” she told Wagyu breeders. “By the end of 2020, we were up to 3,000 (on the contact list). We had survived. And we were definitely viable.”
In fact, the demand for high-end beef took off during the pandemic, she said. The demand for the D2C space, or direct-to-consumer space, especially farm to table was insatiable.” That put added pressure on the operation, but they adapted and grew. They bought two small dairies that had closed to add to the 150 acres on the home farm. They added buildings and equipment to augment the existing barns on the farm that date back to the 1790s.
Interestingly, their customers are largely young men between 30 and 40 years old. “They usually live in urban areas. You can picture them using their Green Egg out in their urban backyard, if they have a backyard to use it in,” she quipped.
“We see everything, do everything and ship it out nationally now. About 80 percent of our product now goes nationally,” she said. The operation now has more than 10,000 contacts and is targeting 15,000 by the end of the year. In terms of revenue, online sales come in at 51 percent of the operation’s total and local sales count for 16 percent. The rest comes from their production sale where they offer bulls and females to other beef producers.
In the direct-to-consumer market, branding is very important. There, Vermont Wagyu can capitalize on the reputation of the state it calls home. “The name Vermont means a lot. It brings to mind quality. It brings to mind wholesomeness. These are things you want to keep track of if you’re going to have a marketing program.”
What’s more, when you’re a small producer like Vermont Wagyu, maintaining an adequate supply can be a challenge. To spread the wealth, so to say, they have built relationships with other Vermont ag producers to offer gift baskets.
“All our forecasts are based on what we have for supply,” she said, and there are only so many steaks in each carcass. So they limit the amount of steaks in each box and add other high-end Vermont products, like Jasper Hill cheeses and a custom-made cutting board. “We make our own maple syrup. So that’s another product we throw in there,” adding value to the customer experience.
For more information about Wagyu, go to www.wagyu.org.
