Springhill Beef Co

Red Meat Value+d Program 1

5 Sept 2022

About

Adam and Jody Turner own Springhill Beef Co, a first-generation family farming business from the Hunter Valley, NSW. Since 2016, Spring hill Beef has continued to scale their operation from approximately 300 acres with their first property, to adding additional properties of 180 acres and 1400 acres in 2021. The farming operation is proudly using regenerative practices focusing on soil health, biodiversity, minimising chemical inputs and using holistic management to produce sustainable, single source grass fed beef.

In 2020, they commenced selling branded beef directly to consumers via markets, their own website and a local grocer with a vision to create a successful, scalable model and introduce new value-added concepts into their range. Their current range of premium retail beef cuts are cryovac packed and then packaged in a specialised temperature-controlled box and delivered to customers via refrigerated courier.

Program Journey

When Adam and Jody came into stage three, they had set a target to achieve approximately 120 subscribers to their meat boxes, processing 4 beasts per month and delivering a $2000 profit margin. Their 6-month roadmap set out some clear milestones they were seeking to achieve during the program including:
• Utilise the carcase modelling tool to develop a cut sheet to determine subscription pricing
• Finalise value chain elements including the securing of a regular processor, butcher and chilled courier
• Develop customer journey plan and digital marketing strategy to increase customer acquisition and eventual retention
• Update ecommerce website, launch direct to consumer subscription business model and finalise product packaging

Since undertaking stage three of the program, Adam and Jody were able to accelerate their growth and make significant progress through the roadmap they had developed to be able to establish a strong supply and processing side of their business. In particular, the successful strategic decision to purchase a butcher shop was a significant achievement for the business, helping the company to scale quickly and overcome some processing challenges.

Similarly, with the guidance of the Farmers2Founders team, Springhill Beef is developing a strong brand strategy and marketing plan for the next 6-12 months, with investment in videography, building of a new ecommerce platform to optimise the customer buying journey and implementing new back-end software to increase retention rates of customers. In addition, the securing of new cold logistics partners with different couriers will open up new areas of distribution for their subscription beef boxes. As a result, Springhill Beef has set a new target of growth to increase monthly subscribers to at least 500 per month within the next 6 months. The business has achieved a great deal during the value+d program with the founders developing a much clearer understanding of their target customer segments and therefore better identifying the business and brand purpose to communicate their value proposition and vision. The business is also now in a position to employ a part time marketing person to help the founders with the implementation of their digital marketing strategy and social media.

We really enjoyed the program! We were able to meet other like-minded red meat producers and listening to their journey and sharing ours with them. It was a great group of people where we could talk openly and honestly about our ideas no matter how big or small. All the coaches were extremely great to deal and coming from different backgrounds to help us out in all the avenues that we needed to cover to develop and produce our value-add product. It is a great program that I hope will keep running so that there is always new and fresh ideas coming through for the Australia red meat industry along with supporting Australian farmers.

What's next

Over the next six months, Springhill Beef Co will be concentrating on building their subscription boxed beef business with a target of a consistent 500 customers per month purchasing 5kg boxes with a goal to move to a fortnightly cycle ordering system. The business is forecasting a $1M per year in total sales.

The purchase of their butcher shop involved the acquisition of well known, local brand Trunk’s Jerky and 130-year-old salami recipe. The acquisition of this new brand will allow the business to potentially explore a different brand hierarchy’s and new customer segments and channels (such as bottle shops and Hunter Valley retailers) through the development and trial of a value-added product portfolio through the Trunk’s brand whilst maintaining the proposition and D2C stream with the Springhill Beef brand.