The Agricultural Approach to Small Business Management.
This article was originally published on the D Magazine website on 2019.05.30.
Anyone who works for a small business knows they must be prepared to wear many hats, sometimes in unison. As the Operations Wiseapple for ORCHARD At The OFFICE, I am at times required to take charge of logistics, customer service, marketing, vendor management, and accounts receivable – all in the same phone call.
Much of the practical experience I can share in business management I’ve gleaned from those who operate the original small business: the farmers throughout the world. Whether it’s “sixty acres up on the Caprock” James McMurtry sang of or a massive, county-sized ranch near the Rio Grande, there are certain basic principles a successful agrarian must adhere to. I have found that adhering to those principles has helped shape our success and make ORCHARD At The OFFICE the largest office fruit delivery service in Texas.
Here are some of the basic principles I can share:
KNOW THE “SHELF LIFE”
In our business, we deal with fresh fruit: bananas, clementines, JAZZ apples, avocados and more. Fresh fruit is, of course, perishable. It’s not going to maintain its freshness, or indeed the ability to be eaten, beyond a few days. This means our business processes are geared around purchase and distribution of fruit within the parameters of perishability – which means we can only be as “flexible” as our product allows.
This idea has broad applicability. A wedding photographer has a very specific window – the actual event – in which they absolutely must get their work done, regardless of time allotted for pre- and post-production. A restauranteur must keep careful track of the ingredients that comprise the items on their menu. “Use It or Lose It” – this is the understanding that nature creates deadlines. As a result…
NO EXCUSES
When the cotton is ready, it doesn’t care if the harvester is broken down, or if the farm is shorthanded or the landowner doesn’t really feel like “adulting”. Either the work gets done or the crop gets lost, which means a successful farmer, even one bereft of mechanical acumen or a line of credit, must devise creative solutions on the spot.
I cannot overstate how important this principle has been in practical application. Whether it’s being aroused from a lethargic moment with the thought of “those bananas need delivered by tomorrow!” or taking the time to work out how to get fruit delivered to Fort Worth in a timely fashion, it has helped me immensely to picture a farmer with a broken tractor part, looking at a field demanding urgent attention, and think “I’d better come up with something”. Necessity truly is the mother of invention and creative problem-solving is a source of self-confidence at any age.
YOU CAN’T FORCE THE CORN.
Genetic modification notwithstanding, crops will grow at their own pace. All the self-will, teeth-clenched determination, or plucky “can-do” attitude on earth won’t turn an apple seed into an apple tree overnight.
A billion dollars in funding will not turn a first-time entrepreneur into a success without a commensurate amount of experience.
As someone involved in marketing, I must always remember that no matter how determined I am to grow the business, I cannot convince, force, manipulate or cajole a person into eating more fresh fruit than they’re hungry for. When I remember that, instead of trying to squeeze water from a stone, I can focus my energy on spreading the word – in our case, Workplace Wellness Through Fresh Fruit. People who run businesses in the service industry understand: a person only wants so many haircuts, or guitar lessons, or high-bandwidth multi-channel digital receivers. Give your customers as much as they want, but don’t spend 50% of your time trying to get another 5% out of them…because you can’t force the corn. It will be ready in its own time.
MEMORIES OF THE ELEPHANT AND THE GOLDFISH
This could be as accurately described as needing the memory of the football coach and the kicker, or a hundred other analogies. Simply put, the idea is this: learn the long-term patterns and see trial-and-error as your most valuable instructor…but put mistakes immediately out of mind rather than dwell on them.
The hospitality industry has been known for being on the leading edge of the former for decades. Since the early 1980s, some hotel chains have been maintaining records of guest preferences, so that when that person checks into a hotel in Albany, there’s already an extra comforter and two hand towels in their room because that’s what they requested last time in Albuquerque. Medical and automotive centers will send out reminders of when service appointments might be made. Identifying patterns beyond the day-to-day, and taking action on them, requires the memory of an elephant.
Yet at the same time, the operator of a lawn service may mess up on a hedge trimming. If they decide that they “suck at life” and need to go home and nurse their self-pity with large quantities of wine, they won’t operate a lawn service very long. They need to accept responsibility, make appropriate amends with the property owner immediately – and move on. Self-doubt will sabotage their ability to be effective with their other jobs, so they need the memory of a goldfish. The moment has passed; focus on the present.
While I could enumerate other examples, I don’t want to run the risk of drifting into Poor Richard’s territory. There is no doubt operating a small business in any sector is demanding, difficult, and not for the faint of heart. However, the rewards that come with it – the fruits of our labor – are as enjoyable as an apple orchard…and we are proud to put agrarian effort into bringing that orchard to your office.
“We deliver fresh fruit to offices,” I say when asked by friends and family about ORCHARD At The OFFICE. The key to our success, the idea which has made us the largest office fruit delivery service in Texas since our 2010 inception, is that we focus on doing one thing in a manner that exceeds expectations. We provide fresh fruit for offices. Do we also provide pretzels, coffee, nuts? No. Fresh fruit is what we do and it’s all we do – so we do it better than anyone else.
This idea is, of course, not without precedent: most businesses start off in a particular niche, and many flourish if they can function at an expert level. In fact, one of the main perils of business is to stagger off into “similar territory”, only to find the Core Competency they’d identified requires a bit more effort than they’d imagined.
An example with local ties: a restaurant franchise built around a single food item – chicken fingers – might leave Shark Tank bigwigs rolling their eyes. Yet Raising Cane’s has taken this business model of a simplified menu and parlayed it into a billion-dollar concept with over 400 locations and three headquarters (including one in Plano). That’s right: two guys had a billion-dollar idea involving serving, not chicken, but a very specific cut of chicken. Doing one thing well can pay off.
ORCHARD At The OFFICE, while not in the “three comma club” (yet!), has also learned there are details involved in supplying fresh fruit to hundreds of offices throughout Texas that one can’t merely bluff their way through by chucking cheap (or imperfect) produce at. For instance, a company that provides vending services including all manner of snacks and beverages to businesses is liable to think “well, we’re in the building anyway – we may as well sell bananas and apples”, not realizing there are basic quality, perishability, and presentation issues that are going to be problematic. Many times we’ve heard from the unfortunate office which got locked into a contract with such a service provider, only to receive mealy, cafeteria-grade Red Delicious apples instead of crisp and flavorful JAZZ, and by the time the employee dissatisfaction with the low-grade bananas becomes apparent, the kitchen area is starting to see a small swarm of fruit flies, ironically infesting the area where the offending vendor proffers their other snacks.
We source the best possible produce and prices that will match our customer’s bottom line, and we’re glad to make accommodations for display, order customization, and payment terms. One of the reasons we decided from the start to never lock our clients into contracts is that we firmly believe fresh fruit sells itself.Superior customer service is only possible if one truly cares, and at ORCHARD At The OFFICE, we’ve found the best way to care is to try to be one thing to all businesses.
If you have an office anywhere in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, whether it’s a staff of five to five thousand, we’ve got a package that’s right for you. Feel free to check out our newly-revamped webpage, https://orchardattheoffice.com , and get signed up for the best fruit delivery near you! We’ll talk to you soon, and we thank you for the opportunity to be of service.
Presentation is a vital component of the ORCHARD At The OFFICE fruit delivery service. We “eat with our eyes” and so we do our best to make sure the fruit is attractive as well as delicious, and that it comes artfully-arranged in our fabulous willow baskets sourced from a Top Secret location.
Lao Tzu said “shape clay into a vessel; it is the space within that makes it useful.” So it is with our baskets. Form must follow function, and you can’t spell function without fun! So we fill our baskets with edible smiles: bananas, apples, oranges, clementines, pears, peaches, plums…everything an office desires to stay healthy and happy! When the baskets are empty, we retrieve them from our customers so that they can get limitless opportunities to provide happiness to businesses throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and Greater Houston.
One week, they might be used to deliver fresh fruit to an accounting office in North Dallas…
…and the next, they might be providing healthy snack alternatives to a software development firm in Sugar Land or Houston. Reusing our willow baskets is part of our commitment to reducing waste. Avoiding single-use cardboard boxes is better for the environment!
Whenever you see the signature willow basket, you can be assured that the fruit inside is guaranteed to be fresh and delicious!
The following “month in review” is penned by our Marketing Wiseapple, Chris Buchanan. It is a blend of professional and personal observations and is presented for general interest and entertainment only.
It has been said that the difference between living and mere “existence” can be summarized in the notion of eating a peach rather than consuming it. It’s savoring each bite as opposed to absently noshing. There are some who pray before they eat, and others who pray as they eat: with each bite they are mindful of the source of the sustenance, its impact on their body, and how, re-energized, they can commit meritorious acts. I have attempted to carry the latter into my regular conduct and thus far have met with strikingly little success, for I am not practiced at this level of concentration. At present, the best I can do is say, “live in the moment”…and once in a great while, I’ll catch myself doing just that.
March 2016 stood out as a reminder of the value of the ephemeral: living in the present, in the moment. Not seeking to recapture or relive feelings with overt sentimentality, but making the most of the here and now. While I’m a proponent of a certain degree of structure, routine, and even ritual, without spontaneity these concepts can make for dull days and forgotten yesterdays. Special events create lasting impressions, as fireworks burn brightly in our memories long after their trails have blazed away and the smoke has cleared.
Kevin Long, our Chief Banana, sets up the display for our Collin College offerings (very different from our Dallas Business Journal presentation!).
One component of my private life which I will detail throughout these blogs is my foray into the world of drumming. I’ve been a guitarist for about thirty years now, with just enough skill to be an effective teacher but certainly (and perhaps fortunately) neither the acumen nor the temperament to be an entertainer. I didn’t start drumming properly until just before the age of 41, and that was only because my secondary employer at the time, the 4/4 School of Music in Plano, needed me to teach a multitude of instruments as they were short-staffed (no pun intended). This necessity sparked an infatuation which has bordered on obsession, a daily ritual which not only provides a certain catharsis from the basic stress of living but also gives me a goal – a skill to get good at.
There is nothing I can do at home that our cat, Fifi, won’t find a way to interrupt if possible.
The reason I’m going on this narrative tangent is to illustrate a point using different approaches to music. I’d grown up a fan of the genre of music labelled”progressive rock” (often shortened to “prog” pejoratively). My high school anthems were the long-form compositions of bands like Yes, Genesis, and Rush. Myself, I always preferred the term “orchestral rock”: what I admired and adored about their approach was that they created compositions (as opposed to simple “songs”) structured in a similar fashion to orchestral pieces: harmonies, melodic variations, different movements, expansive instrumentation. But as they used rock instruments, there was that energy unique to modern music. The players were all musicians of the highest caliber, and the tunes were often vehicles for bringing their talents to the fore – challenging exercises that were incredibly difficult and so, in live performance, the fun was to hear them “pull off” these challenges on a nightly basis. I knew that Neil Peart was the best drummer I’d ever heard, because he wrote amazing parts and replicated them with superhuman precision. The intrigue was in the repetition.
Now, this notion – infatuation with repetition – speaks to the heart of how Americans (and the UK to a large extent) consume their entertainment. By and large, the emphasis is on the recording – because that is what is marketable. Most songwriters subconsciously write with an ear for how it will sound in the studio, and with a producer’s assistance, all the effort and expense goes into making it a recorded artifact. It’s all about how to capture the moment. Wedding outfits are often chosen according to what will make for the best photographs, for after all the pictures are what remain long after the corsages wilt and the cake is eaten. In any event, we film, we video, we record, we store, so that it can, in theory, be re-lived. This is our primary emphasis, particularly in American culture, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
But there is another world, another approach to art, which exists purely in performance. It is not meant to be recorded, it is meant to exist purely for the audience at that particular moment. It is in fireworks, it is in jazz. It is in theatre.
Calin as Lucius in the Plano Children’s Theatre production of Julius Caesar.
On March 15 – the Ides of March – the Plano Children’s Theatre began a run of six performances of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, directed by the incomparable Becca Johnson-Spinos. The cast consisted of young actors from grades 6-12, and my experience has been that the only difference between a determined and talented teen actor and a professional is their pay grade. A prodigiously-skilled amateur, given the proper direction, can spellbind an audience as effectively as an above-the-line with an agent and a film franchise to their credit.
Because my youngest stepson, Calin, was in this performance (pictured above as Lucius – and while the dialogue was all Shakespeare, the setting was reimagined as a zombie-apocalypse Rome), I am of course biased and would give top praise for the production. But I feel completely justified in doing so, because everyone involved, onstage and off, seemed to sense they were part of something really special and consequently put their all into it. Theatre exists only one performance at a time, for the audience in attendance, and that is what imbues it with its unique charm and magic. That’s why pretty much every actor worth their salt makes Broadway a goal. To quote professor Bill Bruford (who shall be referenced again shortly), “if you want to learn tennis, your goal isn’t to play at the club down the street. Your goal is Wimbledon.” As great as the recorded mediums of television and film (or their internet-specific counterparts) can be, the best acting happens on a live stage, where there are no re-takes, interaction with the audience is immediate and dynamic, the moment exists and then it moves on.
At the end of the run of Julius Caesar, there was nary a dry eye amongst the cast and crew. It was the impermanence that made them all aware that they’d shared a special bond, that time marches on…but in that time, they’d done something amazing.
Brutus (Rachel Svatos) and Lucius (Calin) mourn plans gone awry and moments drawing to a close at the end of Julius Caesar.
One challenge I’ve learned to accept with ORCHARD At The OFFICE is the notion that agrarian-driven processes have a similarly ephemeral nature. Fruit is eaten and enjoyed, and the next week while the process is repeated, as the fruit (and in some cases the consumer) is not the same, the experience can’t be replicated. Quality must be assured but not through some assembly-line process of “if we do x, with fruit from y, we will always get outcome z.” Like all things, fruit is perishable, but more immediately so than, say, an automobile or a computing platform. We want to make sure all our deliveries are great, but some weeks will be greater than others…and when those happen, we can’t rest on our laurels. Each day presents new challenges and opportunities to provide the best. At times, this calls for improvisation.
At the heart of jazz music is improvisation. A true American invention, this style has for over a century existed to celebrate the immediacy of the moment. Generally speaking, jazz compositions exist to facilitate the solos. As a result, two-minute melody may create a ten-minute piece by this quartet on this night, and the same melody may lead to a half-hour exploration by a trio in a different club just up the road. Jazz musicians respond to one another, and their inner voice, and to do so requires the greatest musicianship. All my life, as a “drummer-wanna-be”, I aspired to play like Neil Pear. But when I actually started drumming, I found that completely without intention or design, I was drawn to (and learning from) the drumming of Bill Bruford (Yes, King Crimson, Earthworks), who was well-renowned for applying his jazz background in progressive rock contexts before eventually giving himself entirely over to the jazz world. When everyone else was doing exactly the same thing every night in jaw-dropping fashion, he was bending the rules, seeking to look beneath unturned rocks. This groundbreaking style earned him a host of accolades before he retired in 2009, going on to become a professor at the University of Surrey – Guildford.
A quick clip of yours truly going over some percussion basics.
In the world of jazz, records are nearly always seen as a mere snapshot. Thelonious Monk would record “Straight, No Chaser” for a 1952 album and it would bear little resemblance to a recording five years later, let alone fifteen. Live performance is where it’s at. While soloists may have a general direction in mind, just as fireworks may be constructed so they can light up the sky in a particular way, only those who observe them will have that experience. There will be nuanced differences based on causes and conditions, impressions and inflections, mistakes or whims. Pyrotechnicians tend to be well-versed in science as the danger element is so high. Jazz musicians must have the finest chops in order to act and react in the moment.
The above shot has me working on a basic six-stroke rudiment because I’ve learned that to master a musical instrument, I need to master the fundamentals. I am eternally grateful to my musical instructors who have guided me and given me accountability, just as I am grateful to Ms. Becca for directing Calin’s theatrical work, and Sensei McCurrach at the Texas Association of Shotokan Karate for elevating my oldest stepson Mike’s martial arts over the years. For without a whetstone, even the sharpest blade will dull.
When thousands of THESE fall from the sky, property damage will occur.
So that’s what March has meant for me: living each moment to the fullest, for who knows what may come tomorrow? The Dallas / Fort Worth area was given a stark reminder of this on March 23, when in the early evening a good portion of the Metroplex experienced golfball-sized hail. I’d encountered numerous hailstorms in my time, enough to make me rather blasé about their capacity to inflict damage. Two severely dented automobiles, a cracked windshield and a totaled roof were enough to force me to revise my estimate.
Certainly we fared better than most, and given the destruction that had happened to our eastern neighbors in Rowlett when a tornado decimated the town on December 26, 2015, we’ve viewed our own losses as a simple inconvenience, nothing more. A few dents is nothing compared to eradication of entire neighborhoods, and indeed efforts are still ongoing to restore Rowlett to its former status. The important lesson for us was that mother Earth contains forces violent in their power…making the fruits of her land, and the moments we have to enjoy them, all the sweeter.
The hospitality industry has been known for being on the leading edge of the former for decades. Since the early 1980s, some hotel chains have been maintaining records of guest preferences, so that when that person checks into a hotel in Albany, there’s already an extra comforter and two hand towels in their room because that’s what they requested last time in Albuquerque. Medical and automotive centers will send out reminders of when service appointments might be made. Identifying patterns beyond the day-to-day, and taking action on them, requires the memory of an elephant.
