Speed dating

Farmers score new contracts for niche market at high energy event

CHESTERVILLE — What could have taken hours or days took four minutes for 55-year-old beef producer Dan O’Brien. He met an Ottawa restaurateur and later struck a deal to sell strip loin each week. It took another four minutes to connect with a retailer who now buys $600 of beef from O’Brien each week .

O’Brien, of Morewood, north of Chesterville, is one of many farmers across Ontario tapping into local markets through a high-energy event called speed-dating. And farmers love it — it saves them time and makes them money.

The idea is simple. The farmers (or the buyers) sit at tables while the buyers (or the farmers) circulate among tables every three to four minutes. When the cow bell sounds, everyone switches partners. One event can generate numerous sales because you pitch your product to 20 buyers or more in one afternoon.

"This makes it a lot easier," O’Brien said. "Without this I might have to knock on 30 doors just to get one sale." This was his fourth year attending the event hosted by local food advocate Savour Ottawa.

"From what I’ve heard so far, everyone has made a connection," Karen Jopling, agriculture development officer for Greater Peterborough, said of the second speed-dating event she helped host with Kawartha Choice FarmFresh in Peterborough recently. It was modeled after the Savour Ottawa event and hosted 24 farmers and 40 buyers.

"The buzz in the room was unbelievable," she said. "It’s funny how something like that can excite you, but everyone was engaged."

Most of O’Brien’s business has come through speed-dating. He grew up on a beef farm and has been working with cattle for years but with income from a retail outlet and other ventures he didn’t decide to invest in his own farm until 2007. O’Brien’s facility now has 140 market steers and 30 breeding females with calves, all of which are hormone- and antibiotic-free.

His first order of one strip loin per week came from speed-dating. Now he’s on track to gross $500,000 in sales for 2010. Although no profit yet, O’Brien said that without the connections he’s made to local chefs, retailers, and butcher shops through Savour Ottawa, he could not survive. "I would be losing hundreds of dollars for every animal."

O’Brien, a member of the Savour Ottawa advisory committee, is confident that "someday I’m going to make money."

Lakefield honey producers Jane and David Gauthier were hesitant of their first speed-date in Peterborough this year. They walked away from the event with connections to 15 businesses.

"It was wonderful. I was really impressed. We met a lot of people and made a lot of connections," Jane Gauthier said.

"What it comes down to is time," Jopling explained. With farmers and chefs often working at opposite schedules to each other, it’s tough for the two to connect. This makes getting into the local marketplace a challenge for many farmers.

For the Gauthiers, the only restaurants they sold to before speed-dating were the ones they ate at themselves.

"It is the only place you’re going to meet most of the restaurateurs in town who are interested in local food," O’Brien said.

He and Jopling both agreed that speed-dating not only saves time but helps farmers sell themselves in ways they wouldn’t at first consider. O’Brien said he never would have thought to market himself as a "fourth generation beef farmer" or tell buyers his animals are on a vegetable-grain diet but this was what they wanted to hear. Savour Ottawa’s speed-dating event also provided him with posters and business cards.

Speed-dating often gets farmers out of their comfort zones, Jopling said. She suggested that the farmers always ask buyers for email addresses.

It’s the increase in business that keeps O’Brien coming back to speed-dating each year.

Gauthier said she’ll definitely be returning. "It just totally uplifts you. It makes you realize what your potential is," she said.