Another Bus! Market Hosts Visitors of All Ages
But it’s a weekday, and the field trip has to wrap it up and head back to school in the early afternoon, leaving your farm market empty, your hayride-hauling tractor idle and your corn maze abandoned for the next few hours.
But then, suddenly, another bus pulls into the parking lot. The people aboard show great potential as customers: They’re curious, ask insightful questions, are well behaved and have plenty of disposable income.
Who are these magical people?
They’re old people – seniors, if you will – and Kay Hollabaugh can tell you more about them.
Kay is a member of the family that owns Hollabaugh Brothers, a fruit and vegetable farm and market in Biglerville, about 9 miles north of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania’s Adams County. She, along with her daughter, Ellie, discussed senior tours and employee management during the Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable and Farm Market EXPO in December.
The Hollabaughs started giving senior tours in 2005. They had been hosting school tours for more than a decade at that point, long enough to learn that school tours have their limitations. Besides the fact that the kids have to be back on the bus by 1 p.m., Biglerville and its surroundings can’t produce the tens of thousands of students that farm markets near, say, Chicago can draw. Hollabaugh Brothers saw maybe 4,000 students last year, Kay said – a good number for the area, but probably about as good as they’re going to get.
They decided senior tours would help fill the gap, so they started mailing invitations to local nursing homes and community centers. They also advertised at local farmers’ markets. Senior groups started showing up, but Kay soon learned to divide them into two distinct classes, one “wonderful” and the other “challenging.”
The first class is made up of “young” seniors, people in their 50s and early 60s who want to have fun, have time to shop and ask great questions. If Kay talks about apple dumplings during the tour, they’ll buy apple dumplings at the farm market. Those are the groups the Hollabaughs aim for.
The second class is made up of older seniors, usually from nursing homes. These are the groups that can take half an hour just to get off a bus. They come with wheelchairs, walkers, oxygen tanks – they’re not very mobile, in other words. They’re more likely to get hurt out in the orchard and they’re sensitive to bad weather (whereas kids don’t care about weather), Kay said.
Bottom line, taking on seniors is a big undertaking, so make sure you’re prepared. You need employees with the patience and tact to deal with the elderly, and everything at your market must be handicap-accessible. Make sure the tours are profitable, too, she said.
Employee management
During another session, Kay talked about employee management. Though Hollabaugh Brothers is a family business, there aren’t enough family members to do everything that needs to be done. The 500-acre farm and retail market employs about 50 people during the height of the season. A wide range of positions are needed, from harvesters to truck drivers to tour guides to clerks to shelf stockers to fruit-basket makers. They hire a lot of “young moms” and “retired moms” for the market during the few months of the year it’s open, Kay said.
Kay and Ellie recently wrote an employee manual for their retail staff, laying out their expectations as employers. They go through the manual with each new employee, and make her or him sign a copy that goes in the personnel files. A manual proved to be necessary because things that seemed like common sense to Kay – such as concealing tattoos and body piercings – apparently isn’t common sense to everyone.
When hiring, Kay relies on word-of-mouth to spread the news. She also puts a sign out front to alert passersby. She figures people driving by the farm will have a better idea what’s expected than people just sending in a resume in response to a classified ad.
“We get lots of resumes from people who don’t know who we are,” she said.
When it comes to employee discipline, she relies on verbal and written warnings.
Cell phone etiquette has been an issue. Surprisingly, it’s not the high school or college kids constantly chatting on their phones during work, but the young mothers keeping track of husbands and kids. The farm’s current policy is for employees to keep their cell phones stored somewhere – like a purse or locker – during work hours. If they need to make a call, they can use the market’s phone, Kay said.
Above all, she wants to bring out the best in all her employees and bring the good ones back year after year. She’s found that encouragement works better than anything else.
“I don’t understand people who don’t treat their employees respectfully,” she said.
As an inducement, Hollabaugh Brothers pays unemployment over the winter months. Kay often treats her employees with little awards, notes of gratitude, birthday cards, Friday lunches, end-of-year discount shopping – even a night out here and there.
“Every employee is valuable for different reasons,” she said. “You have to find their strong point and work it.”
For more information, visit www.hollabaughbros.com.