REKO ring

Today's video is another look at the Ricohring, how we get prepared and organized, dropping our products fresh from the ground, straight to the customer, how we like it. So it's another Rico Day. Weeks are rolling by here and today's a quieter day of two. Tomorrow we have two Ricos and more restaurants. And our productions have scaled down this year compared to previous years, but we're still shifting about €5,000 of products every week. And so it's a bit of an ordeal getting things ready on time, in good quality to get them straight to the Ricohrings and with customers within an hour from the farm in a simple, low cost way, which others can easily imitate. So we're going to have a look at that. So all harvesting is going on the day that we deliver. So that's Wednesdays and Thursdays at the farm. So we come out early, before the sun's risen, so we can get crops up and off the field before the heat gets to them. And then that way we don't need to dunk things to cool them off, we just get them packed in the field, wash anything that needs washing and then get them straight in the chiller. So despite having a new delivery van, we asked, still a little bit undersized for the. Especially for the double delivery that's happening tomorrow. So we're using two vehicles to go in different directions. So we're using the trailer to drop off products at the freezer space that we'll see when we get into Carlstead.

I didn't mark the ones. No, the ones that are not paid, that is not included in this, are not marked. Like, like last week you remember? I mean, like a dark.

So Johanna's in charge of compiling the orders from the RICO Rink Facebook pages as well as from private other customers and restaurants, and then compiles that into the weekly harvest sheets. Now for the vegetables, we harvest potentially the vegetables for Wednesday and Thursday at the same time, depending on the space we have in the chiller to save time. Thursday's become the busier delivery day. And so she'll put a total for harvest and then how that corresponds to each delivery day so we can pack or plan accordingly. And so she does a lot of that behind the work scenes. That takes a bunch of time. And it's the one floor of Ricoh where everything's done on Facebook. And so all that information that's compiled manually could actually be done automated by a system, you know, pretty simple e commerce system. But it works because it's on Facebook and We've discussed this in other videos and it's, you know, there's definitely things that could be improved with the model. But to be able to go and drop off thousands of viewers of products in, you know, 40, 50 minute stop off is incredibly efficient and it's a great thing that's spread around the region. We're super happy to be leading up the Rico's in our local area. Few kilos of chicken. So how's it working with the whiteboard, organizing, delivery and packing.

So basically the jobs from the morning are divided up into harvesting what we haven't got from the boxes yet and bunching from the chiller what we do have. Then we'll bunch what we harvest and then we pack according to the type of veg box. Veg box one, two, three and loose veg. And then restaurants separate.

Beautiful veg coming out. You happy with it?

Yeah, pretty happy this week. Pretty happy with the micros. All three came out and we got them in the boxes so it's good.

So this week we have some beautiful green crisp lettuce going to restaurants. It's very crispy, looks beautiful. Nice micros again. Very nice patty pans doing good. Smoothing those feather heads. Beautiful things despite the heats. So as long as veg goes into these coals, it stays crispy and cold. It's only an hour till it gets to the furthest drop off point. So these are well cooled down herbs and salads and greens and they'll reach the customers in tip top condition.

Have you got any stations?

So dropping off at a restaurant, then that freezer space, then setting up in Rico, hopefully with enough time to get set up before customers turn up. Some of them do like to turn up a little early, but we'll soon be off. So kanger boxes are labeled with the corresponding drop off points or what's in them so that whoever's delivering can see what's going on. See this is veg box, one of three different types and then they'll be labeled for different restaurants, etc. So Joe, we've got lots of boxes, lots of different locations sometimes. How do you folks coordinate with the drivers? Make sure everything gets to the right place.

We have packing sheets and then before we load the van, the drivers come and check everything off. Each veg box is labeled with a number so they can. There's four in each box so they can count them up quickly. They don't have to take everything out. And if there's two different destinations for the ricoh, they're labeled on the Box as well.

So everything's trying to be as clear as possible to avoid mistakes.

Yeah. It's trying to organize it just like a little bit before.

So the rico's kind of a mad dash when we get there.

Well, there's a few different destinations. There's a few different things to sort out. So it's good just giving it. I like to do it the night before. Just so you go into the next day prepared to harvest and pack.

And I wanted to show you one item that is there also. Just I wanted to show you and Gustavo one thing there.

Okay. So tracking the van uploads. Go. What is essential gear for a recoil?

For our case at least, we have some signing signage, Something to present ourselves. So in this case, we have this picture we set up. We have bags of different sizes. We have elastic bands, a record flag. That is something that was gifted from some kind of agricultural funding.

We are the flag holders.

So we set that up to just mark that the refill is taking place. This is for the egg packing. We pack them really simply with most of the eggs we just packed with a lid on top and rubber bands.

A lot of people come on bicycles and things to pick up products. So it's helpful for them to be able to carry them home. Yeah.

In my basket. This is when we deliver to restaurants. I use this carbon copy thing as a delivery slip to say like what we deliver. And I use this for invoicing later to know what we invoice.

Yeah.

And then.

There'S a little checklist for the check what they've got.

Yeah, this is a lot of sheets where it's compare pound. How you say? Put it put putting together all the orders from all the customers. We have also subscriber list and we have restaurant delivery slips. We have some information about the eggs that we give to restaurants.

What's this thing in the back?

This one is a swish that they can scan like the switch code for paying.

So this is a mobile phone based payment app that we use. And then what else is in there?

Oh, nothing, just wallet, card reader.

We have Isettel as a card reader, receipt printer.

And then we use our own phones for the app, the Isettle app.

So how's the Eureka going this year? Johanna, You've been a pioneer in setting these up. And what's your impression of how they're doing right now?

I think they're doing good. The Colster one is not really increasing. It's just keeping a good level. It's not really following the member. The Number of members is increasing, but the sales are not really increasing in the same rate. So we don't really know what happens with the customers where they. If they come for a while and then disappear. Some are steady and some are more like visitors, you could say to the recco. But I think, yeah, this is high season Sweden we have. It's a bit in the winter, there is not much. So it's. This month attracts more and more new members because of all the greens and especially the greens.

Okay, so we're off. Ragnar's riding with the boys. I'm in here with my flowers. Flowers on the front seat, flower hours on the back seat.

Smells good.

Daddy, you smell barbecue. What's happening here? Is it a little drop off? Yep, just five flats of eggs. Oh, a d. Think of the flower bouquets, Ragnar. It's good.

Smell good.

They're beautiful, aren't they?

And they smell good.

So due to the proximity of the population around here, out in the countryside, we're driving about 45 minutes, 50 minutes today, and then tomorrow we go in two directions to Arvika, which is about 40 minutes away, and to Sune and Torsby, which is about 20 and 35 minutes respectively. And that's actually turned out to be a bigger delivery this year because the Rico ring has opened up in Avica. And I've said before, we did markets there every Saturday that Carla was running last year, which went really well. And that's built up a bit of a groundswell that's allowed some other people to set up the Ricoh and they wanted Johanna to be involved with that, but she just said she didn't have time. So some other people have done that, but that's working really well. And there's some other great producers on that too. So that's the distance that we cover to do the sales that we need to. And that's because that's the, you know, within the 50 kilometer selling radius that we're working within. That's where all the population is. It's, you know, I know some of you living in population dense areas are able to sell within a few miles of your properties, but that's just not possible where we live, right out in the countryside. Coming into the city, Wagner fell asleep and we're just dropping off a small order for artisan bread, a local baker. Okay, so a quick drop off at the baker. Now we're going to the new freezer space that we have to drop off a few, few of the chickens before just popping over the road to Set up the RICO store. So this is our new freezer space where we keep chickens, smoked chickens, and we've got beef and other important products that we sell throughout the year. Brave man doesn't wear clothes. Regretting it. So this is the location for the Rico. It's been here for some years. And some customers arrive early, but people are just setting up. It's of starts in 15 minutes officially, but they've left the boys at the freezer room and they'll be appearing soon to get set up. But there's already some producers here waiting. So it took a little longer in the freezer room than planned. So there's people already waiting, so they're getting set up. So we just have a simple table and a stand and they're going to be whizzing all the products out as fast as they can now. So these are some of our wonderful customers that come to this car park at 5 o' clock on a Wednesday to pick up eggs, vegetables, meat, different things. This is Frederick, who's a wonderful vegetable grower who's about an hour away from us, but maybe I'll make a video with him sometime because he's running that alone, maybe with his partner, but doing pretty big scale veg now. Very many of them actually.

Sa. 185 or.

Yeah. So here you see as people turn up, they'll tell us their names. If they're new customers or if we recognize them, then we can check their names on the order sheet and we can see what they're having that week. And some of our regular customers have the same thing every week. So you get to know that. And then they're given their goods and that's ticked off on the order sheets. And we continue with the queue. You can see we have a pretty big queue. In fact, we have the majority of the customers at the Rico and it's mainly because we have such a broad product portfolio. So we have customers that are, you know, buying eggs and chicken and smoked chicken and pork and sausages and beef and vegetables and microgreens, etc. So that helps. Definitely. Having a certain broad range of products helps to sell any individual product to some degree. But other vendors are doing really great too. Okay, we've got to go. Ragnar says time to go. Because we're cooking dinner for, aren't we? We need to tie it out. We're going to leave this lot serving the rest of our customers. Okay. So I had to leave them to the last orders there as I go back to make dinner for the crew and for them when they get back late tonight. Long day today and tomorrow as our main delivery days. It's great to yeah, I've been really impressed to see that our viewers have been busy establishing Reiko rings in America, Canada, South Africa, even Ireland. And it's a real pleasure to be able to inspire and educate and inform people and just see the ripples of that going out across the world. So thanks so much for sharing back thoughts and comments. I do see most of the comments, I just don't have time to reply and respond to everything, you know, I'm way too inundated with emails and comments and I just don't have time for that, I'm afraid. And sometimes I do and I get inspired to chirp bap. But I know our followers are doing a really good job of sort of cross pollinating and answering questions and referring to answers that are in videos that people perhaps overlooked or whatever. So thanks folks for doing that. I really appreciate the viewership in this channel and as I've said a few times, I'm not trying to build a channel just for the sake of building a channel. I'm not doing it for any economic incentive. I couldn't care less, to be honest. I'm doing it to get the information out, to inspire, to share and love what I'm doing. And I love sharing that too. And I know it benefits a lot of people, so that's why we're here. And I get a sense that the followership, you know, A appreciates that and B is here for the same reasons. And so I really value the sincerity and the sharing and the caring that goes on with your viewers. You know, we have hardly any idiots ever to show up and no one's usually inappropriate in any way. And if they were, they wouldn't last long. You know, I just ban them from the channel because this isn't a place for inane YouTube commenting. It's a place for learning and inspiration and growth. And so yeah, I know that you value that too. So thanks for being awesome. And yeah, we'll be posting out videos of I'm not sure, but I spoke to Frederick there at the end, the other veg producer, and I want to go and see his place not too far away. And whilst he grows in a very different way to us doing tractor based and tillage based production, he's managing about 1.2 hectares of veg production on his own and manages to store a lot of winter storage crops and sell throughout the year, which is awesome. That's a niche here because not many people are doing that. So yeah, not sure when we'll fit that in, but I hope to go and visit his place. He's been on our record for years and I've never been out to his place, but I'd love to do that and I expect some of you will enjoy to see how one person is able to manage that sort of level of production. I think it'll be an awesome video, so stay tuned for that and other updates as we go along, and I look forward to seeing you in a video soon. Bye for now.