S5 ● E8 What is REKO?

We have finally had a lot of snow today is Rico and I thought we'd make a little video just clarifying what RICO is because we've talked about it in videos last summer, but many people are still confused, aren't they? Yeah. So me and Raggy and Johanna are going to drop off eggs and chickens and turkeys to customers in Karlstadt, one of three Rico's we're doing. So Ricoh is totally run on Facebook and that's something that's nice. This has now got. This is Karlstadt's Rico ring, which Johanna's been a big part of along with a couple of other producers in the group. And each group's its own individual thing and has its own basic rules. They're all similar but have slightly different group decisions that they make together. But you see here we've got 6,000 members on this group. So in a way this is what we've been doing since the beginning. Johanna's been dedicating a lot of time to building up subscription customers, pre sale customers and drop off points. And we've always been doing drop offs to local towns where we turn up with all our products for a short window of time. And that's a very efficient way to deal with sales. But what we liked about this model is that a we get a much bigger customer base and customers get the benefit of having choice and can get all of their weekly needs in one place, from dairy to cheeses, breads, vegetables, meats, eggs, etc. Vegetables in the summer and different artisan products as well, charcuterie products, etc. So it's good for us to have that healthy competition we feel like, because it makes everyone strive to be excellent. If we look at the page here, you can see the page is cleared each week by the moderators. So here's Elin, one of the moderators for this group and Johanna's one of the admins along with a couple of other people. So the page gets cleared each week and then people write an advert of what they've got. This is a local veg producer and they sell boxes of their storage vegetables and other veg they import throughout the winter and then their own veg boxes in the summer as well as jams and chutneys. And then people place their orders here on the Facebook page. Here's our page. So we're selling eggs and you basically write what you want to offer that week. So we're selling chickens and turkeys and we've got pig meats and sheep meat still some Bits of that, and you write the price and what you're offering. And there's videos that people can see how we produce, and a number for paying by swish, which we'll hear about in a moment. So different ways people can pay, but one important thing with this is that all products must be paid up front. So here you can put some photos of what you've got for sale. Then as we go further down the page, there's our friends that run a bakery and they make awesome bread. So this is one of the great benefits of turning up at the RICO with all these other great producers, is that we get to swap products or buy other people's products that we really enjoy. This is a local organic goat cheese maker that sells in this ring. And there's other small farmers producing eggs here. So people have a wide range of choices. And that's what we like about it. Like in our group, everything doesn't have to be organic. It needs to be local or in a majority local, if you're making things like jams, for example. But then it doesn't necessarily have to be krav, which is the organic certification here. And that works well for us because we're not craft certified and we don't recommend people become organic certified necessarily. But we only use organic feeds. So, for example, there's another producer selling turkeys that haven't been raised on organic feed and they're cheaper than that. So people have a choice there and it's up to them. And, you know, we value that they're a local quality producer compared to an industrial one. So that's part of the rules of this group. And I think different groups have different rules that they make up. But this is quickly become. We started. When did Karlstadt start?

Mid June.

Mid June, that one started and it's now grown to be one of the bigger ricos in Sweden. And do you remember how many ricos there are in Sweden?

Oh, I don't remember.

There's dozens of newer startings.

Every week we have a new one.

So today these are the orders that we've got accumulated, mostly eggs and some chicken and turkey and dropping off about a thousand euros worth of product. So it's one of two deliveries that we're doing this week and it's quite a time of year for us, obviously in the winter. Things are ticking over.

So this is what we bring to the Reko.

We don't get to meet Johanna very often. She's super busy doing all this kind of stuff, looking after babies and sales. But we're looking at what we bring on the practical level for selling.

So we have. We're using an app called Isettle where we have a product gallery and so it's like a cash register too. So where we add the products that the customer wants and they can then choose to pay with card. Then we use this one, we have Swish in Sweden. So we put this sign up with our swish number. So people can pay with their phone.

Yeah, people have connected to their phone. It's very easy. Easy way.

You have to have a cash register in Sweden when you have a certain amount of cash sales.

So by law you need something that documents and sends automatically what you've been.

Selling registered at the tax office, the cash register.

And what's this little device?

So this one is for printing receipts, so it works on Bluetooth and it's connected to the Isettle and this one is the card reader also connected to that same cash register. And then we also take cash payments that we register in the same program.

So it's important to note it's all pre sold now that's an important rule of Ricoh. You don't have customers dropping in. Obviously they can see what's going on and talk to you and put in a booking for the next week, but they have to avoid it in advance. So this is Johannes form for understanding clients that what they bought so we can take it off as we go.

In our case we have two lists because we have one, this one is our subscribers so they already paid. So I'm just keeping track of what they are taking. And this one is for the Reiko. So it's the names, what they bought, if they prepaid. Some people prepay. It's quite a slow week.

I think it's common for retailers everywhere to have quiet Januarys but still pretty good turnout. We're going to go now to Karstad, pick up some turkeys and chickens and a bit of sheep meat from the freezer. And today we're excited. We're picking up some smoked chickens from the sheep farmer locally who specialise in a bunch of charcuterie. And we're really excited for those kind of collaborations that happen through this kind of localized food network. So one thing we like about RICO is that it's a really quick drop off time and as we've said before, selling is half the work of producing. So it's really important to keep that down to a minimum. The winter drop offs are 30 minutes. It sometimes over spills to like 45 minutes. But that's totally reasonable. We're selling here, about 50 kilometers away from the farm and that's a town of 65,000 people. Tomorrow we're off to Sune, which is our most local town. There's about 5,000 people and then Torshby. How many people live in Torshby? So we used to sell like this before Ricoh started. And Johanna, you've been a big part of like setting up our subscription sales and our pre sales and then setting up the RICO rings as well. Like what. What do you like about the RICO ring specifically?

It seems to be very accessible for people that it is happening on Facebook and people join it very eas.

It seems like it's grown really fast on the actual network on each of the different ricos. Now there's thousands of people like in the group, as it were.

Yeah, we have 6,000 members right now. It's unclear if everyone has voluntarily joined or if people are just added some people.

But.

According to the sales, it is a very successful record. We. We have quite a wide range of products right now. We have a baker that it is. I think that's important to have a baker. We have all kinds of meat, vegetables from several ones. We have dairy is not. We have cheese, but it could be more dairy, I think. And then there are all the.

That's where the benefit really lies in our eyes, is having people that complement our own products. So we probably have the largest customer base at this Ricoh in some ways. And it's because we have a diverse product portfolio. But whilst there's competition, we see that as really healthy to have, you know, striving towards, like, doing things really well. And it's nice that customers have that choice either in the types of products, the way it's produced, the way it's sold or marketed. So we feel like that's a really healthy benefit of the Ricohs and it's something that we invite. It's nicer to have that social experience. Some of the other benefits are like the collaborations that happen between people. So aside from swapping products, like last week we swapped some chicken for smoked Canada goose breast and deer meat. But this week we're picking up some smoked chickens. And we decided, you might remember from last summer, we talked about investing in a smoking machine for doing a couple of hundred chickens at a time. But what we've decided to do is not make any big investments this year and we're going to be working with the local cheap farm who are becoming less and less involved in the production of Animals and more involved in charcuterie who they already have the facilities set up. And so we're going to pay them to smoke chickens for us to order. Essentially when restaurant customers and private people order those for us. We're really hoping that Ricoh grows and becomes our primary sales point. I mean, we integrate with our current subscription and drop off customers. So for us we've adapted our Ricoh drop off to sort of take in all of our existing customers also just so we minimize the amount of delivery time we're doing. But we're hoping to do more and more through Ricoh and it's a model that I think other people can take and adapt even if it's not under the sort of Ricoh network. Maybe you're further afield like in America or whatever, but I think it's more initial work if you're setting it up from scratch yourself, but something that's really rewarding. And there's different rules in different groups maybe. Johanna, do you want to talk about the sort of differences in rules you've seen?

Whoever starts the reco who administrates the group is actually the ultimate decision maker for the group. So different groups in Sweden have different rule sets. Some groups are more restrictive to solely local organic products.

Some groups like certified organic.

Some groups can be also more restrictive to how local things need to be. And others leave it more to the demand of the customers to regulate that. I think in our case we chose to be very open and I think one of the reasons is that we are in a smaller place that we range of producers is smaller. So if we would be restricting it, we would have very few producers which would not be as attractive for the customers. So we leave it more open.

It seems to work. People like that choice now and we see that different. You can see what other people are buying. So you can see your customers sort of migrating to other producers or the other way around. And I think a lot of people enjoy trying out the different products from different people. No?

Yeah, I think so. I think the range is very important. It's good to in the start of a raco, to start by gathering producers. So to not start before you have range of products is important to have.

Like a critical mass. Yeah, yeah.

Also each producer brings its circle of customers into the raco. So together you have there is a big customer base.

It's getting dark right now and it'll be dark when we get there and certainly be feeling like night time when we get home. It's very polar contrast with summer when the days are, you know, it's not getting dark till 11 o' clock at night. But it's kind of nice in the winter because it inspires people to be more prompt and keeps the delivery time down to a minimum, which is awesome for us. So we're just pulling up at the freezer space, which is where we pick up chickens, turkeys and other meats. We hire a space here. It's where we store all our surplus stock to sell through the winter. It's a big. What is it, like a warehouse? It's where, like co op, big supermarket, keep all their goods. So it's huge storage place, massive freezers and refrigerated spaces with goods coming in and out all the time. Like there's some big lorries and there's about 30 lorries around the back. So goods coming in and out all the time. And we have to sort of scoot in and take our kanga boxes, pick up some chickens without getting in their way.

-28 in there.

So, yeah, it's a nice freezer space. So Johanna's got her gloves on. Get some chickens. We would like Johanna to be in more videos. I mean, Johanna's super busy doing all of the sales and the accounts and, you know, administration stuff, but she doesn't really like the camera. So what to do? A lot of people have commented on how, you know, behind every successful farmer, there's a farmer's wife. And it's super true. And I feel like it's. It's mostly a practical thing. You know, I'm often. The way I've been making YouTube videos last year is just whipping out my camera out and about as we're doing chores on the farm. But I would love to include more of that content. I think it's. It's also, Johannes, English is not her first language, so I think she gets a little nervous. And maybe you can comment below to encourage her to get more engaged in the channel, because I think it's a big part of it. I would also like to include the crew that are here through the summers more often, and I do that organically, depending on how people interact. Like, Matt was a great sport last year and was great on the camera, and I think that just happens naturally. But let us know if you want to see more of Johanna in the comments below, because I think that will help support me to get her engaged more often. Hannah's doing the heavy lifting today. I've got a herniated disc problem still, so I'm not doing any lifting this week.

It was quite hard because I needed to find specific weight ranges and we.

Got some chickens going for smoking. So it's important they have a very consistent weight range to get the best products. But we're ready to go and smoke. Drop off some stuff at the local bakery and then head to Rico. Look, where's Ragnar?

Where is he?

Ragnar, I'm coming under with you, dude. That's a pretty cool chilled out place you found. So, you know, having a young baby makes farming and you know, taking care of sales and stuff a little bit more challenging. But what to do? We love it, don't we? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, we're at the bakery. This is where we used to have a drop off point. And they were customer of ours as well. Sartisan bread. And they have a deli over here. But we have a quick drop off and time to get some nice bakery goods before we go to the market. This is Semla. What is Semla?

It's just like a bread with some cardamom and slightly sweet.

Sweet bread with cardamom, slightly sweet.

And then there is marzipan.

Homemade marzipan, almond paste and cream. Yeah. And this bakery is awesome. They use our eggs and we also get the microgreens and some vegetables in the summer. And chicken. They have our chicken. So this is a nice spot that Matt used to like to come to as well and feast before going to.

Sell everything where you get your treat.

We have one more drop off here at the delicatessen just around the corner from Rica. And then Ragnar, you and me, you're gonna do some walking and filming because mama gives all the customers their eggs and chickens and turkeys and lamb. Okay, so we just showed up and Ragnar, we gotta get Ragnar on my back. But you see, it's quite fast and furious. People are already here and some people bringing their egg trays back, which is awesome. Our customers are awesome. And we get all our egg trays back, which we use for padding on the top, which is perfect. I'm just going to put Ragnar on and we can have a look around. It's outside the big secondhand shop. So all the Ricos are happening in like supermarket car parks or in some space that's been arranged with the owners of that space. Like for example, in Sune, our local town, that Johanna set up a Rico ring there. It's in the alternative kind of school. In their school playground. That big queue is people waiting for air, eggs and for chickens from our farm shop, as it were. And then We've got the bakery and there's other vegetable producers here as. So this is the test of some of our chicken smoked and here's a grilled one too. So this is from neighboring farms, sheep farm who are selling their products here and they do a lot of charcuterie. So this is just a test batch to try out some different lengths of time in the smoker and it's going to be available on the next RICO wing next week. As I said in other videos, we decided not to make any big investments this year. So we're not going to be investing in the smoking facility which is about a €10,000 investment. So we're excited to test the market this year and give business to our local farming friends. And then if it looks good, we will expand and grow on that next year. And I think for us, producing the amount of broilers we do and trying to sell locally and mostly to private sales, it really will help to be able to offer wider portfolio by chopping chickens down, by halving them or filleting them, and also offering smoked or potentially even grilled chickens to too. So it's an interesting new chapter that doesn't require any major investment for us and in true pop up style it just disappears. We got three more customers getting eggs left and then we're off. So that's all today. Thanks for watching our videos as always and if you want to read our manual of how to set up a farm like us, you can click this link here. If you want to become one of our patrons and support this channel to grow and spread regenerative agriculture further, you can click this link here and join the crew that are supporting us to make these videos. And I look forward to catching you in the next video. Till then, see you later.

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