-Next on "Start Up," we meet up with Drew Patrick, the creator of Michigan Fields, a company that connects people with locally sourced and grown grocery products.

All this and more is next on "Start Up."

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As the country faces extraordinary challenges, small-business owners everywhere are doing all they can to keep their dream alive.

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♪♪ This is "Start Up."

♪♪ ♪♪ The value of the U.S. online grocery market has grown from $12 billion in 2016 to over $30 billion in 2019, and with the pandemic, 2020 numbers are expected to be significantly higher.

Typically, grocery delivery companies will deliver groceries, premade meals, and a wide variety of other goods to customers.

Orders are almost always done online and typically take at least one day to deliver, though some companies offer same-day delivery.

Today I'm going to meet up with Drew Patrick, the founder of Michigan Fields.

From what I know, Patrick has been developing this concept that would connect people with only locally sourced and grown grocery products, As a huge fan of grocery delivery services, I can't wait to hear more about the company and his plan to capture a piece of this highly competitive market.

What was the impetus for this business?

Like, what was your moment where you said, "I'm going to do this"?

-Well, yeah...COVID?

I mean -- -That's a pretty good one.

-It really did start after stay-at-home orders went into place in Michigan.

And the idea for the business didn't originate because of that, but that just became the timing that was right to pull the trigger on it.

So we had -- at Skidmore Studio -- had the idea and it was part of my vision when I took over the company to create a brand of our own that we would control.

So that plan was on the shelf and we had talked about it a good amount, but when COVID came around, stay-at-home orders went into place.

We were able to take a plan, adapt it because it was not for grocery delivery, but launch really quickly.

-What is Skidmore and what is your role at Skidmore?

-Skidmore is a 61-year-old creative studio that helps good organizations be their best through brand strategy and design.

-So you started it when you were negative 20 years old.

-Yeah, close, you're almost right on.

[ Laughs ] -Right.

-But I took over the company two years ago.

I've worked here for 10 years, but took over ownership two years ago.

Now we focus on branding and marketing for food- and beverage-based businesses.

So our plan that we had for Michigan Fields was how do we launch a food-based business of our own where we own the brand?

We had tossed around different ideas for different food-based businesses, and ultimately we landed on, what are we trying to do beyond just owning a brand of our own in a food business?

We really care about local food, local produce, supporting the local agriculture in Michigan.

So this allowed us to tie everything together.

And we did start talking about grocery delivery pre-COVID, but we weren't sure if that was the right path to go down.

But then stay-at-home went into effect and it was, "People need groceries."

-Right.

-And if we can supply Michigan-based products to Michigan residents, we're going to be helping both sides of the equation.

Right?

Economic benefit.

There's an environmental benefit because we're not getting product from South America.

A lot of the produce that we get here in the grocery stores from there.

So all around positive if we were able to get this going, and we were.

-Was step one building a platform?

-It was, and I went to my team, and we build websites and brands for a living.

So that part seemed, oh, it makes sense.

-In-house.

-In-house.

But a typical project for us with a client is anywhere from three to six months to develop a website and launch it.

So I said -- pulled my executive creative director aside and said, "Here's what I want to do.

How quickly can we get the site that will work up and running, not the site you want?"

-Yeah.

Functionality, barebones.

-Yeah.

And it's going to be great because it's coming from Skidmore, but it has to be an MVP -- a minimum viable product.

-Of course.

-And he said two weeks, and we did it.

I mean, it was late... March 21, 22 or so where we actually pulled the trigger and said we're going to do this.

And the site was live on April 5.

-That's -- That's -- That's a huge feat.

-Yeah, it was.

-Congrats for that alone.

Thank you.

-That's a tough part of getting something off the ground.

Right?

You got to make a lot of decisions, make them quickly and move.

Just as one of the things that I reiterated over and over was, "Don't stall, make a decision.

And if it's not -- if it turns out not to be exactly right, we'll fix it, no problem."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I know that there is some differentiation between existing companies like your Instacart or Shipt or things like that.

Talk about the main differences between what you do versus what they do.

-Main differences, we're in actual grocery store.

So we are securing and procuring our own product, receiving it, holding inventory and then picking and packing custom orders from our own stock.

So we don't shop at grocery retailers and then deliver grocery.

We are the store, the retailer.

-How do you curate your products?

-It's relationships that we've had in existence from in our Skidmore Studio days and relationships we're building now through being in the business, but we're reaching out to farms direct, to distributors in food, and to producers of Michigan-based food products almost daily to make sure we're curating and finding the best products for our customers, but also doing so in a way where our supply chain limits or eliminates ideally waste.

And that's another huge part of our food system that we're trying to improve.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -OK, so tell us your name and what you do here.

-Lauren Terey.

I work with Drew in ordering all their product for Michigan Fields.

I manage our inventory and then I do help out with daily pick and pack.

-When you're ordering products like what goes into that, what are you really looking for?

-We really care about sustainability.

If the product is organic, if the product is tasty, that's really what we're looking for.

It's like finding those really niche farms that have the most delicious berry in Michigan and then providing that to downstate Michiganders.

Like, we had an instance of there were some strawberries from Bardenhagen Farms that's in Traverse City.

They have the sweetest berries in all of Michigan.

Normally they don't ship downstate.

So we were able to source them, bring them downstate.

We're selling a couple hundred pounds of those Bardenhagen over the course of a week.

-Talk about the sort of logistics element of coordinating all of this, because it seems like a lot to manage.

-Yeah, it's tough.

It's kind of ebbs and flows with how well a farmer's crop has done this season.

We saw an issue with peaches this year due to a late spring frost, so it's tougher to source.

So we're constantly learning and running into these issues, trying to figure out what else we can do to get really great produce for our customer.

-What is the reaction to feedback that comes from people?

-We get great feedback, especially during the pandemic.

There's been so many people who haven't had access to really fresh produce or -- -Yeah, I'm one of them.

-Yeah.

So we've been able to deliver directly to people's homes and with contact-free delivery.

It's been super important to our customers.

So they have been really appreciative of us for getting fresh food on their tables.

-Now you have the site up and running, the platform.

Now you have to fill it with the product.

So how did you -- tell me what some of those products are, the very first ones to make it out.

-So the first people we went to were clients of Skidmore that are food-based businesses.

So called up Zingerman's in Ann Arbor and said what can we get?

And their Bakehouse was really excited to be a part of it.

So immediately we had Zingerman's Bakehouse, which arguably the best bakery products in the state.

-Oh, yeah.

-Right.

We worked with Guernsey Farms Dairy.

Brandon at Farm to Freezer has Michigan-sourced frozen produce that he's already selling through retail, and he was able to provide his product immediately, and a ton of support logistically for us -- cooler space, freezer space, and space for us to pick and pack, which if we didn't have those relationships, we could have done it, it just would have taken longer and cost more and been more difficult.

-I'm the owner of Michigan Farm to Freezer.

We're a small-batch food-processing company in the eastern market.

We also contract to manufacture and pack for other small Michigan-based companies.

-When did you start doing this?

-We started seven years ago.

I was a school-lunch service director running a small school-lunch program, started freezing some product at the school for use in the winter.

And now we're a statewide enterprise that that feeds, you know, and when school's in session.

200 school districts across the state, over 300 different retail locations -When a harvest comes out from a farm, you're able to flash-freeze it and preserve that so schools have fresh fruit or vegetables all year round?

-Right.

Michigan is an incredibly biodiverse state.

The issue is we've got a really short growing season.

So we're we're truly a season-extension program, extending that growing season, you know, extending the shelf life on the product for twelve months so that we can get Michigan product in January.

-So what's your affiliation with Drew and Michigan Fields?

-So we provide the space, the physical plant.

-Yep.

-For that process to happen because we have the licensed facility to do it, and Drew's got not only the platform but now the vehicles to handle that last mile.

-And right now I would assume with -- with a lot of the direction from school going to home school, maybe there's a solution there.

-That's right.

Yep.

So, you know, getting getting nutrient-dense, local Michigan products into homes is something that we're entirely passionate about.

And Michigan Fields provides us with that opportunity to access that market.

-And then there were other relationships that we reached out to -- Planted Detroit was a new relationship where they were referred to us through a design network here where they were looking for some help on the design side a few weeks before.

And when we decided to this reached out to them and said, "You want to be supplier for Michigan fields?"

And they jumped right in.

And man, their product is amazing!

I buy those greens every week now, and the microgreens that they're growing in Detroit are just delicious.

Everybody should try them.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Start by telling us your name and the name of the business that we're in right now and kind of what you do here.

-My name is Simon, Simon Yevzekman.

This is Planted Detroit.

We have two buildings here on the east side of Detroit.

We are an indoor, controlled environment, vertical farm.

We're growing leafy greens, baby greens, and culinary herbs, indoor 365 days a year under controlled environment.

-Explain to people what is a vertical farm.

-We're using LED lights instead of the sun, and we're using water with nutrients in it instead of soil to supply the plants with nutrients.

So we're able to grow plants in a controlled environment and grow them on successive levels.

So we're able to maximize on the square footage available to us.

-So this could have essentially in time a profound impact on the food supply, the food chain, right?

-Absolutely.

You really can decentralize the food system.

So instead of a few large monoculture farms in the Salinas Valley or California supplying all of the lettuce to the Midwest, we can supply what Detroit needs in Detroit.

And you save all the miles on the trucks.

You save all the food waste associated with food being harvested and then spending most of its viable life on a truck rather than on a shelf or in a customer's refrigerator or in their salad.

-Talk about your relationship with Drew and Michigan Fields.

-We started serving to them right around March when the pandemic hit.

Most of our supply, almost all of it was going to restaurants before -- before COVID-19 pandemic.

And we've switched really rapidly to direct-to-consumer and through grocery delivery services like Michigan Fields.

So there are some day, you know, once a week they'll tell us what they need and we'll pack it up for them.

It gets to their customer within a maximum of five days from when it was harvested, and it's still extremely fresh and it's kept cold the entire way.

-What are the margins like on something like this as a business, because here... You've got to obviously you have to make a profit for a business to sustain, but you're adding additional components to that wholesale product, correct?

So so how does how is the, I guess, financials working out on it?

-Not only on product margin, because we are buying wholesale.

Different from some of the other grocery delivery.

We do charge a delivery fee on every order.

So that's to cover the cost of the logistic -- -Transportation.

Yeah.

-So we have our own refrigerated vans that are delivering.

I guess that's another big difference, too, is we're not contracting the delivery side.

We own the delivery side and the trucks and so we make sure there's temperature control and we can maintain quality from start to finish in the process.

-In a lot of ways, you're also now in the transportation business.

How how is that to transition?

-That was the part where we feel we were most entrepreneurial.

-OK. -We were -- we had really great relationships with suppliers and some assistance on the warehouse operations side.

We've got the brand and marketing side that we already do.

Delivery was another story.

-Did you basically contract a third-party transport company?

-No, no.

-You did it all yourself from the ground up, buying vehicles, refrigerated vehicles.

-So we rented vehicles for the first few weeks to make sure we were going to get off the ground and everything was going to work.

But purchased vehicles, I think, three weeks into the operation, decided we're in, we're committed, purchased refrigerated vans because the vans we were using in April weren't refrigerated, and we knew summer is coming.

So you can't run hot vans out with frozen and fresh produce.

-Right.

-Frozen fresh food.

So we knew we had to get the temperature control figured out and purchasing our own vehicles was the fastest way to do that, where we could maintain control, and by controlling our supply chain and our operations start to finish.

So we're procuring product either directly from farms or producers.

We're very close to that so we can see it and -- and secure only the best product.

And then picking, packing, delivering with our own drivers in our own trucks where we know we've got those trucks set at 38 degrees and the temperature is going to be consistent.

Then that's the only way we really know we can provide a really high-quality experience start to finish.

-Tell me about your your experience.

-I am not new to the food delivery service.

I've tried different ones in the past, but I was super excited about this one because it's from Michigan, which is more unusual.

You know, normally they come from wherever, and with COVID in particular, not having to go to the grocery store is especially nice, but also food sustainability is really important to me.

And food security and being able to support local farmers makes me very excited.

It's been great.

And, you know, they've got Zingerman's and... and just things that you normally had to drive to go and get it anyway.

And I'm not leaving my house so much these days, but also just the convenience of it is fantastic for me.

-Was it pretty easy?

-Yeah.

Yeah, no.

I mean, you just literally shop, pay, and then they dropped it off on Monday and they text you throughout so that you know, like, when it's coming.

-And they kind of pride themselves, it seems, on customer service.

How was that experience, even down to the delivery?

-It was great.

I mean, to me, I'm a busy working mom, so just having a... "Oh, it's here.

Great."

Put it inside.

It was no contact.

It was -- I didn't need to do anything, which to me was lovely.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -How much influence will the pandemic have on a business like this for the future moving forward?

-What we saw is it allowed us to get started.

It was environment, like we said, that would allow us to kick off and have a customer base or prospect base that was interested in hearing the story.

-Yes.

-But beyond that, we have to prove ourselves over and over again with every delivery, and the good news for us -- That market was projected to grow pretty significantly before the pandemic ever happened.

-Sure.

-So, you know, you've got Amazon buying Whole Foods and you've got Shipt.

[ Indistinct talking ] -...for a year plus.

-Yeah.

So Target, Kroger, all the major grocery retailers have their own way of delivering direct to consumer.

-Sure.

-And I think there's double-digit growth projected in that industry for the next 10 years.

So I'm not worried about there being a market.

We just have to do our job in providing the experience that makes people want to go with us because it's going to grow for sure.

-And with a national audience, I think that's -- that's the main question that people are going to have is, "I really like this idea.

When can I get it?"

So how quickly can you grow?

-[ Laughs ] Well, you never know, right?

Where the opportunity lies is where we'll pursue.

There are contracted shipping and delivery options that would allow us to deliver nationally.

And if we have the right product, we can make our website known around the country.

And we can ship from our dock anywhere across the country.

So we're going to keep our eyes open to those opportunities.

I can't see my team back, saying, "What are you talking about?"

-"What?

What?

We're going national?

Oh, no."

-But, I mean, the purpose and what we're doing is to support Michigan growers and producers.

-Exactly.

-And if their product is desired outside of southeast Michigan, then we're going to take a look at it.

-If you could go back to March, what would you do different?

-It's hard to say because it's been such a whirlwind, and we did a really good job of getting up and running quickly.

I think one of the things we would do early on is focus more on brand awareness at the beginning.

-Yeah.

-Because we launched at a time where we didn't have to really actively or proactively do anything.

We put a few posts out on social, and there was enough activity where we were able to have enough business right away to get going.

But then that tapered off by the end of May.

And then we were essentially starting in June with our brand-building initiative, and we had lost two months or so in that process.

So I think we could have started that a little earlier.

And then on the supply side, I'd say we had great partners that we started with and getting up and running with the Michigan ag calendar and what's being harvested in time, we probably could have done a little bit better job in preparing further in advance for the products that were going to be available so that we had everything in stock right away.

We weren't trailing a little in our inventory.

-These are called growing pains for a brand-new business, and your four months in, so that's great.

-And the hindsight's easy, right?

You can look back and say I shoulda, shoulda, shoulda.

Really, I think we did a really good job of just acting and moving forward.

And that was key to us having a successful launch.

-So somebody else that's considering a similar space or not a similar space, just considering a new business during the middle of a pandemic, any advice for them?

Be authentic and true to who you are.

Don't try to do something just to to be opportunistic about the market.

-Right.

-We we went into this because we love food and we work with food-based businesses.

We're passionate about our local food economy.

We work with food-access non-profits locally.

That's the place we play every day.

-Sure.

-So if you're gonna do something, do something that is true to you and then act, move, move faster than you ever thought you could because that's -- -True to you.

-You can.

You can move faster than you ever thought you could if you set some unrealistic deadlines and expectations and let people know it's OK to make a mistake.

And it's OK if we don't do this exactly the way we thought we would.

We'll, of course, correct.

And we'll keep moving and we'll do it smiling and having fun.

♪♪ -I really enjoyed spending time with Patrick and his team, and I love hearing stories like this.

Patrick saw an opportunity to be part of the solution and fearlessly jumped into this business without looking back.

And although he had the idea for Michigan Fields since 2017, he knew that he had to act quickly as the stay-at-home orders were issued around the country.

So he fast-tracked the concept, launched, and is now servicing the community with fresh local foods delivered right to their doorstep.

As I've said before, the show might be about business, but in reality it's about people, and this is a story about quickly adapting to your environment, exhausting your resources, and bringing businesses together, and provide a valuable service to the community.

What could be better than that?

For more information, visit our website.

Search episodes for "Michigan Fields."

♪♪ -Would you like to learn more about the show or maybe nominate a business?

Visit our website at startup-usa.com, and connect with us on social media.

♪♪ -♪ We got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ Got a long road ahead of us ♪ Before we pay our dues ♪ We got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ Before we pay our dues ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Vistaprint -- a proud sponsor of "Start Up" and small businesses everywhere.

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