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"Cultivating
tourists boosts farm profits" - The Country Today -
Wednesday, September 27, 2000
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Cultivating Tourists
boosts Farm Profits
by Paul Dietmann
With hundreds of
thousands of tourists streaming into Wisconsin throughout the summer,
it’s only natural that some creative farmers are thinking of ways to tap
into our state’s $9 billion tourism
industry by “farming” tourists.
A farm-based tourism
business can be a good way to add extra income to the farm operation, but
it isn’t necessarily an easy enterprise to start or operate.
Nancy and Charlie Fochs
are nearing the end of their second season offering tours and running a
gift shop on their Nanchas Elk Ranch near Wisconsin dells.
After a very challenging first year in business, Nancy and Charlie
are generally pleased with the progress they’ve made in their operation
this year.
The Fochses made the
decision in August 1998 to open their farm to the public after repeatedly
finding people climbing over a locked gate walking up their driveway and
wandering around the yard looking at their animals.
If people were willing to go to that extent to see their elk,
they figured some would likely be willing to pay for a tour and buy
a few souvenirs and well.
Once the decision was
made, Nancy and Charlie had a lot of work to do in a short amount of time.
They had to have their advertising materials ready to go to their
primary advertiser in less than two weeks. They had to make sure local zoning would allow this type of
operation.
They needed to upgrade
their liability insurance, research any licenses or permits they would
need, build wagons to
transport customers, design the gift shop, buy merchandise to sell and
plan the tour. In the
meantime, Nancy also continued working full time off the farm as a
physical therapist.
County zoning turned out
to be one of the first hurdles the Foches had to jump.
Because some of the items they planned to sell in the gift shop
were not grown or produced on the farm,
they needed to have the farm rezoned from “agricultural” to
“commercial.” This cost
$800 for a certified survey map, plus several months to pass the Town
Board, the county Planning
and Zoning Committee and the full County Board.
In their negotiations
with the Planning and Zoning Department they also learned that to provide
restroom facilities for their customers they would need to construct a
privy: a port-a-potty was not sufficient.
They were able to work out a compromise on this issue.
Nancy and Charlie
originally planned to pull the tour wagons with pick-up trucks.
They learned from their insurance agent that if they used trucks
for the tours, the vehicles would
need to be insured as commercial carriers – a very expensive
proposition. Instead, they
opted to lease tractors to pull the wagons.
Finally, they were ready
to open for business.
“Our first year was
really tough,” Charlie said. “There
was a big learning curve. For
example, we originally advertised that we would be open from 3 to 7 p.
m. Wednesday through Sunday. However,
we soon realized that we needed to by open longer hours, seven days
a week to meet our customers’ needs and get the return we needed from
the business.
Changing the hours in the
middle of the season really hurt our business.
We had to pull in 50,000 brochures and put stickers on them with
our new hours.”
“We also mad the
mistake of not inviting local people out to see what we were doing,”
Nancy added. “They can
really help promote the business when they’ve seen it.
We also didn’t budget enough for hiring labor to give us a break
from dealing with the public everyday all summer long.
Buying merchandise for
resale in the gift shop was more challenging that they expected it would
be. Vendors pressured them to
buy large volumes before the season started, warning them that some items would
no be available at all by midsummer.
They ended up with a substantial investment in inventory.
Charlie noted that
“sometimes you have to spend $2,000 on something that you recoup 25
cents at a time.”
Learning how to
effectively advertise the business has been a challenge.
Nancy and Charlie are finding that fewer customers are responding
to their brochures or the ad in the Dells visitor guides, and more are
finding their Webpage: www.ElkRanch.net.
“You need to really
evaluate every advertising opportunity because you will be inundated with
marketing people,” Nancy cautioned.
“Advertising is very expensive and it’s a hard expense to pay
because it's intangible. Fore
example, we pay $100 per week just for the opportunity to place our
brochures in the racks around the Dells.”
Now at the end of the
second season, Nancy and Charlie are beginning to see the fruits of their
labor. “We’ve had people
come from all over the world, including South Africa and Asia.
It’s been a great way for us to learn about potential markets for
elk products.”
The Fochses have seen
their business grow each month this season.
They have had more motor coach tours visit the farm and are
starting to see new visitors coming because of positive recommendations
from satisfied customers.
They believe that the
tours have been a good way of educating the public about the elk business.
And they are finding that it’s easier to sell their elk meat and
antler products when customers have toured their farm.
Nancy and Charlie have
some valuable advise to share with other farmers who might be thinking of
going in agri-tourism Buiness. One
aspect they stress is the need to develop and maintain an attractive
appearance of the farm.
“People want to visit
the farm buy they don’t really want to walk through manure.” Charlie
said. “The upkeep of your
farm is also a signal to your customers about how you car for your
animals.”
Nancy and Charlie recommend
taking an entire year after deciding to enter the agri-tourism business to
conduct market research, explore similar types of ag enterprises, assess
your competition, make
connections with key contact people and plan your business strategy.
Word-of-mouth advertising
is extremely important for the success of an on-farm business.
The Fochses always ask their customers to tell their friend s about
the farm, and some customers take stacks of brochures to pass along to
friends or co-workers. They
also suggest tapping into as much “free” advertising as possible such
as two-for-one coupon books,
but they do not recommend giving coupons for free tours.
Finally, Nancy and
Charlie suggest partnering with other local businesses to engage in some
co-promotion. You might consider working together to attract motor coach
tours, share brochures with
each other, or carry each other’s products in your gift shops.
They have found it
helpful to offer free tours to employees of local hotels, restaurants and
other tourism-based businesses to encourage work-of-mouth advertising.
They are currently looking for
a local restaurant that is willing to carry elk burgers as a way to move
some of their meat and promote both businesses.
A farm-based tourism
business can be a way of increasing revenue on a small acreage but it takes
the ability to work with the public, careful business planning and an
attractive, easily accessible farm to make it work.
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Paul Dietmann is the Sauk county Extension agriculture agent.
He may be contacted at the Sauk County UW-Extension, 505 Broadway,
Baraboo, WI. 53913, (608)
355-3250, or email paul.dietmann@ces.uwex.edu
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