The number one reason we’ve weathered COVID-19 (so far, anyway)

I recently went back through what I wrote in March when suddenly everything shut down due to COVID-19. It's crazy: I feel like there's less information now than there was back then. And that’s really saying something.

Things have obviously had to change over the past two months, and at Spinaca we've been able to adapt. I wouldn’t say we’ve hit any home runs, but we've done it to the best of our ability. And all of us know how completely blessed we are that we can continue to work and that there is a huge demand for our crops. 

That being said, we battle real issues every day. 

A domino effect

Because of COVID-19, businesses we relied upon for supplies and services can't keep up with our needs to get products to our customers. So we've lost a lot, actually. We've watched crops rot in the fields, not because there wasn't demand, but because we can't get personal protective equipment for our crew so we can't harvest, or because we have to minimize the number of people in the field, which means production numbers are down. 

Meanwhile, the crops grow in good times and bad; we have a finite window of opportunity to harvest them. It's disheartening and discouraging to watch something you planted — which people are ready and willing to pay for — die in the ground. Working twice as much for half as much is a rather bitter pill.

God bless flexibility

As for the specifics, our foodservice accounts are still down 40%. God bless foodservice for the ideas they can dream up overnight and execute the next day! It’s very tough to pivot the way they have (and it’s no easier opening at 25 percent capacity) but thank God they’re doing something.

At grocery stores, demand for our products is still up. We definitely saw a rush initially, when states’ orders to shelter-in-place came down, but it’s leveled out somewhat by now. I think that has to do with limiting the number of people in the grocery store at a given time, going through the cattle shoot, up one lane, down the other, with just two registers open.

But like I said in my post in March, the grocery store is still a very informative focus group for us at Spinaca. What was scarce at grocery stores before is now being rationed, and now more items are being rationed, too: milk, eggs, chicken, beef, pork. Often these items are limited by family and by visit because processing plants are having their own employee health concerns, which is limiting production. 

Food rationing and food prices are starting to move up, which is a very scary thing for me to watch as unemployment rises. It means that more people with less money are fighting over less food at higher prices. That’s only going to cause more strain on people who are already strained.

It takes years to become an overnight success

On the functional foods front, we continue to see demand outpacing our ability to get everything harvested for customers we’ve cultivated for years and new ones that need fresh organic produce to go into meal kits. Home delivery subscriptions were probably struggling before COVID, but now they’re at absolute capacity. Five years ago, we started down this road having to educate ourselves on what this category even was. Today, they’re one of our top value movers. Trust me: we’re all heaving a big sigh of relief that we did the R&D to get into venues outside the fresh market. I’m so grateful. 

Maybe it’s a lesson for anybody in business: Always be searching out those new markets, products, and services, even if it means that the sale doesn’t come for several years. We’ve had to keep grinding, turning new rocks over every single day.

Who knows what we’ll be talking about in 30 days? The world will be that much more evolved (and perhaps that much more upside-down) but I can guarantee I’ll be thankful for a healthy family, vendors, and customers. I’ll still be making every phone call I can, sending every email I can, to find that next market. 

Also? Eat your veggies.