The idea is to use fruit that is in season. So the growers often will have an overstock of another fruit available and we’ll use it in our cider. It’s what people make a special trip in for. When we announce that we have a new “Something Different” on social media, we have people coming through the door within 15 minutes. So “Something Different” creates a local buzz! Yeah. The other thing about “Something Different” is, every tank we produce, we pair it with a local charity. And every time we pour from the tap, we give 50 cents to the local charity. So for our current one, the charity is the Valley Hospice Foundation. So far, in a year-and- a-half, we’ve donated over $15,000 to local charities. Closer to home, what do you do to help create a healthy work environment? We focus on this quite a bit. We have a bunch of small things we do that I think make a difference. For example, free yoga once a week for an hour at the cidery. As well, we have a fairly large staff room. I find the most likely place for great ideas to come about is in the staff room. It connects all sides of the business together around the lunch table. We also throw yoga pillows around to relax on and we have standing desks… Of course, we also have a few decent staff parties here and there.
We like to promote an ‘active’ workplace. A sense of wellness. We spend a lot of time thinking about lighting and air quality. It makes a difference. We even have a squatty potty and a bidet in our washrooms. People come upwith these ideas andwe give it a try. What do you do to remain successful in a digital world? We are very focused on the image of the brand online. We see a lot of small business owners with older owners who hand over the social media accounts to younger people within the business and just say ‘take care of that.’. We didn’t do that. We hired a professional from the beginning. We want to make sure that all the content that goes out online is consistent with our brand image. We are hoping that some day we will convert the online presence into sales, but for the time being, we are just trying to keep up with demand that’s walking out the door. So right now we’re just focusing on keeping our core customers informed. Even- tually, we want to use social media as our advertising and marketing platform to push our product across the country. That’s the plan? Cross-country distribution? We’re focusing on doing things right and keeping our custom- ers happy right now. When the time comes, we’ll figure out a way to do it that works best for us. But for now, our focus is on the people walking through the door.
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OCTOBER 2017 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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