Vegetable growers keep the faith with consumers
When Mark Sawler first worked in the family business 20 years ago, his father Ron sent him to grade carrots one day. Being young and new to the technical specifications, he reduced the grading decision to one simple question.
“I just asked myself, ‘Would I like to eat
this?’” recalls Sawler, who today manages sales and packaging for Sawler Gardens, the family’s vegetable farm in Berwick, N.S.
“If the answer was yes, I put it in the bag. If the answer was no, I didn’t.”
With that, the young man grasped the consumer-first philosophy that has guided this operation for nearly 40 years. Despite countless changes in areas such as production, marketing and distribution, the Sawlers have never taken their eyes off one basic truth: people will buy what they like. Today, Sawler Gardens grows and packs a variety of vegetables: mainly carrots and onions, with smaller amounts of parsnips and beets. The products are sold under the Sawler Gardens brand throughout Atlantic Canada, as well as under the private-label brands of the region’s larger retailers. Management of the operation is divided between father Ron, Mark and his brothers Peter and Roger.
Not just a farm, a brand
Sawler Gardens is more than the name of the farm. It’s also a consumer-facing brand, and as such, it must live up to the brand values that the family has worked to develop and project. The family constantly thinks about the consumer’s reaction to the product and how that reflects on the brand.
“I’m looking to get a consistent, high quality product with some real flavour,” says Mark. “I want people to take it home, use it all, and enjoy a very tasteful product.”
It takes a lot of work to ensure that the Sawler Gardens brand is associated with freshness and flavour, from the choice of vegetable varieties to harvesting, packaging and storage. This dedication pays off when consumers provide the sort of feedback that makes the family
proud. Travelling in Atlantic Canada, family members often meet people who recognize the Sawler name and associate it with many years of enjoying great tasting vegetables.
Mixed feelings about these changing times
If you’re a vegetable lover, these are great times. For most of the year, you can get fresh, high quality vegetables at a reasonable price.
“Technology has helped to make the quality better, especially in the last five years or so,” says Mark. “I go into one of the superstores, and I’m just in awe of what’s there.”
Mega-sized food retailing has been good for quality and price, but it’s made it more difficult for family farms like Sawler Gardens to reach consumers. At times, the industry’s new-found scale and industrial sophistication make Mark nostalgic for the older ways.
“Today, the end consumer is often not our customer,” he says. “Our customer is the retailer who’s looking for something different to put in their store. That’s a big change for us. When I first started out, it was reward enough just to know that somebody wanted the product. Now, you often don’t know the people you’re dealing with.”
Think big, farm small
When Ron Sawler converted the family dairy farm to vegetables in 1968, production was the name of the game. As the farm grew to today’s 600 acres, and operations became more complex, issues like marketing, finance and human resources became more and more important.
In Mark’s view, the most difficult part of the business is achieving performance and balance among all facets of management.
“I think of it as a recipe,” he says. “If you look at the ingredients that go into a
recipe, some you might like and some you might not. But it all has to go in, or the recipe won’t work.”
Over the next 10 years, Mark sees the challenge as evolving with a growing industry, while staying true to the family’s philosophy of flavour, freshness and local character. Together with his father, brothers and family, he’s prepared for whatever the future brings.
“We are a small farm in a small region of the country, but we’re sized to our market,” he says. “We’re not as big as a farm in Ontario, but we don’t need to be. Our goals for this farm are to produce food in this area, and then sell to our neighbours across Atlantic Canada.”
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