{"id":5371,"date":"2013-11-13T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/?p=5371"},"modified":"2014-03-17T12:39:30","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T16:39:30","slug":"the-business-of-mongering-pastoral-artisan-cheese-bread-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/the-business-of-mongering-pastoral-artisan-cheese-bread-wine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Business of Mongering: Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greg O\u2019Neill is the co-founder of Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine (with partner Ken Miller). We spoke with him at the end of 2013 about launching and growing three stores, a bistro, a catering business, and local food service cheese distribution enterprise.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"pastoral-artisan-sidebar-300x900\"<\/a>Culture<\/strong>: What experience did you have before opening Pastoral?<\/p>\n

Greg<\/strong>: We\u2019d both worked in restaurants, and Ken is a trained chef who worked under David Waltuck at the award winning Manhattan restaurant Chanterelle (now closed) and is a soft ware developer. I have an MBA from Duke and worked in global marketing for a bunch of consumer product companies like Colgate-Palmolive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Culture<\/strong>: How did you find your first spot? Did you scout the areas? Did you do demographic studies?<\/p>\n

Greg<\/strong>: When we lived for a while in Germany, we got used to, and fell in love with, market shopping. We had met in Chicago, so we decided to go back there. And we realized that Chicago had a good food restaurant culture, but not, at that time, a good food market culture \u2013 no market shopping. We saw that as an opportunity. But, as to the specific locations, we did our homework. You have to. We did pedestrian counts, and sensitivity analysis, meaning, what if we had an average $15 ring up vs $25. What if we had 25% less customers. And, we worked with a good real estate agent who didn\u2019t steer us toward cheap rent because something was on a side street.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Culture<\/strong>: So, what is your average ring?<\/p>\n

Greg<\/strong>: At first, it was $17. Now it\u2019s north of $25.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Culture<\/strong>: What’s been your biggest success thus far?<\/p>\n

Greg<\/strong>: Growing during the time when the economy was in the toilet. We hired quality people all during the economic downturn. We just kept soldiering on. We started with 5 employees (including me). The company couldn\u2019t support both Ken and I until we opened the second store. We were lucky that Ken could do what he did for Pastoral (finance, IT, physical plant) after he worked all day!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Culture<\/strong>: What’s been your biggest challenge?<\/p>\n

Greg<\/strong>: When we opened our second store, it hit the perfect storm. Prices were going through the roof (Milk, Fuel, Wheat and Foreign Exchange) and we weren\u2019t prepared. When we ordered products we weren\u2019t informed that the prices had gone up until they had been delivered, sometimes as much as $3\/lb!, and we were afraid to push back. We were \u2018too small, too new\u2026\u2019 We actually lost 5 gross margin points in a single quarter. It almost killed us. We needed to institute bottom line mentality on top line business. So we told our vendors we needed a 15 day price increase notice. And we still have to keep reminding our supply chain of this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Culture<\/strong>: How do you find new products, especially if they are local and small-batch?<\/p>\n

Greg<\/strong>: You can only find so much at a large show like the FFS. We go to the Good Food Show, and we do retailer visits, and we keep our eyes on Farmers Markets. Everyone at Pastoral does this. We are a team.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Culture<\/strong>: How do you market Pastoral?<\/p>\n

Greg<\/strong>: We don\u2019t actually do much advertising, other than as good corporate citizens in culture and Edible Chicago. PR is huge now for us, and social media amplifies it. We are a regional retailer, but we want a national brand presence. But one thing I won\u2019t do, and actually hate it when I see it, is advertorials. I think it cheapens the editorial and the advertising to mix them or put them right next to each other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Culture<\/strong>: What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n

Greg<\/strong>: We took the last year off. We\u2019re thinking about next steps but we have a restaurant, three retail shops, a bistro, and we distribute cheese to 85 restaurants. We can\u2019t grow every one of these businesses. So, we are looking at the optimal way to profitably grow the business for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

One thing that is interesting is that our original location is growing 20% this year, because of its proximity to our cheese and wine bistro. But, running a restaurant is sexy, yet a pain in the butt. We\u2019re working really hard to have a team culture across all lines of business. And it\u2019s also interesting because we now have a business portfolio where if one business is down, another may be up. For instance while our first shop is growing this year, another has lower customer counts because there\u2019s huge construction in the area. There\u2019s nothing we can do about that. It just is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Culture<\/strong>: Any advice for fellow mongers running a shop?<\/p>\n

Greg<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Do your homework. Know your market, the customer, and who you are.<\/li>\n
  2. Differentiate. Don\u2019t become your competition. Stay focused on who you are and double down on what you do best. Stay on your game.<\/li>\n
  3. Be realistic. You cannot run a business and work yourself into the ground \u2018til your passion and ingenuity are gone. Don\u2019t take too much on yourself.<\/li>\n
  4. Do it with a partner, but do it with a partner with complementary skills. If you\u2019re gaga about the esoteric, or you\u2019re all business skills with no street cred, you\u2019re in trouble.<\/li>\n
  5. ACCRUE! Don\u2019t believe you\u2019re going to make a big bubble payment sometime in the future. That\u2019s going to be a hardship for the business.<\/li>\n
  6. You have to entertain the downside. If you won\u2019t look at it, or talk about it, it\u2019s still there. You have to think about what you want and what might happen.<\/li>\n
  7. Business is stressful on a relationship. We {Ken and I} made the decision early on that we would rather have a successful relationship than a successful business. You know, it\u2019s kind of funny\u2026we never thought we\u2019d be the kind of people to launch a business. We\u2019re actually both pretty risk-adverse.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    \"PastoralArtisan-logo\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Learn about how your favorite cheesemongers and specialty food shops came to be and continue to grow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5387,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[513],"coauthors":[81],"class_list":["post-5371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-for-retailers","tag-business-of-mongering"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Business of Mongering: Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine - culture: the word on cheese<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/the-business-of-mongering-pastoral-artisan-cheese-bread-wine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Business of Mongering: Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Learn about how your favorite cheesemongers and specialty food shops came to be and continue to grow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/the-business-of-mongering-pastoral-artisan-cheese-bread-wine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"culture: the word on cheese\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-11-13T13:00:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-03-17T16:39:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/KenMiller-GregONeill-750x368.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"750\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"368\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Stephanie Skinner\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Stephanie Skinner\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/the-business-of-mongering-pastoral-artisan-cheese-bread-wine\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/the-business-of-mongering-pastoral-artisan-cheese-bread-wine\/\",\"name\":\"The Business of Mongering: Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine - 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