We are a regional retailer, but we want a national brand presence. PR is huge now for us, and social media amplifies it. Greg: We don’t actually do much advertising, other than as good corporate citizens in culture and Edible Chicago. We go to the Good Food Show, and we do retailer visits, and we keep our eyes on Farmers Markets. Greg: You can only find so much at a large show like the FFS. And we still have to keep reminding our supply chain of this.Ĭulture: How do you find new products, especially if they are local and small-batch? So we told our vendors we needed a 15 day price increase notice. We needed to institute bottom line mentality on top line business. We were ‘too small, too new…’ We actually lost 5 gross margin points in a single quarter. When we ordered products we weren’t 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. Prices were going through the roof (Milk, Fuel, Wheat and Foreign Exchange) and we weren’t prepared. Greg: When we opened our second store, it hit the perfect storm. We were lucky that Ken could do what he did for Pastoral (finance, IT, physical plant) after he worked all day!Ĭulture: What’s been your biggest challenge? The company couldn’t support both Ken and I until we opened the second store. We started with 5 employees (including me).
We hired quality people all during the economic downturn. Greg: Growing during the time when the economy was in the toilet. Now it’s north of $25.Ĭulture: What’s been your biggest success thus far? And, we worked with a good real estate agent who didn’t steer us toward cheap rent because something was on a side street. We did pedestrian counts, and sensitivity analysis, meaning, what if we had an average $15 ring up vs $25. But, as to the specific locations, we did our homework.
And we realized that Chicago had a good food restaurant culture, but not, at that time, a good food market culture – no market shopping. We had met in Chicago, so we decided to go back there. Greg: When we lived for a while in Germany, we got used to, and fell in love with, market shopping. I have an MBA from Duke and worked in global marketing for a bunch of consumer product companies like Colgate-Palmolive.Ĭulture: How did you find your first spot? Did you scout the areas? Did you do demographic studies? Greg: We’d 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. 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.Ĭulture: What experience did you have before opening Pastoral? Greg O’Neill is the co-founder of Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine (with partner Ken Miller). The Business of Mongering: Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine Stephanie Skinner | November 13, 2013
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