The Rural Voice, 1993-11, Page 26,1111116
OATMEAL BY MAIL
Perth County farm couple come up with unique way
of getting their product to the consumer
by Keith Roulston
Barry Mahon with a box of Hilton
Farms Oats ready for shipment.
You see it at every elevator in the
fall, the long lineup of farm trucks
waiting to unload their grain to be
cleaned and loaded onto even bigger
trucks, or box cars or on to ships
headed for heaven knows where.
Things are different for Barry
Mahon when he markets his 50 -acre
hull -less oat crop: he'll send much of
it out, one cardboard box at a time,
through Canada Post.
Mahon and his wife Karen and
family members run Hilton Farms
Inc., a cash crop and milling
enterprise near Staffa in Perth
County. Their unique marketing plan
is a reaction to the changing
conditions of their operation.
Hilton Farms Inc. is living proof
that you can't sit down and figure
everything out in advance when
you're starting a business. As you
walk toward the "mill" you'll see a
typical Ontario dairy farm set-up —
low -slung modern barns, towering
silos. From deep inside the buildings,
however, comes the low growl of
22 THE RURAL VOICE
large electric motors.
The farm used to be a
family dairy operation
with Barry and his
brothers but in the mid
1980s they decided to
get out of the business.
The brothers went
their separate ways
(brother Paul is editor
of The Ontario
Farmer).
Looking around,
Barry decided there
was a need for a
custom seed cleaning
operation to allow
farmers to save money
by planting their own
seed back on the
fields. After a couple
of years he realized
this wasn't a long term option for the
farm because farmers, seeking to
save money, were planting seed
without cleaning it.
The couple had also started a
program of serving lunches to
schools, a business they found too
labour intensive. Through contacts
they developed in the baking
industry, however, they saw a need
for large quantities of oats. With the
seed cleaning equipment in place
already, the Mahons felt they might
be able to serve this niche market. By
the time they had put the pieces in
place to serve the market, however,
large companies had moved in to fill
the niche. A new, government -
subsidized plant in Manitoba flooded
the market, dropping the price of
oatmeal for the baking industry to
"dirt cheap".
An article about their new milling
operation appeared in a provincial
farm publication and a woman in
Vankleek Hill, near the Quebec
border, called. She was interested in
getting a bag of their oats. With no
province -wide distribution system in
place, the question for the Mahons
was how to get the oats to the
customer. Rather than disappoint the
woman, they had the idea to send the
oats by courier. When Barry called to
get the cost, he was surprised how
economical it was. Looking at the
figures, he thought it might be
possible to send more oats by
courier.
When he talked to the courier
company again, however, he found
out there had been some mistake with
the price he had been quoted for the
first shipment, and the price was now
higher. On a chance, he called
Canada Post. They offered a rate he
thought could work out. And so the
unusual marketing plan was born.
Mahon admits it is taking a while
to build up business. Canadians, after
all, aren't accustomed to getting their
oats through the mail. "We have to
show them we can deliver and that it
is a better product than you can get in
the store."
And they can deliver, and swiftly,
he says. He praises Canada Post's
parcel post service. There have been
times when people have called in a
panic because they were out of oats.
The Mahons have put a box of oats in
the mail that day and people have
reported receiving it the next day, if
they were in the same area of the
province.
As for the quality of product,
Mahon feels the customer gets a
good deal with his oats. For one
thing, the oats are fresh. Hilton
Farms mills only enough oats to meet
immediate demand, so if a customer
orders oats and gets it a day or so
later in the mail, it's only a few days
removed from the original grain. The
oats in a supermarket may sit in a
warehouse for three to six months, he
says.
There's a price advantage as well,
with the oats -by -mail costing less
than supermarket oats because there