Great Lakes Dairy Sheep Symposium - the Department of Animal ...

The Objectives
One of our ambitions has always been to have a closer relationship with our clientele. It
allows for quicker feedback about our products and as a small business, our ability to respond
quickly to changes in the marketplace is a decided advantage. We believe that it is critical to
educate the consumer about our products, about how we manage our farm, our respect for the
animals, etc. In the end, your job is to educate the consumer. If you do a good job of that, the
sale takes care of itself.
It was imperative to be able to present all of our products to clients at the same time and
in the same place. This helps build brand recognition and also sensitizes the consumer to the fact
that La Moutonnière produces more than just the cheese sample they taste as they pass our booth.
We found that not one of our wholesale clients (over 100 shops and boutiques across the
province) carried our entire product line. This was painfully obvious whenever a potential client
asked where to go to get a specific product from us. We had to think first about which shop was
in their vicinity, and then whether or not that particular shop carried the product in question.
We also wanted to move the office, wrapping, distribution, and commercial kitchen under
one roof – to include on-farm sales. (We are still under construction as I write this in September,
with the plan to be open in mid October.)
The objective and aim of our own shop at Marché Jean Talon:
1. After selling to over 100 shops/clients over a series of years, we came to a better
understanding of the spoken and unspoken rules of retail cheese sales in our province.
We also had the meat and fiber to supply our own shop with a wide range of products -
enough to meet the needs of most clients. There is nothing worse than only having one
variety of cheese in the display fridge. People look once and move on. If the product line
is broader, and the products are seasonal in nature, more people return to see what is
currently in season.
2. We really wanted to emphasize the seasonality of our business. It is far too easy to fall
into the trap of competing with larger, commercial producers. Our strength lies in the fact
that we are a small farm with a highly individualized product line. Commercial producers
can’t compete with our seasonal production, with our unique family of cheese and dairy
products, and with our personal touch. For obvious reasons, we can’t and don’t want to
compete with them in their areas of specialty – mass production and distribution. Instead,
we have chosen to emphasize strengths that big business can’t duplicate.
3. We adhere to European market philosophies and endeavour to make seasonality our
strong point. It is our goal to educate our clients and forge a dawning awareness that the
seasonal changes of flavour in both cheese and meat are to be appreciated.
4. We needed to identify and contribute to the synergy with our fellow producers. This is
one of the major differences between European food culture as it is expressed in Quebec
and the rest of North America. For example, we worked with the olive and tomato
vendors at Marché Jean Talon to emphasize the seasonality of traditional Greek salads – a
synergy which helped even out seasonal fluctuations in feta sales. Graphing the sales of
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