Vinestops Update - It's Live!

Today I'm talking with Jim at Vinestops.  This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company. https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/ https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/ www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company. 00:28 Today I'm talking with Jim at Vinestops in New York in America.  Good morning, Jim. How are you?  Morning. How are you?  I'm good. I don't know why I did that. I don't think there's New York anywhere but America, but whatever. It's okay.  How is the weather there today? It's beautiful.  Clear blue skies and it's not muggy, which is really awesome.  Yeah. think maybe, hopefully, dare I say it, we've turned the corner. Maybe. 00:56 It was, it was brutal. My tomatoes got decimated from the Sephora leaf spot.  And we get that when you have that a lot of rain and a lot of like mugginess and it was just like the worst conditions for it. So it's a little disappointing. Yeah. We lucked out. Our tomatoes are coming in hand over fist right now for the next couple of weeks. And it's been amazing because we didn't have very good luck last year or the year before. 01:23 The weather in Minnesota this morning is sunny. There's a very, very light breeze. Like you can just hear a little bit of a hiss through the leaves, but that's it. And it's 68 degrees and the high for today is only supposed to be 78. So I am tickled with the weather we're having currently. That's like ideal weather for me.  Mid 70s, I'm there all day long. Yeah. It's been gorgeous the last few days and 01:49 The one creature on my property that is most thankful is my dog. She had such a hard time with that heat wave that we had.  And she's been so much more comfortable the last week or so. Oh, that's great.  I always love it when the animals aren't stressed out, right? Yeah, she was so sad, Jim. She kept laying on the tiles on the bathroom floor. And every time I would go in the bathroom, she'd look at me like... 02:16 can you fix it mom please and no I can't fix it I don't know how I'm sorry.  So you and I spoke in September last year about this project called Vine Stops and you couldn't tell me you couldn't tell me a whole lot about it because it was in the works. So do you want to tell me what it is and give me an update.  Yeah.  So you know we talked about my farm stand and my farm and having the issues that lot of 02:46 of farm stand owners and vendors have, which is like, how do we get people to our farm stands,  especially with people that are out there,  like way out there when they don't have a lot of traffic.  And so we came up, I came up with this idea about Vine Stops. Originally it was to, to make pre-built farm stands to sell in big box dealers,  like Home Depot and Lowe's and Tractor Supply. 03:14 And I ended up getting a patent on a farm stand I developed.  And then what happened was we really, we kind of transitioned it more to a platform to be able to find farm stands and vendors.  And it's not nothing new, right? There's a lot of apps out there that, you know, you can pay five to $50 a month and be able to get a platform to sell your, you know, your show your 03:44 your farm stand or your or your if you're a home baker or vendor.  But that's not what I wanted to do. I didn't want to just throw together another app that,  just, you know, people like us pay have to pay for a lot of money for and then there's nothing behind it. Right. I truly wanted to create an ecosystem that brings everybody together. But a company that is face face forward, meaning 04:13 You know, I want our company to be there with the users, not just kind of have them pay a monthly fee. then, you know, we're, we're on an island somewhere running a business from our laptop, you know?  Um,  and so the fine stops since I talked to you last has, has blossomed. It's so incredibly, uh, you know, I'm excited.  We, we thought we were just going to be farm stands. 04:40 vendors and farmers markets, kind of a management platform.  We ended up turning it into just a true ecosystem where we have home bakers and food trucks accounts now that have features that were specifically designed based off of feedback from the users.  And that's the best part about VineStops is we're having meetings with the users and saying, what do you like? What do you don't like? 05:09 what do want to see? And we're making it for them in the system.  So, Vistops has truly kind of developed into this whole ecosystem of being able to find farm stands, vendors,  farmers markets, food trucks,  events, and even more. And we're continuously growing. So, it's fun, it's exciting, and we're meeting great people. And the best part about it is 05:36 we're accomplishing what I want to do, which was create a company that helps farm stands and home bakers and vendors be found, but also doing it alongside with them as one, as a farm stand owner. 05:53 Very nice. And it's been accomplished in, well, under a year because we're not even at September of 2026 yet. Yeah.  We're humming along.  And, you know, we haven't even started advertising.  We're doing no advertising whatsoever.  Everybody that's joining the site is word of mouth. And it's also like finding us on Facebook or 06:22 you know, comments or, you know, people saying, Hey, check out Vine Stops, you know,  and that's the way we wanted it now for a little bit because we, still are learning. And I think the feedback from people that operate farm stands and the home bakers and, and, uh, farmers markets, uh, is, is very important for us to kind of tailor products, uh, that really, uh, fits their needs, not create a product and tell them what it is. 06:51 And then they have to pay for it, if that makes any sense. And our goal is to be no cost, low cost. I would love to continue to build out VineStops where the users aren't paying for it.  And the money that VineStops makes comes from other sources that doesn't make somebody baking out of their house pass along 7 to 8 % user fees to the customer. 07:20 you know, because that's what some of these platforms do. And it's a lot of money when you're paying a couple of dollars for a cookie or, or, you know, a muffin already. And then all of sudden you have to pay almost 8 % user fees on top of that transaction.  Yeah. Yep.  And I feel like I harp on this constantly, but with the cost of inflation on everything right now, it's getting harder and harder. It is. 07:48 And there's, know, and we can do a whole nother show on this other topic because over the last three or four months, especially now that AI has become like ingrained in everything,  my team has identified probably 10 to 15 new farm stand,  farmer's market apps that are getting pumped into the, the, 08:17 social media world, you know, as having tens of thousands of users and people on these platforms. And they're tricking people because what happens is, you know, this app was just kind of thrown together with AI, right? And then it gets pumped on social media as a farm stand, farmers market app that has, you know, 10,000, 30,000 users on the system worldwide. And then it 08:47 tells you, hey, know, free trial for seven days and you're paying 10, $20 a month after that. And then when you get on it, there's truly actually no users. And, you know, I started learning a lot this year about the whole tech world and, and, um, AI and, and what's called API's in, and how they kind of connect with different sites. And all they're really doing is they're taking an app, they're throwing a platform together. They're connecting it to Google and to other. 09:15 platforms that kind of collect where these farm stands are or farmers markets are and then showing it on their platform like they're users but they're actually not users. It's just collecting data from other platforms.  And so as a farm stand owner, I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to join this platform. I'm going to pay $10 a month and look at all the users and people around here. But you get there and it's like, you start clicking on it and then 09:43 You realize they're not users. I'm just clicking on what's already on Google.  so I feel bad. I feel bad because in our journey and talking to some single moms and home bakers and people really struggling to get this off the ground,  it's sad to see them fall for these quick pumps of AI tech companies and platforms out there just to grab. 10:11 money from them without offering really truly what they think they're getting.  So that's why we're doing this slow.  We're not. And that's why we don't.  We're trying to keep this low cost, no cost, because I don't want to do that. I want to build a platform that truly is a platform of users and truly is a community of people and that we can actually help people save money and make more money by not charging them what the fees are that are out there. 10:42 fabulous and I talked a lot about AI on my other podcast because I started a new one back in January and my co-host has a a bee in her bonnet about AI worse than I do and the problem with AI is that a lot of people over 50 cannot discern what's real and what's AI and it's just sad 11:11 And it just, I said this yesterday, chaps my ass that there's always got to be a bad guy looking for a way to make a cheap and fast buck.  listen, I'm not going to lie. You know, we're a tech company. You know, I am a farmer and I am a farmstead owner.  You're not building a tech company in this world without utilizing AI somehow. know, buying stocks utilizes AI. We utilize it in a different way. We created a, we created a leaf. 11:41 that's his name.  And Leaf is kind of like your plan. It's our platform like helper and why we created him to help.  So when when people are on social media saying, am I allowed to set up a farm stand in my in my neighborhood? We want them to be able to just ask Leaf that, hey, Leaf, I live in, you know, Guapiners Falls, New York. What are the laws around setting up a farm stand? And Leaf will help you find them. 12:07 Or,  Leaf,  find me peaches within 30 miles of my house and Leaf will pull up the farm stands and farmers markets and pull up the peaches that are for sale. So that's how we're utilizing the AI with VineStops.  But again, we're not just a total AI company and you're not going to see the people behind it. We are very much going to be front forward and having 12:35 community meetings via Zoom and touch bases with our vendors and even farmers markets.  We've set up a VineStops booth at one of the farmers markets and they're like, no way. I was like, yeah, that's one of our goals. We want to actually be out there. We want to sponsor farmers markets. We want to try to get money for them, whether it's for grants. 12:58 Yeah, AI is here, unfortunately, and it's tricking a lot of people, unfortunately, especially the elderly who are not used to it. And it's sad and I hope they figure out a way to manage it a little bit better than they are now.  it's unfortunately a runaway train and it's not being managed properly.  Well,  they let the horse out of the barn too soon is what happened,  as it typically does. 13:29 And I am not bad mouthing AI. We've been using AI for years in many ways, shapes and forms.  Just not in the ways that people are using it now. So if you're going to use it, use it for good.  Be a superhero, use it for good.  So I was looking at your website earlier this morning and I saw that you have a calendar feature on there. What is that about? 13:58 Yeah, so you're seeing half of it, which is, you know, I last time I told you I couldn't tell you stuff.  So the calendar feature is going to be really awesome.  That's going to live throughout the site through all the accounts and especially from a user perspective, what you're looking at, right?  So there's a couple of ways of landing on that calendar now. You're going to have your farmers markets. 14:24 your community events. like if my town puts up like a fireworks show on Saturday, they can throw an event up on there.  And what's coming, what's built, but we haven't released it yet because we're doing a different part,  is that you can now set up mini events for your farm stand or as a home baker especially. And we actually got this idea from a home baker in Virginia.  She sat with us for two hours and really went through everything. 14:52 Uh-huh. Bree's Bakery,  she, she's, the way she runs her bakery is that she, she sets her, her menu and then everybody has to get the orders in by a certain time. And then she has a specific pickup time at her farm stand that she'll be at for people to pick up their orders. And so what we did was we built vine events, they're called. And so she can create the pickup window as an event. And then when you, when you purchase it from her. 15:23 from her storefront, you can actually click on that event as the pickup window.  And for her on the back end, it helps her organize what she needs to bake for that day. But it also can land on the community calendar as like, you know, as an event where, where you can pick up fresh produce or bakery items, but also for farmers markets.  if, if Bri decides she's going to be at the farmer's market next week, 15:53 and that farmers market is on five stops,  well, Bree can actually put that event,  that farmers market as an event in her checkout so people can order it and then tell her they're going to pick it up at the farmers market that day.  So there's those are a couple of the uses that we're going to have for that community calendar. But the goal again is no matter where you are on the site, if you're on the Discover tab or 16:22 or whether you're in your consumer profile, that you can go to that community calendar and use the filters. If you want to see what's going on just within 30 miles from you,  then you do that and you can see what's going on within 30 miles from you. And then you can click on each day, it'll show you all the events.  And we also, I'll give you a sneak peek.  You're not gonna see it on there, but it's already done.  We're gonna have what's called Vine Clubs. 16:51 And I'm trying to get to see the theme, right?  So we created this community within Vine Stops that's not live yet, where let's say I run the Tomato Club of Wappengers Falls and I have a Facebook group and you know, we do our thing. Well now I can put that group on Vine Stops and we're going to have a whole section for people to be able to put their... 17:20 their clubs on their manager clubs, but also tied into the community calendar.  So, and, and in leaf.  So, um, you know, I have my, my club in, in, in in vine clubs.  And let's say you love tomatoes.  You're looking at the community calendar for the, you know, the next two weeks. And, and I have our meeting on there and it says, you know, Oh, look, next Friday. 17:47 The tomato club of Wappeners Falls has got their meeting here.  You can click on it and go right to our club page.  But also if you use Leaf and said, hey, Leaf, are there any clubs near me or hey, Leaf, I want to join a tomato club, he'll pull up my club and say, there's the tomato club of the Hudson Valley or Wappeners Falls right there.  And so that's not on the site live yet. It's built in the background, but you can kind of see 18:17 how over the past year we've morphed from just like a farm stand locator to a true community style organization. And we want to really build a site and a company where people can explore and just get lost and like going through the site and finding other people and other groups and not feeling like they have to go to Facebook for one thing,  YouTube for another thing. 18:46 keep on bouncing around and, and, and that's, that's, that's the whole, that's the, that's the vision right there is to get everybody really just utilizing the site as a source of knowledge and community.  That is amazing. And that's not what I heard when I talked to you almost a year ago. So this is great.  So as you're telling me about all this, for some reason, the library that I went to in a very small town where I grew up, 19:16 is coming to mind. They had a big bulletin board and they had pins and they had they had pieces of paper you could actually just write on and put up if you wanted to. And it had community events in the three or four towns around my town and for my town. And they had, you know, people who wanted to, I don't know, rake leaves or babysit or whatever. And they had 19:42 just all the little community things that you would expect back when the internet didn't exist.  And this is what that's what this reminds me of except that it's the internet.  So is Vine Stops national?  we've got users worldwide already. Okay. Yeah.  It's it's it's it's we haven't really tried to dig into why we have some accounts and where we do.  Because right now we're just not 20:11 truly worried about where they're coming from or more worried about what they're looking for, what they're, how they're using it,  what account, you know, what accounts are being open and really just continuously building the product based off of feedback and my vision, you know, um, I think very, very soon in the next 30 to 60 days, you're going to probably start seeing advertising pushes going out. Cause I think we're, we are at the point, we've been at the point where we could, we could, you know, say, Hey, here's our site. 20:41 join, you know, and here's advertising pushes and, and, know, let's get a lot of people on there using,  but boy,  we, we truly love the feedback we're getting it. And honestly,  we'd rather fix it and, and, and really dial it in and then launch then to launch and then have people disappointed.  So we're, we're, we're here.  People, people can go on and sign up right now and, and they could be very happy. 21:10 It's certainly not perfect.  What we're doing is we're actually taking four or five different products,  vendors, management platform,  a farm stand, a locator app,  a community.  We're bringing multiple products into one place.  that's not easy to do to where it feels like you're not just looking at five different businesses, that you're truly looking at one organization or one ecosystem. 21:39 So that's the tricky part we're trying to do right now is try to really make it feel like a true ecosystem,  not just five different companies in one.  Yeah. Integrating all of this is a trick to make it feel user friendly and comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. And we really could use all the feedback we can get.  Anybody that's listening that wants to just go on even 22:08 create accounts as test accounts and just tell us we're happy with that. We can always delete them.  But you know, it's, it's, uh, that's the thing is we want to know where, where people are getting lost. I'll give you good example.  The consumer side of these farm stands and home bakers,  we underestimated the, what the consumer wants to see on their end when they're logging in. Cause a lot of them will log in. 22:36 do the transaction, right? A little scan of barcode at the farm stand,  do the transaction, it completes, and then it's kind of like done, right? Out of sight, out of mind. Yeah.  But we didn't have anything behind that.  Like, know, then what? Right? That was like, you know, nobody knew what was next.  So that's why we built out the consumer profile more.  So when you go to your vine stops, you might have a farm stand, but you also have a 23:05 consumer profile and that shows you all of your purchases, your messages between you and the farm stands and the vendors that you're buying from, as well as some featured farm stands, farmers markets within your area and some other things below it. But we wanted the consumer to kind of have a landing place where they can see their past transactions,  they can manage their orders, they can see 23:34 where they like to order from, you know, they're, they could, you know, add favorites. Uh, there's a quick button now, like if there's one favorite farm stand that they constantly use, you know, they can press that and it takes them right to that farm stand instead of having to go search for it or click a QR code or anything like that. So, you know, just a lot of features.  Some, some, some say it could be feature overkill and it could, we'll probably disappear some of them, but we won't really know until we have like a true solid. 24:04 user base,  like I would say next six months to a year, at that point we can see,  hey, all right,  10 % of this population is only using this feature,  but 70 % is using this feature. So let's make that feature a little bit more better or find out if we even need the other feature that nobody's using.  Yep, that makes sense. 24:32 I question while you were talking and of course it went bye bye as soon as I started listening again.  I don't remember what it was. Oh, now I do. Now I do.  Do you have a rough estimate of how many users you have now? Yeah, we're almost at a thousand. Nice. And when did it go really live? Well, we really haven't had an official launch yet. 25:02 I mean, we,  remember when we, when I spoke with you last, I mean, it was live for you to use. You were able to create an account. We were testing, but ever since then, we really just, uh, we've been live and just changing actually almost daily. We, we, make changes to the platform.  Um, but we have not had a official of Einstein's kickoff mass marketing event yet. 25:31 Okay. think that's going to be the next 30 to 60 days that we were talking about. Okay, cool. I love this so much. There are so many people doing something like what you're doing, but I feel like yours covers more basis for people.  does.  You know, some of those other platforms might be more detailed and might have features that we just don't know about that we would want to put in. 26:00 And we'll get there. I'm not worried about that. I think, again, the main thing is really want to put something together that's going to reduce the costs for some people.  know how hard I work to make 30 to 50 bucks a day at my farm stand. It's a lot of work.  to pay $25, $50 a month for a platform on top of that, along with 26:30 You fees, just I don't see it realistic, you know But hey people pay it so it's there must be a demand for it But I'd like to keep that a lot lower if not free for for the users here And we'll have to put something in it, you know, we just don't know what that looks like yet but my commitment is We're gonna be cheaper than anybody if we even put anything in there Yeah, that's awesome and 26:59 The other thing here is that this is a very symbiotic relationship between the customer and the producer. And I am a huge proponent for this.  We need people to grow food or raise food. know, beef is expensive right now.  We need people to raise and grow food and we need people to support those people doing that by buying the products that the people have. 27:28 The fact is, if you buy locally, you are getting much more nutrient dense food to put in your body to support your own health. And that's the big thing here. You're absolutely right. Listen, I'm a huge support local business advocate and, and,  uh, and then the of living.  I look at this past just supporting locally. I actually look at this as 27:57 supporting your neighbors financially.  Because there's a lot of people that rely on their second, third or a little side gig to just make that extra buck to pay that bill that they barely can pay.  Right now, yes.  And so that's the important thing is how do we do that as a company? How do we help support the mission of shopping locally, but also support the mission of 28:27 helping people that need to do this, help them make more money.  So like for me, like I'll tell you the interesting transition I saw from when I started this to now with my farm stand is like, I'm a cash,  it was cash only farm stand in Venmo.  And it's an honor system. you just, know, people walk up and they drop off, you know, they pick up what they want and they take, you know, what they get. 28:56 drop cash in the box and that's it.  And I would run out a lot because I don't grow a lot. And what this did for me was I saw my customers transition very fast when they realized they can just order instead of going to my farm stand constantly and not seeing anything.  there's certain things that I know now next year that I have to grow a lot more of. 29:22 Because the demand through the orders,  I was, I was, had to say, I'm sorry, I can't fill your order for like a week because I got too many orders, but it really opened my eyes to where I was missing in the sales and with the volume.  But also for them, they were, they would come flat out like, listen, I love coming and sitting there in your driveway and talking to you sometimes. 29:47 But they're like, this is great that I don't have to drive there four or five times to see if you got eggs out of the stand.  So it's really helped me in that sense.  And running a honor system farm stand on a platform is not easy at all because there is a very difficult balance of putting inventory on your platform, but also understanding that people are showing up to your farm stand and buying stuff. 30:15 without, without using the system.  So there's a, there's a, there's a balance and a management of it that has to happen to where you're not putting stuff on the platform and saying it's all there. And then somebody showing up and nothing's there. Uh, and that's a frequent problem.  So I've continuously tried to alter this to where it's the best, I guess it's the best of both worlds to where. 30:45 your your if you buy something if you see something that's online right on on the app and it's it's an honor system farm stand they they know my customers know that most likely it'll be there if they do the order online the way i set it up is i'll acknowledge them hey listen i have your order ready it's ready for pickup you can just go pick it up or i i need i need another day 31:14 I do need to get a couple of things free and let them know without them coming.  that's, that's, think really where, uh, where it helped me this year. And I think that's where it would help a lot. Other people that operate these honor system farm stands that don't, don't utilize platform because as you build that customer base of orders, you can actually running an honor system platform or honor system farms in, you can actually organize yourself better. 31:41 and not feel like, you know, everything's so chaotic. What's going down there? Who's buying it and when they're buying it? Yes, with our farm stand, if we were going to do it the way that you're talking about,  we have enough room that we could set up a little partition and be like, OK, everything on this table is free game.  Everything on that table is pre-orders and it has their name on it. Ah, I like that. We'd be able to do that because it's big enough, but 32:11 If you just have a little farm stand, that might be hard. don't know.  I built a, when I built my farm stand, I actually built a pickup cabinet on the top of it. Yeah. So I have, uh, you know, you just open the drawer and it's got little areas and I put the, I put the orders right up on top there. And so I say, you're, you're, your orders ready. It's on top of the farm stand. That's my separation, but you're right. It could be anything really, uh, on, on,  um, on, uh, 32:42 how you want to set that up.  I mean, yeah, the water thing was big.  It's just, you know, the, the profile itself, we, there's a couple of good learnings. We learned that photos are actually important.  Some people are setting up farm stands or businesses that are buying stops and not uploading any photos.  And visually to customers, they actually like to see that personal connection. They like to see where they're 33:12 going to or maybe even a logo, right? It gives them a little bit more professional touch and a good story of knowing like where they're buying from and who that person is, right? And so these little things that when we did our customer interviews, like, you know, what do you like about when you shop at these,  let's say we showed them two different farm stands with the same product and one's really nice, one is just basic, right? 33:39 That's the feedback we're getting. So now what we're doing is we're actually creating learning videos,  training videos, and there's going to be a learning library in every account to teach people,  if you're running a farm stand on VineStops, here's your best practices and here's what the customers told us why you should do this. I love this so much. There's so much here that's good, Jim. 34:09 As I told you last time, I try to keep these to half an hour, so I'm going to wrap this up.  Where can people find you? Well, now they can go to Vinestops.com. It's live. Yeah.  And I am very interactive with it. My team is interacting with it. So they can message me right at Hawk Valley Farm as my farm is on there. If you go to Vinestops homepage and scroll all the way down, you'll see the little link right to my farm stand and they can just send me a private message if they want. 34:39 but I'm not, I'm not, I don't hide my phone numbers around.  I'm an open person. love talking to people.  So anybody can call me 518-227-7266. They can find me on Vine stops. I'm on social media, Jim Glorioso.  And anybody out there listening,  I welcome the phone call or the message. I'd love to talk to you. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you again. Oh, absolutely. I love this. 35:08 You can find me at tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Jim, thank you so much for your time and thank you for everything you're doing. Oh, no problem. I look forward to talking to you again.  Have a great day. You too.