And If You Think It Is, That’s Actually a Really Good Sign.

This episode is for you if the thought of email marketing to your customers makes you feel a little… gross.

Like, I don’t wanna bother people.

I don’t wanna be one of those spammy email people. No thank you.

Yeah. I hear you.

I used to say the exact same thing.

But here’s the thing I want you to sit with for a second: the fact that you’re worried about being annoying? That’s actually proof that you wouldn’t be.

People who actually are annoying don’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether they’re annoying.

In my experience, the people who feel uncomfortable about email marketing are almost always the ones who’d be really, really good at it – because they actually give a crap about their customers.

So if that’s you, keep reading. I promise I’m going somewhere with this.

What is email marketing for local food businesses?

Email marketing for local food businesses means building a list of customers – people at your farmers market, your food truck regulars, your cottage bakery fans – who opt in to receive updates from you. It is not cold emailing strangers or buying lists. It is people who raised their hand and said, yes, please let me know what you’re up to.

First, Let’s Talk About Tomatoes

Stick with me here, because I’m about to make a food analogy and you’re going to get it immediately.

Jessica Sowards of Roots & Refuge once said “Store-bought tomatoes taste like disappointment.”

And… if you’ve ever grown tomatoes – or homegrown carrots, or honestly most things – you know that what you get at the grocery store and what you can grow yourself are basically not even the same thing.

That’s what I’m asking you to do with email marketing.

You’ve only ever tasted the store-bought version – the spam filter stuff, the big corporate blasts, the emails from companies that bought a list and are shotgunning promotions to people who never asked to hear from them.

That stuff is gross. I agree with you.

But that’s a mushy flavorless storebought tomato. Or chicken noodle soup from a can.

And what I’m talking about is homegrown tomatoes ripe off the vine, your grandma’s homemade chicken soup with fresh vegetables and homemade pasta.

Those are not the same thing.

The Three Biggest Myths About Email Marketing (Busted)

Myth #1: Email is pushy and salesy

It can be. Just like anything can be. But only if you make it that way.

The emails you send to your customers are just updates… from someone they already know and trust (you!), going out to people who literally signed up to hear from you.

They raised their hand.

They said, yes, send me your stuff, I want to know what’s going on.

Think about the emails you actually enjoy getting. They’re probably not pushy. They’re probably not salesy. They feel like hearing from a friend.

That’s what this can be.

Myth #2: You’re bothering people

This one is SO common, and I get it – because when most of us think of email marketing, we think of all the stupid emails in our spam filters, sent by marketers we never asked to hear from and don’t want to have anything to do with.

But that’s not what this is.

The people on your email list are the same people who comment on your Facebook post a week after an event saying, Man, I missed it. I’ve been waiting for you to bring that thing back for three months and I didn’t see the post in time.

Those are the people who want to be on your list.

Those are the people who will open your email, see exactly where you’re going to be, and show up.

You’re not bothering them. You’re doing them a favor.

Myth #3: People hate email

No. People hate bad email.

People hate email that feels like junk, like fluff, like somebody trying to sell them something for the hundredth time this week.

People love hearing from people they actually care about.

There has probably been an email at some point in your life that you were genuinely happy to receive.

You can create that feeling for your customers. It is entirely possible.

What Good Email Actually Looks Like (A Story From My Own Business)

I used to have a six-figure online digital design business. At one point I had built up my email list to 55,000 people, with a consistent open rate of 50 to 60 percent.

But before I got there, I had a business where I didn’t do an email list. I was selling custom phone cases on Etsy, making about $4,000 a month in gross sales. Things were going well. And then Etsy changed their algorithm.

Within six months, I went from about $4,000 a month to $750.

That was the moment I knew I had to go get a job, because I had run out of savings and I knew it wasn’t going to recover. And in hindsight – I realized many years later that if I’d built an email list of customers, I would have been okay.

But I didn’t have one, because I had told myself I didn’t want to be one of “those” people.

Here’s the other side of that story: One day I realized that there were a couple mentors that I loved hearing from.

I read their emails religiously. I would save them.

I would literally wait until it was time to put the kids to bed, make a cup of tea, get my cozy blanket, grab my laptop, and actually look forward to reading their emails.

They emailed maybe once a month. And I read every single one.

That’s when it clicked for me. Email wasn’t bad.

Most people just go about it wrong.

If I myself loved reading the emails from these teachers – the ones who gave me glimpses into their lives, let their personalities shine through their words, and always gave so much value – then maybe the email itself wasn’t the problem.

Because when I heard from them the right way, I loved it and I appreciated it.

They weren’t emailing every day. They were sending emails that actually mattered, that felt like hearing from a real person. And people loved them for it.

So that’s what I started doing myself. And by the time I was done building that business, I had people telling me, I don’t even really like the product you sell, but I’m on your list because I love hearing from you. Reading your emails feels like sitting down for coffee with an old friend.

Yes. That’s exactly it.

Why Email is Especially Powerful for Local Food Businesses

Here’s something that I think gets overlooked: local food businesses have some serious unfair advantages when it comes to email marketing. And I mean that in the best possible way.

You already meet your customers face to face

Most online businesses spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to build trust with people they’ve never met.

WE don’t have that problem.

WE’re at the market.

WE’re at the window of the food truck.

We hand someone a cookie or a plate of food and watch the bliss on their face when they take the first bite.

That is a massive head start.

When those same people get an email from you, they already know who you are. They already like you.

They’re already more likely to open it, read it, and show up.

You’re selling food – and food is inherently relational

Food has been connection since the beginning of human history. What you sell is not some anonymous widget. It’s something people feel things about.

One of my favorite parts about selling from my bakery is watching someone take a bite of one of my giant cookies and just… light up.

That’s not a transaction. That’s a relationship.

That relational quality carries right into your email list.

Your product is perishable – and email solves that problem

Most local food businesses have a time-sensitive product. You need people to show up at a specific time, in a specific place, knowing exactly what you’re selling. S

ocial media is terrible at this, because you never know if your post is going to reach the right people at the right time.

Email hits the inbox. It doesn’t disappear in a feed.

And you get to include everything – where you’ll be, what’s on the menu, pictures of what you’re selling, prices, pre-order links, all of it.

Email is a cheat code for perishable products. I’m not kidding.

A Real-World Example: How One Algorithm Tanked a Whole Day of Sales

I work with a local food truck owner – incredible food, loyal regulars, genuinely beloved in his community. He has about a thousand followers on Facebook.

He does not do email marketing (YET! lol!!).

There was one day where almost nobody showed up. Even his most loyal regulars – the people who never miss – weren’t there.

He didn’t know why. Was it his food? Did he upset someone?

We were talking about it and he said, I barely even had anyone comment on my Facebook post. I usually get a bunch of people.

And I said: there it is. That’s your problem.

We went into the back end of his Facebook page and looked at the reach numbers.

And for whatever unknown reason, his post had reached a fraction of his normal audience – probably less than one percent.

Facebook’s algorithm just wasn’t in his favor that day.

Facebook will never ever notice or care, but these things affect us in very real ways.

He lost hundreds of dollars in sales because of one bad algorithm day.

And this is one of the people who has told me, I don’t want to do an email list because I don’t want to bother people.

But here’s the thing – people love talking to him. They sit at his food truck and chat away. Of course they’d want to hear from him.

He just has this idea in his head that email had to look like one specific thing, and it doesn’t.

(Don’t worry, I’m still working on him and I know he will rock it when he starts his list finally)

What Email Looks Like When You Do It Right

Okay, so you’re maybe a little more open to this. Here’s what I want you to know about how to do it in a way that actually feels good.

Ditch the fancy newsletter format

The emails that made me fall in love with email marketing (the ones I saved and read with a cup of tea) were not fancy styled newsletters.

They were not magazine-style layouts with perfectly branded images and tip-of-the-week sections.

They were just… emails. Written by a real person, in a real voice.

Maybe with some bold text or a photo dropped in. That’s it.

And that’s what works for local food businesses.

You’re not Target. You don’t need to look like Target.

People are on your list because they like you, not because they want a corporate newsletter.

Write like you’re writing to a friend

Here’s how I write my emails: I just… write.

“Hey, here’s what’s going on this week.”

“Here’s something funny that happened.”

“By the way, here’s my menu for Tuesday’s drop. Here’s where I’m going to be, here’s the address.”

That’s it. I wing it. And people respond to it, because it’s authentic and it’s genuine.

You don’t need perfect grammar. You don’t need to sound like a corporation. You don’t need to follow a rigid schedule.

You just need to be yourself.

Forget the ’email every other day’ rule – seriously

There was a teaching that went around for years that said you had to email at least every other day, otherwise people would forget about you. And that is absolute garbage.

The mentors I loved emailed maybe once a month.

And I looked forward to every single one. Contrast that with the people who email every day: I unsubscribed.

Because it became noise.

It was fluff – a bunch of words that didn’t actually mean anything – and I stopped caring.

Email once a week if you want to. Email once a month if that’s what feels right.

What matters is that when you do email, it’s worth reading.

What to actually include

Here are a few things you can put in your emails as a local food business:

  • Where you’ll be and when (this alone is worth the price of admission)
  • What’s on your menu – photos if you have them, because food photos are incredible sales boosters
  • A story from your week – what you’re working on, what made you laugh, what’s going on
  • A sneak peek at something you’re working on
  • Occasionally, a special just for your list – loyalty discounts, early access, pre-orders

That’s a whole email right there. You don’t have to overthink it.

The Scalability Thing: Why This Gets Better Over Time

Here’s one more thing I want you to understand about email, because it’s really important.

It takes you the same amount of time to email 10 people as it does to email a thousand.

That’s not true of almost any other marketing action. It’s one of the only things in your business where your reach can grow without your effort growing proportionally.

And over time, you’ll start to develop a core group – the people who open every single email, who respond, who become your true fans.

They will buy anything you make. They will try anything on your menu. They will show up in the rain.

I have a customer on my bakery list right now – my list is under 100 people at this point, just to be transparent – who, when I had to take a few months off, came back and told me, You are not allowed to leave us ever again.

That’s a true fan, and that’s what email builds.

Common Questions About Email Marketing for Local Food Businesses

Do I need a big list to make email marketing worth it?

No. I have seen real results from lists of a few dozen people. The point is not the size of the list – it’s the quality of the relationship. A list of 50 people who love you is worth more than a list of 5,000 strangers.

How often should I email my list?

As often as you have something worth saying. Once a week is a solid rhythm for most food businesses because you can tie it to your schedule – where you’re going to be, what’s on the menu. But once every couple of weeks is fine too. Just make it count.

What email platform should I use?

I use a platform that has a free tier to get started – you don’t need to spend money on this until your list grows. I put together a free starter pack at bethanyarcher.com/start that walks you through exactly how to set up your list for free. It’ll take about an hour, and then you’re set up and ready to go.

What if people unsubscribe?

They will. That’s okay. Unsubscribes are just the list cleaning itself – people who weren’t the right fit anyway. Don’t let it stop you.

Your Next Step

If any of this has shifted something for you – if you’re starting to think okay, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad – here’s what I want you to do.

Go to bethanyarcher.com/start and download the free starter pack. It includes a tutorial that walks you through setting up your email list completely free. Once that’s done, you’ll be ready to actually start implementing everything I want to teach you.

Because if you want consistent sales without feeling like you have to constantly post on social media and hope the algorithm cooperates? Email is where you put your time.

It’s not gross or spammy.

It’s just a relationship.

And you’re already good at building those… every time you hand someone something delicious and watch their face light up.

Go get your list set up. I’ll be here when you’re ready.

– Bethany