But there’s one thing I haven’t heard anyone talk about yet, and it has been stuck in my head for weeks.

So now we’re going to talk about it.

We Were Built for More Than This

Here’s the thing that got me started down this rabbit hole.

There’s a stat floating around that medieval peasants had roughly 150 days off per year. At first, that seems kind of insane – that’s more than HALF of the time!

Now – that statistic does need to come with the caveat that this only included work they did for their landlords/etc (and they still had to come home and do the domestic work which was WAY more than it is now because they had to weave baskets and make cheese and carve spoons and do all kinds of things).

But there’s something to it, and it’s kind of wild when you think about it.

But – feeling like this was still pretty nebulous, I went looking for something more concrete and found a University of Cambridge study on hunter gatherer tribes in the Philippines who were still living their traditional lifestyle.

These people sustained everything they needed in about 15 to 20 hours a week. The rest of their time was spent socializing, resting, and just… living.

(I mean… holy crap!!!! We are doing something WRONG!)

The study also looked at neighboring tribes who had adopted agriculture – same people, same culture, just focused on agriculture instead of hunting and gathering and it blew my mind but they found those people worked 10 more hours a week to sustain the same life.

More technology. More work. Not less.

Now – I’m not here to sit here and say hunter-gatherer life was easy. Far from it, and I am super aware of the fact that life as a HG was rough, precarious, dangerous, and SHORT.

But the point here is this – it goes to show that we were meant for a life with less… grind.

That pattern? It goes a lot further than farming.

The Washing Machine Didn’t Free Anyone

Before the washing machine existed, doing laundry for a family took literal days. Slapping laundry on rocks, boiling it, the whole thing. It was basically a part-time job by itself.

(Side note if you’ve never watched it, go watch Tales of the Green Valley which is a part of the BBC Farm Series, it will show you the drudgery that is laundry back in the day!!)

And before all that effort was required? The expectations around clean clothing (and how a housewife might spend her time) were completely different. Spot cleaning. Wearing things multiple times. Heavy use of aprons.

Then came the washing machine.

And yay, our lives got way less hard!

But… but but.

Did we get our days back? Nope. We got daily laundry, giant overflowing closets, delicate fabrics that need special treatment, and somehow, even higher standards than before.

We’re still busy and we’re still scrambling. Now it’s just… new and different things that we have to do as parents/housewives/housepeople/whatever.

That’s not efficiency. That’s a raised bar.

And here’s what really gets me. Think about what we’ve piled onto domestic life since then. Pinterest-worthy everything. Smash cakes and fancy birthday parties every year. The perfect gym body, the perfect meal on the table (and definitely different meals every day, never repeating), elaborate packed school lunches, fit in between all the sports practices and school events and PTA meetings and holy cow I am feeling stressed out just WRITING this.

The washing machine could have given women a whole extra day of leisure. Instead, it just changed what “enough” looked like.

A Few More Examples You’ll Recognize

Cell phones. I became a parent in 2006 and I swore my kids wouldn’t have one until they could pay for it themselves, same way I had to work for a pager in the nineties. But I had no idea that society would completely restructure itself around cell phone ownership. Now if a teenage girl pulls over on the side of the road, nobody stops to help because everyone assumes she has a phone. My 14-year-old has a cell phone. All my kids do. I caved, and honestly? You kind of have to.

Calculators. Being a banker used to be high-skill, high-trust work. Mental math, precision, real expertise. My great-grandfather supported an entire family as a banker, but when I went to get a bank job myself, it paid barely above minimum wage (because fact: it’s not as hard now!). Think of how different a job as an accountant would have been 200 years ago vs today. But guess what… we’re still doing the jobs… they just mean less. The technology didn’t free anyone up to do more meaningful work. It just commoditized the skill and moved the efficiency gain somewhere else.

Cars. Oh my gosh think about this for a minute… how motor vehicles completely have changed the landscape of EVERYTHING. Towns used to be built around walking distance. Everything you needed had to be close enough to reach on foot or by horse. At minimum, there wasn’t an expectation that you could, for example, go to an appointment in the city 100 miles away with two days’ notice.

Our entire society is built around that assumption, and opting out is genuinely difficult.

Every single time. New technology arrives. We absorb the efficiency. The bar raises. And then we wonder why we’re burned out.

Okay, So What Does This Have to Do With AI?

I want to be clear: I am not an AI hater. I use it a lot. It saves me massive amounts of time with this podcast, with my freelance work, with my baking business. I genuinely think it’s an incredible tool.

When I first heard of AI, I thought it was scary but cool… and I thought how nice it would be to have what was essentially a life assistant to help make things easier for me in my life.

Which… I’d guess a lot of people thought.

I thought AI could create leisure for me in my life – as the overworked, single mom working multiple jobs trying to keep the roof over our head that I bought when I was making considerably more money (lol!)

But here’s the part nobody is thinking about.

You’ve probably heard the example that one person using AI can now do the work of five people.

But – in real life, that does NOT mean five people working at 20% capacity and then going home early with the same paycheck.

It means one person doing the work of five, getting paid like one person. And the other four are just… out of luck, I guess.

My previous business, creating digital graphics, was largely taken out by AI. The demand collapsed. I can’t continue working in that industry because of it. So I’m not speaking theoretically here.

AI is here and it is raising the bar in massive, culture-shifting ways we can’t even comprehend yet.

Personally – I choose to look at this as an opportunity and see how I can potentially figure out how to gain from it, instead of lose.

So can you.

Where the Productivity Gain Actually Goes

Let’s talk about the productivity gain here.

I work as a freelance digital content manager, and AI has genuinely transformed how fast I can work. Projects that used to take weeks and cost clients $3,000 to $4,000? I can build one in a couple of days or even hours now with AI’s help.

But I’m not working less. I’m giving my client what she’s paying for (my time!), which is the right thing to do. She’s the one who benefits from the upstream productivity, because she’s the business owner.

That’s the pattern. The efficiency gain flows upward. Always.

Whether it’s a corporation cutting a team of 10 down to 2 because AI filled the gap, or a freelancer producing twice the output in the same hours, the person at the top of the triangle is the one who wins. The CEO. The stockholders. The business owner.

Which… actually? That’s kind of important information for us – read on.

Why Your Food Business Is Actually in a Good Spot

Here’s where I want to give you a second to breathe, because there’s genuinely good news here for cottage bakers, food truck owners, farmstand vendors, and anyone else selling real food to real people in their community.

You win twice – because in your business, YOU are at the top of the triangle, AND your product cannot be replicated by AI. Not anytime soon.

The handmade food, the human hands, the face-to-face conversation at the farmers market, the relationships, the local trust you’ve built, none of that is something a machine can do. And the more digital everything gets, the more people are going to crave exactly what you offer.

So here’s what you do:

Use AI as a tool – absolutely. Use it to brainstorm, to optimize your listings, to help you get found online, to process data and ideas faster. Use it to help you stage product photos by generating ideas you can then recreate yourself. Use it to schedule content and keep your marketing consistent.

Do not use it to create logos, photos, and posts. And I’m not even going to rant about data centers and whatnot because I’d be a hypocrite if I did.

But purely from a business standpoint – don’t do it, and here’s why.

I’m already seeing pushback against obvious AI content. AI-generated logos, AI-written posts, AI graphics.

To the extent I’m going to do an entire podcast episode about it soon, I think.

The funny thing is a year ago people couldn’t spot it as easily. Now? I’ve watched fully AI’d posts from well meaning entrepreneurs get no engagement at all because now people can feel the machine behind it.

That resistance is only going to grow.

As local food businesses, you are going to be on the right side of that shift.

So yes – use AI. Allow it to help you be more efficient and multiply YOU (because it’s one of the best ways, IMO, for us to reclaim our time).

Just don’t use it to replace you. Your voice, your face, your food, that’s what people are actually buying.

So What Do We Do With All This?

I don’t think we’re going to be able to change how society absorbs technology at a big-picture level. People are gonna people. The bar is probably going to keep rising.

But on an individual level? As business owners? As humans?

We actually get to decide.

We get to be the person at the top of the triangle. We get to be the one who benefits from the efficiency instead of being displaced by it.

And we get to choose, at least sometimes, to let the time savings actually be time savings instead of just piling on more output.

(That’s definitely going to be my main choice)

AI could mean a four-hour workday with the same output as eight. Whether that actually happens for you is something you get to have some say in, especially when you’re your own boss.

My homework for you this week isn’t really homework. Just this: notice where the bar was raised in your life without you choosing it. Where did something that was supposed to make things easier just make things more complicated? You don’t have to fix it. Just notice it.

That awareness is where it starts.

And if you want help building a local food business that actually works with your real life, bethanyarcher.com/start is the place to begin building your online presence and get your marketing dialed in so you can scale it up.

The post What AI and the Washing Machine Have in Common (And What It Means for Your Food Business) appeared first on Bethany Archer | Digital Marketing Strategy.

If that’s you, I need you to hear this: it’s not because you’re not working hard enough.

It’s probably because you’re working in the wrong direction. There’s a difference, and it matters more than almost anything else in your business.

So… let’s talk about it.

Passion Is Powerful. It’s Just Not a Business Model. {#passion}

Most of us didn’t start our food businesses because we thought, hmm, I need a business, food seems like a good category. We started because we love what we make. We love feeding people. I mean, I DO! And I figure if you’re reading this, you probably are too.

We’re passionate about it.

And that passion? It’ll carry you far. But it will not protect you from underpricing yourself, saying yes to everything, burning out, or getting pulled in ten different directions at once.

I’ve felt it. A lot of the food truck owners, cottage bakers, and farmstand vendors I know have felt it too. That desperate urge to just do more – as if more effort automatically equals more sales. It doesn’t. And the food industry is a brutal place to figure that out the hard way.

How bout this hard truth – food-based businesses (bakeries, food trucks, restaurants) have about a 70% failure rate. That’s insanely high – one of the highest of any small business category.

The usual reasons cited are low profit margins, high operating costs, weather dependency, product waste, competition. But there’s another one that doesn’t get talked about enough: we keep making more and selling more without ever stopping to actually run the business.

Motion vs. Momentum: What’s the Actual Difference? {#motion-vs-momentum}

Here’s the thing about modern hustle culture: we’re rewarded for looking busy. If you’re exhausted, you must be doing it right. If you’re constantly going, you must be building something.

But being busy and building something are not the same thing.

Motion is activity that looks like progress. It’s responding to every message immediately. It’s contorting your whole schedule to say yes to every little order. It’s posting just to post. It’s driving across town for one sale. Motion feels productive – it’s the hamster wheel that at least feels like doing your job.

But here’s the hard part: motion does not compound. You do it once, and that’s it. It doesn’t keep working for you. It just keeps you running.

Momentum is different.

Momentum is what happens when your effort builds on itself. It’s the system you set up once that keeps running. It’s the marketing channel that grows over time. It’s the product lineup that gets more profitable the longer you sell it.

Momentum is slower at first.

It requires patience and strategy. Sometimes it requires saying no, which is uncomfortable – especially when you’re stressed and behind on bills and everything feels urgent.

It’s HARD to set aside the urgent for the sake of the long-lasting, I get it.

But momentum is the only thing that ever actually moves the needle.

Motion keeps you afloat. Momentum moves you forward. And you can stay in motion pretty much indefinitely without ever actually going anywhere.

If you’re a home baker, food truck operator, or farmstand vendor and your business feels stuck even though you’re always doing something – this is probably a big part of why.

Getting clear on this is the first step to changing it.

Real Talk: Three Food Business Owners Who Are Stuck {#real-talk}

These are composites – people I’ve seen, maybe people you know, maybe me (definitely sometimes me ). I want you to notice how each scenario feels like hard work. Because it is. That’s not the problem. The problem is where the effort is pointed.

Susie the baker who wants every sale.

A customer asks Susie for one loaf of banana bread, but they need it delivered to their office because they can’t make it to her normal pickup. Susie says yes — a sale is a sale, right?

She packs it beautifully, drives 12 minutes, waits in the lobby, drives home. About 40 extra minutes total, including the back-and-forth messaging to arrange it all. The profit on that loaf? Maybe $3–4, if she’s accounting for her time. At $15/hour, that’s $10 in labor for an $8 loaf. The fuel and extra packaging probably wiped out the rest.

But here’s what really gets me: it’s not just the money she lost. It’s the money that 40 minutes could have made her.

I mean – if she had that time to put into her business, there are so many “momentum” things she could have done.

She could have used that time to work on her email list. Schedule a text message blast. Update her Google Business Profile. Take better product photos. Set up pre-orders. Those are the things that would have kept paying her back. The banana bread delivery? It paid her nothing and probably trained that customer to expect delivery every time.

Lydia the baker who loves new flavors.

Lydia is creative and her customers enjoy the variety, but every single week she’s testing new recipes and introducing new products. Her profit is unstable. Her customers can’t consistently get their favorites. Her hours keep climbing.

Because (and you may have noticed this in your own business) here’s the thing about new products – every single one requires upfront work. You conceptualize the flavor. You test it (sometimes multiple times, with wasted ingredients). You photograph it. You write the description. You market it. And then you do it all again next week.

(side note – I am tooootally speaking to myself here. )

What works better: signature items, a rotating special, reusable photos and descriptions that you can actually build on. Case in point – I’m scaling back to my single bestselling item right now while I prep to list my house, and you know what?

The demand is there, the system is dialed in, and I have actual bandwidth left over for marketing. That’s the 80/20 rule in action.

Joe the food truck owner who’s everywhere.

Joe is at the Wednesday market, Friday night events, Saturday morning AND afternoon, oh and Sunday brunch. He’s working harder than anyone. But he never builds an email list. He never updates his Google profile. He barely posts online. Every week is just reacting and prepping.

Here’s the thing: you cannot grow a business when every ounce of your energy is spent keeping it afloat.

An ounce of proactive behavior is worth a pound of reactive behavior. But when you’re constantly in go-mode, you leave yourself no room to be proactive. You can’t build the things that will stack and compound if you’re always just surviving the week.

Your Time Is the Most Expensive Ingredient You Have {#your-time}

You can buy more flour. You can buy more containers. You can pay someone to take photos for you (or my favorite – to wash the dishes for me… thanks, kids!).

You cannot buy more of your time.

Your time is the single most expensive ingredient in your entire food business, and it’s the one thing you cannot get back, cannot get more of, and cannot outsource. That means every minute – not just your baking time, but your grocery runs, your customer chats, your packaging, your social posts, all of it – is a real cost to your business.

This is why opportunity cost matters so much for local food vendors and home bakers. Every time you say yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. The question isn’t just can I do this – it’s what will doing this cost me and is it actually moving my business forward?

The things that build momentum for a food business? Building your email or text message list. Creating pre-order systems. Showing up in search results. Batching your tasks. Building your Google profile. These are the things that keep working after you’ve done them.

Driving banana bread across town is not one of those things.

So What Do You Actually Do With This? {#what-to-do}

I’m not going to give you a 12-step system today. Honestly, the first step is just seeing it.

You can’t change something you haven’t noticed yet. So this week, I want you to pay attention as you go through your day. Just notice. Ask yourself:

Is this actually moving me forward, or is it just keeping me busy?

If I stopped doing this, what would actually happen? Is this task profitable, or is it just urgent? Could this be simplified, batched, eliminated, or automated?

I’m not saying stop doing all the work. We still have to make the things. But start noticing when you’re choosing motion out of habit or fear, and ask whether you actually have to.

That’s where things start to shift.

If you’re ready to start building the kind of marketing system that creates momentum instead of just motion, grab the free starter pack at bethanyarcher.com/start. I created it to help you start growing your online presence and it’s where I’d tell every home baker, food truck owner, and farmstand vendor to begin.

Have a thought about this? Comment and tell me all about it!

The post Why Your Home Bakery or Food Business Isn’t Growing (Even When You’re Working Hard) appeared first on Bethany Archer | Digital Marketing Strategy.

If someone went online right now and searched for whatever you sell — cookies, salsa, tamales, smoked brisket, kolaches, whatever your thing is — in your local area… would you come up?

Would they find you easily? Would they find you AT ALL?

Sit with that for a second.

If your answer is “honestly, I have no idea” — that’s actually why we’re here today. Because this is one of those things that feels kind of optional until you really understand what’s at stake. And then it starts to feel a little urgent.

The good news is it’s way more fixable than you think. And most of it is free!

People Are Searching For You. Are You There?

Here’s something kind of wild: something like 97% of consumers search online before doing business with a local business.

Not some of them. Basically all of them.

And it’s not just Google anymore. People are typing their questions straight into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — and those AI tools are giving them answers based on what they can find about you online.

If there’s nothing to find? You don’t exist. I’m sorry! But you just don’t.

Think about it from a customer’s perspective. Your friend says “oh you have to try this lady’s kolaches, they’re incredible.” What’s the first thing you do? You Google it. You want to see if other people agree. You want to know where to find them and when. You want some kind of proof that this is worth your Saturday morning.

If nothing comes up, the trail goes cold. And you just… don’t go.

That is happening to local food businesses every single day. Not because their food isn’t good. Because they’re invisible online.

Let Me Tell You About a Food Truck

I work with a food truck here in town. Amazing food. Really excellent, dedicated people. They have a good following.

But one day I went into ChatGPT and searched for the type of cuisine they serve near our town, just to see what would come up.

ChatGPT told me there was nobody serving that food locally. That I’d have to drive two hours away to find it.

WRONG. So wrong! But ChatGPT had no idea, because this business had no online presence beyond Facebook. No website. No Google Business Profile. Nothing for AI to grab onto. As far as the internet was concerned, they didn’t exist.

So we set up a Google Business Profile. It took maybe 20 minutes. I created a Gmail address for the business, filled out the profile, and that was it.

A couple weeks later I checked again. Not only were they showing up — they were showing up with a review someone had left literally 30 minutes earlier. A brand new customer who’d heard about them from a friend, went and tried the food, loved it, and left a review.

And within 30 minutes of that review going up, ChatGPT had already found it and was quoting it back to people who searched.

Thirty minutes. That’s the gap between invisible and found.

And I’ll be honest — I sat there thinking about all the people who had probably searched for that cuisine in our area over the years and been told it didn’t exist. All those potential customers who just… went elsewhere. Because there was nowhere to find them.

That one still gets me a little.

Why Right Now Is Actually a Really Good Time to Care About This

There are two reasons this matters even more in 2026 specifically, and one of them is actually kind of exciting.

The first is something that’s being called a “trust recession.” People are burned out from being scammed and misled online, and they just don’t extend trust the way they used to. 84% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation from a friend.

Which means even when someone DOES hear about you through word of mouth, they’re still going to look you up first. They want backup. They want to see that other people back it up.

Businesses with five or more Google reviews get four times as many clicks as businesses with none. Not because reviews are magic — because they tell a stranger that you’re the real deal and other people have already taken the leap.

The second reason is where it gets exciting.

AI search is still in transition. The playing field is still relatively level right now. Research firm Gartner estimated that by 2026, AI would influence 50% of local business discovery decisions — and that’s not a future thing, that’s a NOW thing.

And here’s the part that matters for you: most local food businesses are not thinking about this yet. They’re thinking about signage and farmers markets and word of mouth, which are all great! But they are not thinking about whether ChatGPT can find them.

That is YOUR advantage if you move on it before everyone else does.

The businesses that get those top spots before the dust settles on all this AI transition stuff are going to be really hard to unseat later. I genuinely believe that.

So Where Do You Need To Exist Online?

Okay so here’s where I want to be clear about something: I am not about to hand you a twenty-seven step checklist. That is not what this is.

But I do want to walk through the main places that matter and why, because understanding the “why” is what makes you actually want to do the thing.

A Google Business Profile is the big one and honestly the only truly non-negotiable item on this list. It powers Google Maps. It powers “near me” searches. It gives people a place to leave reviews. And it’s what AI tools use to figure out who to recommend locally. It’s free, it takes about 20 minutes to set up, and as you just saw from the food truck story — it works embarrassingly fast. If you do nothing else on this list, do this one.

Yelp is worth your time because it powers Apple Maps and Siri and a whole bunch of apps you’ve probably never even thought about. But more importantly — every consistent listing you have somewhere is another vote of confidence. Someone finds your Google profile, then your Yelp, then your Facebook, all saying the same things? Their trust in you just quietly stacks up. It’s kind of lovely actually.

TripAdvisor is one people seriously sleep on. When I was doing research on how different AI tools pull information, I kept noticing that Claude specifically was constantly citing TripAdvisor. Different AI tools pull from different places, and TripAdvisor has a ton of “best of” and “top bakeries near me” style pages that are really well indexed. If your business can be on there, go be on there.

Local directories are mostly for the machines at this point, not for human eyeballs — but that’s exactly why they matter. AI tools are actively crawling them. When I was running my own bakery, getting listed in a local directory was one of the things that got me to the top of AI results. The AI basically quoted my directory description back to people almost word for word. I thought that was wild. And those listings are usually completely free.

A website is still the most powerful thing you can have, because it’s the one place where you get to write about yourself entirely in your own words — and whatever you write there is what AI is going to use when it describes you to potential customers.

Side note on that: be a little evocative. If you make brownies with four kinds of chocolate and a fudgy center that makes grown adults emotional, SAY that. Because AI will pick that up and repeat it, and whoever hears it is going to want your brownies immediately. You’re basically writing your own AI sales pitch. Use it.

A one-page site with your story, your menu, some photos, and your contact info is genuinely enough to start. It does not have to be fancy.

Social media is a touch point and a personality showcase — not a foundation. Facebook and Instagram are great for connection and showing off your food, and I still use them. But they are not a substitute for the stuff above, and relying on them as your only online presence is exactly what got that food truck into trouble. (If you want more on that particular rabbit hole, I have a whole episode about the algorithm and why it is not your friend. Just saying.)

And your local newspaper. I know, I know, hear me out. Local papers have a long, well-established history online, and AI treats them as highly credible sources. Getting featured in a local article — or even just sending a press release — can do more for your findability than months of social media posts. Plus actual humans still read them! Bonus.

The thing that ties all of this together is consistency. The more places you show up saying similar things about yourself, the more solid your online presence looks to the AI tools that are increasingly deciding who gets recommended. They’re looking for the most consistently present, most talked-about business. And that is very achievable.

You Don’t Have to Do This All At Once

Seriously. Please don’t try. You have food to make and orders to fill and a whole actual life over here.

The point of this whole post is really just to light a small fire under you about WHY this matters — because once you really get it, the motivation to do something about it tends to take care of itself.

But before you do anything else, I want you to do one thing.

Open an incognito browser window — or a fresh ChatGPT session — and search for what you sell in your area.

“Best home bakery near [your town].” “Where can I buy homemade jam in [your city].”

Do you come up? Who does?

That’s your starting line. And it’s honestly kind of fascinating to see, either way.

I built out a full online visibility audit and tracker inside my free starter pack at bethanyarcher.com/start that walks you through exactly how to do this search, what to look for, and how to document it so you can actually track what moves the needle as you start building your presence.

Go find out where you are. Then we’ll go from there.

Ready to find out if you’re actually findable? Grab the free online visibility audit at bethanyarcher.com/start and go see what’s out there.

The post Why You Need To Be (More) Findable Online appeared first on Bethany Archer | Digital Marketing Strategy.

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

The post Email Marketing Isn’t Annoying or Sleazy. appeared first on Bethany Archer | Digital Marketing Strategy.

Yeah. That one.

It’s demoralizing in a way that’s kind of hard to explain to people who don’t do this. Because it’s not just unsold food – it’s your time, your supplies, your early morning, your energy. And when it happens consistently, it starts to mess with your head a little.

Am I pricing wrong? Is my food just… not that good? Did I do something to upset people?

I’ve been there. And I want to tell you something before we go any further:

It’s probably not your food.

There are some very specific, very fixable reasons why local food businesses – cottage bakers, food truck owners, farmers market vendors, farmstand operators – consistently go home with product they couldn’t sell.

And once you really understand the WHY, then we can start talking about how to fix the issue.

So let’s talk about it.

Reason #1: You Can’t Control the Variables, But You’re Relying on Them Anyway

Okay so let’s start with the one that feels most obvious, because I think we all know this deep down and just don’t always want to say it out loud.

You cannot control the weather. You cannot control foot traffic.

You cannot control whether there’s a competing event in town that’s pulling people away from the market, or whether this is somehow the same weird weekend it was last year where nobody showed up for no discernible reason whatsoever.

If you’ve been doing this for more than five minutes, you already know that market days can be completely unpredictable in the most baffling ways.

A gorgeous, perfect Saturday – empty. A cold, drizzly, genuinely unpleasant morning – somehow packed.

I’ve noticed in my own town that big local events can swing things wildly… and not even consistently! The same event that made one year incredible for sales made another year slow as molasses. You just can’t predict it.

And here’s the part that really matters:

The problem isn’t that these variables exist.

The problem comes when our business is reliant on them going our way.

That’s relying on luck.

And we’re going to come back to that idea a lot in this post, because it’s really the thread running through all four of these reasons.

Reason #2: There’s a Communication Gap (And It’s Probably Bigger Than You Think)

Here’s a truth that took me a while to really internalize: your customers are not thinking about you between market days.

Before you take that personally – neither are you thinking about every business you love.

That’s just how humans work. We’re busy. We’ve got stuff going on.

And unless something puts a business on our radar right when we need it to be, we just… don’t think about it.

Think about your own life. There are probably places you genuinely love that you haven’t been to in six months – not because you stopped loving them, but because nothing reminded you to go.

Your customers are the same way with you.

Most of your buyers aren’t going to your Facebook page to check what you’re selling this week.

(I mean YES some of them are, but most of them aren’t)

They’re just not. They’re living their lives.

And if something doesn’t pop up to remind them that you exist and tell them exactly where to find you – they’ll sometimes even go right past you without even realizing they missed you.

This is what I call the communication gap.

And closing that gap – making sure the right people know where you’ll be, when you’ll be there, and what you’re bringing – is one of the highest-leverage things you can do for your sales.

BUT – here’s the thing.

Most of us are trying to close that gap with tools that aren’t actually doing the job. Which brings me to reason number three.

Reason #3: The Algorithm Is Not Your Friend (And It Was Never Designed to Be)

Okay, I have a lot of feelings about this one. Buckle up.

Posting on social media is not a marketing strategy.

I know, I know, I know… that’s not what you were told, and I know it probably feels like a bold statement. But I mean it.

Posting on social media is a gamble.

Here’s what’s actually happening when you post: your content reaches somewhere between 3–8% of your followers.

It lasts maybe a day in anyone’s feed, if you’re lucky, before it disappears forever into the void.

And a huge chunk of the people who DO see it? Not even close to you geographically – because the algorithm is grouping you with similar content creators, not with people who can actually buy from you.

I noticed this myself as a baker. My Facebook feed is full of posts from other cottage bakers… people making incredible delicious-looking things that I will never, ever buy because they’re thousands of miles away.

I am a completely wasted view for their business. And the same thing is happening to your posts.

The algorithm doesn’t know you’re selling a local product. As of right now, it doesn’t compensate for proximity.

It just sees that you talk about cinnamon rolls, so it shows your posts to other people who talk about cinnamon rolls – most of whom are not in your town.

And then there’s this – if you include a link in your post that takes people off of Facebook? (as in – a link to where they can preorder, or whatever)

Do this, and Facebook will actively show that post to fewer people. Because keeping people on the platform is their goal.

Getting customers to your pre-order page is not their goal.

I worked with a food truck owner once who had a really bad sales day at a farmers market. Traffic was a little low, but nothing that should have explained how bad the numbers were.

He mentioned offhandedly that he’d barely gotten any engagement on his Facebook post that week – usually he got a lot more.

So we went and looked at the actual reach statistics in Facebook. He has about a thousand followers. That particular post had reached a fraction of his normal numbers. Not because anything was wrong with his food or his business — the algorithm just wasn’t in his favor that day.

And that’s the main reason why he went home with leftovers. Because his Facebook post didn’t get traction.

That story has stuck with me. Because here’s the thing –

You cannot build a reliable business on the foundation of an unreliable marketing system.

I’m not saying delete your social media accounts. I still post.

But social media cannot be your foundation.

Why?

Because you don’t own it, you don’t control it, and it can be taken from you or stop working at any time.

Here’s a stat that will make your jaw drop a little: text message marketing has 98% deliverability. That means 98% of the people on your list will actually see your message.

Email marketing runs 30–50% open rates.

Compare that to the 3–8% follower reach you’re getting on social media, on a good day.

There is no comparison. And yet most local food businesses are spending all their marketing energy on the platform with the worst numbers.

Reason #4: You Might Be Overproducing Out of Fear (This One’s a Little Uncomfortable)

Okay, I’m going to be honest with you here, because I’ve done this myself and I still catch myself wanting to do it.

A lot of us overproduce because we don’t want to disappoint someone who comes by late and finds us sold out.

That feeling is real, it’s human, and if you sell food – especially food you make with your hands and your heart – you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.

We love feeding people. We love watching someone take that first bite.

And the thought of someone walking up to our booth excited about our chicken and dumplings, only to hear “sorry, I’m sold out” – ugh.

So we make more. Just in case.

But here’s the math problem with that: one late customer who wanted your sold-out item does not pay for an entire extra batch.

And for most of us, especially bakers, it’s not like we can just make three extra cookies. It’s a batch or it’s not.

So we make the batch, the one or two extra customers don’t materialize, and we drive home with a full cooler again.

Being sold out is not a failure. It isn’t “bad.” Being sold out is information.

Personally, my goal is to be sold out by about 85–90% through my day. That tells me I’ve served the majority of the demand without overproducing to the point where I’m going home with more than I can use.

CAVEAT: There are exceptions, and I want to be clear about that.

When you’re doing a brand new venue or event you’ve never done before, it absolutely makes sense to produce a little more so you can gauge demand.

I did a big Christmas market a while back and I deliberately made more than I expected to sell because I needed to know what the demand actually was. But I also hedged myself – I made cookie dough that went straight into the freezer so I could bake more if needed, so what didn’t sell at the market got me almost all the way through January.

That’s the difference: overproducing with intention and a recovery plan versus overproducing out of fear of saying “sold out.”

If you’re going to make extra, use the freezer. Hold components back. Build in recoverability.

But don’t make a double batch just because you don’t want people to be disappointed. That’s a boundary-with-yourself problem, not a sales problem.

So What’s the Fix? Systems Over Luck.

Here’s the thing that connects all four of these reasons: they all involve relying on something you can’t control.

The weather.

Whether people happen to see your post.

Whether someone happens to drive by at the right moment.

Whether your supply magically matches demand.

That’s just luck. And luck is not a business strategy.

Say it with me: LUCK IS NOT A BUSINESS STRATEGY.

What we need instead are systems – repeatable, reliable ways of reaching our customers that don’t depend on variables we can’t control.

I know “systems” can sound boring and corporate and like something that requires a lot of fancy tech. It doesn’t.

The most basic version looks like this: you collect phone numbers or email addresses from people who have already bought from you, and you reach out to them directly before you show up somewhere.

That’s it. That’s the foundation.

I had a Saturday not long ago where my cinnamon rolls just were not moving. I’m still figuring out my display, so I was sitting there wondering what was going on.

And then I realized – I’d forgotten to text my list. So I sent one text to my 30-something person text list.

Ten minutes later, a customer walked in – she’d literally just left the gym (I LOL’d when she told me that), saw my text – and she bought every single cinnamon roll I had. Every one.

That is what a system does. It makes your results predictable instead of accidental.

I also use Hot Plate – it’s a free platform where I can create a menu and let people pre-order and pay online before they even come to pick up.

No back-and-forth DMs, no chasing people down for payment, no “I meant to come by but forgot.” They ordered, they paid, they’ll show up.

Systems aren’t fancy.

Yes, they can feel a little nerdy.

But they are where the actual freedom is – because they work whether or not the algorithm likes you that week, whether or not the weather cooperates, whether or not foot traffic is good.

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

If you are constantly scrambling because you’re relying on conditions you can’t control, stepping back to build even one simple system will change everything.

Before You Go, I Want to Ask You Something

Think about the people who have already eaten your food and loved it. The regulars, the people who have told you how good it is, the ones who come looking for you specifically.

If 20 more of those people (people who already know your food is good) knew exactly when, where, and how to buy from you this week… would you sell more?

Sit with that for a second.

If your answer is yes – and I’m betting it is – then your food isn’t the problem.

Your quality isn’t the problem.

Your skill isn’t the problem.

The problem is that you’re not on their radar when you need to be on their radar.

And that is a communication problem.

Which is GREAT because that means it’s fixable.

If your answer is no – more awareness wouldn’t lead to more sales – then it’s worth looking at whether people clearly understand what you sell, whether it’s obvious when your orders are open, and whether you’re communicating clearly enough for someone to actually make a purchase decision.

That’s usually a clarity issue, not a “post more” issue.

Either way, the fix is not doing more. It’s doing the right things.

Ready to Start Building Systems Instead of Crossing Your Fingers?

One of the main things I focus on is bridging that communication gap via email marketing, getting found online, etc.

And in order for you, or anyone else, to be able to implement what I teach, there’s some things that you’ll want to have in place.

One big one is to have an email list set up – legally and correctly (no, you can’t just email people from your home email address without issues).

It’s not difficult, though.

I put together a free starter kit for local food business owners who are ready to stop relying on luck and start putting something real in place.

It’ll walk you through getting your email list set up from scratch, and help you make sure you’re actually showing up when someone in your area searches for what you sell. Both of those things are foundational – and neither of them requires you to dance on TikTok or beg the algorithm for scraps.

Grab it for free at bethanyarcher.com/start.

And if you want to hear the full conversation – including the cinnamon roll story, the food truck client whose entire slow day came down to the algorithm, and a lot more – you can listen to the full podcast episode here.

This is what On Your Terms is all about: building a local food business that actually works for you, on your terms – not at the mercy of a platform that doesn’t care whether you sell out or drive home full.

I’ll see you next week.

Bethany

The post 4 Reasons Your Local Food Business Keeps Going Home With Leftovers appeared first on Bethany Archer | Digital Marketing Strategy.

Okay, picture this with me for a second.

You’ve been cooking all week. You’ve prepped, you’ve packaged, you’ve loaded up your coolers with all the amazing food you made.

You show up to your usual spot – the farmer’s market, your food truck location, wherever – and then… crickets. Like, NOBODY shows up.

Hours pass. You’re staring at your coolers thinking “okay, now what?” and realizing you’re about to go home with half of what you brought in the first place.

Which basically wipes out all of your profit for the day.

Have you been there? Because I bet you have. I definitely have. And honestly? A LOT of local food businesses have been there.

Why Social Media Is Stunting Your Local Sales Growth

Here’s what I’m seeing with cottage bakeries, food trucks, and farmers market vendors everywhere – they’re relying entirely on Facebook to reach customers.

They make a post on Facebook and then they’re just kind of shouting into the void, hoping that it works.

But it often doesn’t.

Want to know why? When you make a post on Facebook, you’ll reach anywhere from 3% to 8% of the people that follow you.

THREE TO EIGHT PERCENT. That’s it. That’s horrible. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

Sometimes it works great because the right person comments on it, and then that makes Facebook show it to some other people, and then it becomes a commenting frenzy, and then suddenly you’re reaching more eyes. That’s awesome!

But you can’t count on that.

And sometimes what happens is none of the right people see it. The first people that Facebook chooses to show it to aren’t very responsive.

And then you might get like… hardly anything.

There’s a local business I work with, and the owner said to me, “Man, I feel like I upset somebody. Did I hurt my customers somehow?” Because one week they just didn’t hardly come out.

We went into his social media and looked at the statistics. I said, “Look though – look at how many people you normally reach. But THIS one reached maybe 15 people.”

This is somebody who has about a thousand followers. A THOUSAND followers and it reached 15 people.

That’s exactly why local food businesses need email marketing.

Hi, I’m Bethany (And I’m Here to Help You Fix Your Food Business Marketing)

I teach digital marketing to local food sellers. I’m a cottage food baker myself, but I’m also a former six-figure online business owner.

And here’s the thing – I learned SO much about online marketing building that business. Stuff that I’m now translating into my own bakery.

There are techniques I use that I’m really not seeing very many local food businesses use out there. And that’s exactly what this podcast (and this blog) is for.

I’m here to help you learn how to use internet and digital tools to actually market your food business.

Look, I started my bakery because I love baking. I love it so much that I’d probably be about 500 pounds if I didn’t sell it. (That’s what I tell everybody all the time – I HAVE to sell, I don’t really have another choice!)

But even more than I love baking? I love helping people succeed.

Why “On Your Terms” Matters So Much

There’s a very special meaning behind the name of this podcast.

“On Your Terms” is hugely important to me personally because I am DRIVEN. I have a very, very strong resistance to anything other than living life on my own terms.

Being able to do what I want, when I wanna do it. Go where I wanna go, when I wanna go. (Within reason, of course – we’re all adults and we have lives to live.)

But what it comes down to is freedom.

And if you’re reading this, you probably have a local food business of some sort. Maybe you’re a cottage baker, or you have a food truck, or maybe you’re a popup vendor operating under a tent at events.

There’s probably a reason why you started doing that, right? And I would hazard a guess it probably has a little bit something to do with independence.

The kind of independence where we wanna provide a better life for our family. And that doesn’t always mean loads and loads of money.

Sometimes that just means our presence. Being there with our family. Having the flexibility to take our kids to the dentist when we need to without asking anybody for permission.

Why I’m Qualified to Talk About This (And Why I’m Broke While Doing It)

So here’s my story real quick.

I had a digital online graphics business selling SVG files to crafters. I grew it to six figures within three years using email marketing, Pinterest, SEO, systems, and automation.

It taught me SO much. I learned everything about digital marketing by actually doing it and making it work.

You’re probably wondering – well, why aren’t you still doing that?

Couple reasons. One was a decline in the industry. When COVID hit, it dropped my income by about 80% because a lot of my customers could no longer afford to buy the files.

That never actually went back up after COVID was over. There was just this general overall decline in the industry.

But also? I was really burned out.

And here’s the ridiculous thing – my intuition told me at the time I needed to start teaching. I needed to make that my main focus.

But I didn’t. Even though I didn’t really have it in me anymore, I kept just trying to make the old thing work, and the old thing did NOT wanna work.

I kept trying and trying. It just wasn’t working.

And here I was completely ignoring my intuition, because my passion is to teach people.

The sad thing is, if I had moved on sooner, I wouldn’t be in the spot that I am. I mean, to be honest, I’m pretty much broke as I’m recording this and I’m kind of limping along until I can sell my house and get my life back in order.

But I’ve decided that’s not gonna stop me from doing what I love, which is teaching.

I guess the lesson there is sometimes you have to hit a wall before you change directions. Maybe if you’re stubborn like I am.

Email Marketing for Local Food Businesses: Your Secret Weapon

Not everybody’s gonna open the email, but at least you get it there.

It’s like showing up at their front door, knocking, and saying “Hey! Guess what? I’m gonna be serving this at the farmer’s market on Friday. I hope you join us!”

Instead of, you know, taking out a billboard by their house and hoping they drive by and see it. You know what I mean?

Email marketing is kind of timeless. I built my six-figure business on it before, and that’s what I’m doing now with my cottage bakery.

Industry standard for email open rates is about 25% maybe. For the food industry, I generally get between 40% and 50% open rate.

Right now I’m warming up a new audience for my bakery (I’ve just recently started getting this going), so I’m still looking at about 30-40%. But either way? That’s WAY better than social media’s 3-8% reach.

You can communicate a decent amount of information at once. You can send pictures, you can do all the things.

It’s just a much better way to reach people.

In my old business I used to get about 50% open rates, and I know I can get back to that. There’s just little tweaks and stuff you have to do over time.

Every single marketing effort that I make has one goal and one goal only: I wanna get people on my list.

Even when I make Facebook posts announcing what I have, really what I need to be doing is using Facebook to get people to opt into my list so I can send them the emails.

It’s Just a Numbers Game (And That’s Actually Good News)

Here’s the beautiful thing about email marketing for cottage bakeries and food trucks – it becomes a numbers game.

You’ll figure out that for every so many people you have on your list, you’ll get a certain amount of orders.

For example, on my text message list (I’ve been using HotPlate to take pre-orders, and they have a text messaging feature which is massively helpful), I figured out that for every 15-20 people on my list, I would get one pre-order.

So when I had about 20 people on my list, I’d get one pre-order that week. When I grew my list to about 40 people, I started getting a couple every week.

It’s a numbers game. You just get that many more people.

Now obviously not just anybody – you have to get the RIGHT people. But once you do, it’s just math.

At the end of a year, you can look back and say “You know what? I made about X amount of money per subscriber.”

(And yes, even if you don’t take pre-orders, there are ways to track how effective your emails are for increasing farmers market sales. We’ll go into that another time.)

It’s crucial for building relationships. It makes it SO easy to build relationships with your customers, which creates so much loyalty.

They feel like they really know you, and they start to care about you. And then they’re gonna come out every week to see you.

Plus, it automates some of it. Which is important because as a food business owner, your time is your single greatest expense.

It is the one thing you cannot get more of. You can’t multiply it, you can’t hire it out, you can’t buy more of it, you can’t outsource it.

If you set up an automated sequence of emails to send out once somebody joins your list, that means you’re making contact with these people over a period of time – but it happens while you sleep.

You Need to Be Searchable (Like, Yesterday)

Another real problem I see with a lot of cottage bakeries and food trucks? We’re not searchable.

If you go onto Google, Google doesn’t even know you exist.

And as time goes on, more and more people are gonna be using online tools to find local businesses. (This might be more applicable if you’re in a city versus a small town, but either way – you need to be found.)

Here’s a quick illustration. There’s a food truck I work with here in town.

I went on ChatGPT and asked, “What’s the best [their cuisine] in my town?” And ChatGPT was like, “Well, there isn’t any. You’re gonna have to go to this city that is two hours away.”

I’m thinking NO. But their only marketing is on Facebook. They don’t have a website or anything.

So I set up a Google Business Profile for them. Just very basic info. It sat there for about three weeks.

Then a customer came up to their truck, ordered food, loved it, and left a Google review about two hours later.

I went back to ChatGPT and asked the same question. Guess who it recommended?

This all happened very quickly. Now pretty much anybody searching for that type of cuisine in our town is gonna find them.

All because of a Google Business Profile.

Your Assignment: Ask AI About Your Food Business

Right now, go to your favorite AI and ask about your product.

I sell cookies. So I asked ChatGPT, “Who sells the best cookies in my area?”

At first it didn’t say anything about me. Because I hadn’t finished my website yet.

Now I’ve made some adaptations, made a basic website, done a couple things – and now it’s recommending me for some things.

Not everything I wanna be listed for yet, but I’ll get there. It’s just a matter of time.

Right now in 2026, everything is still really evolving. But within a year or two, Google’s probably gonna pull the regular search and it’s all just gonna be based on AI.

When that happens, you wanna be the one listed.

If you’re reading this after that shift has already happened? It’s not hopeless. It’s just gonna be a little bit harder for you to get ranked.

But you still can. Right now is just a very easy time to do it.

Your Time is Your Most Expensive Ingredient

Your time is your single biggest expense. You can’t multiply it, you can’t hire it out, you can’t buy more of it.

I cannot stress this enough: Your time is your single biggest expense.

You have to utilize it very wisely.

I have seen food businesses (and I’m not gonna say I’m innocent here – I’m guilty of it too) where we’re so excited and eager to grow that we’ll go through all kinds of hoops.

I have seen people drive 20 minutes to deliver a $5 order. Do not do that. It costs you more in time and gas than you made on the order.

Don’t offer free deliveries. Don’t try to offer everything on the menu – like everything you can possibly think of.

There’s a lot of things we need to simplify.

Create systems and workflows. Be efficient. Because these small efficiencies? They compound into freedom.

And freedom is what “on your terms” is all about.

The Four Pillars of Local Food Business Marketing

I’m gonna teach you a lot of things on the On Your Terms podcast, and we’re gonna focus on four main pillars:

Email & Text Message Marketing (obviously – it’s the backbone of everything)

Searchability (getting found on Google AND by AI)

Systems and Automation (because your time is too valuable to waste)

Mindset (because we’re not building a business that runs our life – we’re building one that serves it)

These aren’t theories. I’m right here in the trenches with you.

Yes, I built a six-figure business and I know this stuff. But I’m also pretty new to the cottage bakery thing – I just started it back up about four months ago after having to stop for a while.

We’re not just talking about theories. We’re looking at actual things that will help you reclaim your peace and increase your profit.

It can be SO exhausting to spin your wheels and feel like you’re not getting anywhere with your farmers market sales or food truck business. I just want you to know it doesn’t have to be that way.

There are ways to make it simpler, more efficient, and increase your customer reach so you’re not going home with half your food still in your coolers.

Your Two Action Steps to Better Local Food Business Marketing

Okay, I have two assignments for you.

Assignment #1: I went on a lot about email marketing, and you’re probably like “Oh my gosh, I don’t even know where to get started.”

Don’t worry – I’ve got you covered.

I have a quick free download that goes over the whole process of getting your email list set up and started. I show you how to create opt-in forms, and it even covers how to create your own email address with your .com if you don’t have one already.

It’s not complicated. It’s actually really, really simple.

Head over to bethanyarcher.com/start and download the Local Food Marketing Starter Pack. That’ll get you going, and then when you follow along with the rest of my content, you’ll be able to actually DO the things I’m teaching.

Assignment #2: Throughout your week as you’re going through production, I want you to pay attention.

Look at what’s actually slowing you down and stressing you out the most.

Is it having to wake up at 3 AM to prep ingredients? Are you making way too many trips to the store? Staying up way too late to finish orders? (I’ve been known to do that a few times myself. )

Write those things down.

If you have people helping you, interview them. Ask “What are the frustrations you have? What feels annoying or slow?”

Then I want you to brainstorm one to three ways to make those things easier.

For example – let’s say you’re a taco truck and you’re trying to plop sour cream out of the container with a scoop onto a taco. That’s gonna be hard and annoying, and that’s gonna be a bottleneck.

Get yourself one of those squeeze bottles, dilute the sour cream a little bit with some milk, and squeeze it on there. Problem solved.

A lot of the time we just go through the motions and we don’t even think about it.

So pay attention this week. Where are you getting frustrated? Write it down.

Then grab a cup of coffee, sit down, and look at your list. Ask yourself: “What are some solutions here to make this easier?”

Even just a few minutes saved here and there can make a HUGE difference, especially if it’s on the production line when you’ve got people waiting for their food.

Every little system you fix buys you a little bit of time. And that time is what buys you more freedom.

The Bottom Line on Marketing Your Local Food Business

You don’t necessarily need to be doing MORE.

You just need to be focusing on doing what works and making those things more efficient.

Whether it’s marketing or your production systems or whatever it might be – save your time as much as you can.

Be efficient with what you do. Do not be shouting into the void. Do not trust the algorithms.

Focus on moving the needle, because that’s gonna create the freedom and independence. That’s what “on your terms” is all about.

Building freedom and a life that works for you, because you have a business that works for you.

So you can live your life on your terms.

Ready to stop coming home with leftovers? Download the free Local Food Marketing Starter Pack at bethanyarcher.com/start and let’s get your email list set up!

And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the On Your Terms podcast so you don’t miss the next episode. Share it with your food producer friends too – it’ll help them AND help me get this ship off the ground. Thank you so much for being here. I really, really appreciate you.

The post Here’s Why Your Local Food Business Marketing Isn’t Working (And How to Fix It) appeared first on Bethany Archer | Digital Marketing Strategy.