We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ana Dugger a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ana, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

Our growing methods and practices prioritize the health of ourselves, our workers, our customers, and the beautiful low country we are lucky enough to call home. Food production is so far removed from us, so few of us realize the amount of suffering, both human, animal, and environmental that goes into the food we eat. Furthermore, to boost profits and marketability, supermarket meats and produce, what we are all urged to eat to promote a healthy lifestyle, are laden with chemicals, sprays, and all wrapped in plastic to boot. Our packaging are all composable or recyclable, and we do our absolute best to minimize our carbon footprint. While practicing aquaponics and operating sustainably is much more challenging and expensive than traditional farming, we are so proud and honored to enjoy both growth and success over they years. We hope food production and visibility is changing, and we are thrilled to be a small part of that journey.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

At Billy’s Botanicals, we use natural and sustainable practices like aquaponics to bring healthy food to our friends and neighbors in the low country. In addition to produce, we also process local seafood and provide farm fresh floristing services. We sell primarily to local restaurants, farmers markets, and through our farm bag delivery program. Come see us at Forsyth Farmers Market, Richmond Hill Farmer’s Market, or message us directly to hear more about our farm bags.

My husband, Billy, and I graduated from high school and college in the height of the recession in 2005-10. Unable to find decent paying jobs in our field, we ended up bartending together at TGI Fridays in Richmond VA. The offer to move down to some vacant family land in Richmond Hill, GA came up. We saved as much money as we could and moved down to begin Billy’s Botanicals. The first few years involved a lot of sacrifice. We continued to work in restaurants as we tried to get the farm off the ground.

As taxing as that was, so many of the valued chefs that support our farm met us in this way. Working for farm to table chefs at various restaurants like Husk, Repeal 33, Marker 107, and 1540 Room really gave us an idea of what types of what products they would like to see from their local farmer. Those relationships persist to this day, and are invaluable to us. Now we service over 10 restaurants in the Savannah and Richmond Hill area with fresh produce, seafood, and flowers.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

In 2022 we had a devastating flood over Labor Day weekend. Like so many of our neighbors are experiencing this year, we were the unlucky few that after a ton of rain, the water simply sat on the farm with nowhere to go. Our crops were all flooded with brackish water, killing our plants and severely damaging our soil. We were stranded in our home (which thankfully, is elevated) but we could not operate. We had to bring in our staff on overtime to try and rebuild. It was plunging our already delicate profit margin deep into the red. Furthermore, we needed costly repairs to our driveway to even get back to the farm itself.

After reluctantly setting up a go fund me and asking local restaurants for giftcards to auction, we received a literal flood of support and we considered shutting down for good. Thanks to the generous donations and a charity event hosted by Repeal 33, we were able to pull it off and stay in business. We operated for 2 years in the red to bounce back, and thankfully 2024 is looking much better for us.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When we first started we were on Facebook exclusively. It wasn’t until another fellow business owner pushed us to join a newer platform, Instagram, in 2014 that we started to spend more time on it. With the help of some of our younger friends, we were able to grow our following. Now, most of our new customers and chefs are familiar with us exclusively through social media. When we launched our farmbag, we used our instagram and Facebook exclusively to do so to much fanfare. In a time when we are all accessing the value of social media, I do think there is something to be said for small business owner’s ability to reach an audience for little to no cost.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.billysbotanicals.com
• Instagram: @billysbotanicals
• Facebook: Billy’s Botanicals