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

Paul, appreciate you joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

While working for a large corporation that doesn’t really appreciate its employees i decided there must be something better. I started looking at doing dairy goats. I visited the federal Institute for Goat Research. I attended their trailing classes once a year for over 20 years. I bought the family farm and started converting it from a cow operation to what was needed for a goat dairy. When I finally retired i decided it was time to give it a go. I had completed the dairy building and replace the feed lot and the pasture fences I need to only buy and install the equipment and buy the goats to get started.

Paul, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I make goat cheese for the last 9 years. I started slow with no customers. When I had my first batch of cheese I started walking into restaurants and ask to speak to the chef. I was able to get a few restaurants. I started attending farmers markets and continued to grow sales. The second year I picked up a restaurant that had high usage for my cheese. My cheese sales continued to grow as chefs realized my local cheese was better than any cheese they could get from distributors.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

The year of the pandemic was a challenge. Restaurants slowed way down on their orders. I started adding more farmer markets going from 2 on a weekend to 12 farmers markets each weekend. I had to team up with other farmers to staff multiple markets. Consumers were very good about coming to the markets and I was getting retail prices instead of wholesale prices for my sales.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

T have picked up many restaurants from chefs coming to the farmers market and trying my cheese. The next best source of finding restaurants is when a chef leaves one restaurant and moves to another.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @lostrubyranch