BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Owners of a seventh-generation family country store and orchard shared their tips for surviving the COVID-19 pandemic, businesswise, during the recent Illinois Specialty Crops Conference. Chris and Angie Eckert, owners-operators of Eckert’s Country Store and Orchard in metropolitan St. Louis said their farm – where Eckerts have grown apples for more than a century – persevered and in many ways flourished by being adaptable to pandemic restrictions and consumer preferences.

“We are as a family very grateful to have seen increased demand on our farm and the excitement over local business,” said Angie Eckert, who manages Eckert’s Country Store. “We feel blessed that our family and our team has remained safe and healthy, and our hearts go out to those who have been affected by COVID. It’s certainly been a challenging year.”

While many businesses have folded or suspended operations during the pandemic, Eckert’s Orchard and County Store survived the past year by strictly adhering to recommended public health guidelines and implementing pandemic-related business adaptations.

“We started a curbside ordering business (primarily) through the request of customers, and we stumbled through that process before converting our cooking classroom to serve as the hub for that business. We added plexiglass to separate our cashiers and we implemented new policies,” said Angie Eckert, also noting that hand sanitizer and masks were provided for workers and customers and “six-foot spacing” signage was placed throughout the business environment.

“Our restaurant was closed and it still is today, but we provided some outdoor dining beginning in May and through the fall,” she added.

Of the most concern to the Eckert family was whether or not the family’s u-pick orchard business would weather the COVID-19 downturn, according to Chris Eckert. “(The orchard) really is a bottleneck where we had placed guests together in a very closed situation, so we worked with our health department to come up with a new design where we moved some of our wagons and added partitions in order to separate groups. That worked pretty well for us,” he said.

Plans for popular annual Easter and Christmas promotions at the orchard were initially discarded, then reconsidered as more innovative methods for protecting participants surfaced.

“We made Easter a drive-through event where the Easter Bunny handed out eggs to kids in the back of the car and that went really well. It told us how much real demand was out there; our guests were looking for something to do with their kids that felt normal,” Chris Eckert said. “This was carried over through the end of the season, when we put Santa in a bubble. We changed our breakfast with Santa to photos with Santa, and we put him in a giant see-through, fresh air bubble to keep him socially distant from the kids. There was huge demand for that as well.”

By putting their heads together and closely following innovative retail trends, the Eckerts soon found ways to not only survive but flourish as a pandemic-restricted agri-tourism business.

By pre-scheduling many orchard and country store visitors, a more fluid and consistent weekly cash flow emerged. The Eckerts also adapted dynamic pricing levels, charging more admission for customers who visited the orchard on weekends compared to weekday rates. The family now plans to retain dynamic pricing and pre-booked ticketing once the pandemic is in the rearview mirror.

“Dynamic pricing really works, and I think while we were initially skeptical, our guests were used to it. Look at sporting events, concerts or any other event you go to; people are used to being charged more on peak days. It also encourages people to go on different days of the week, which is beneficial,” Chris Eckert said.

The Eckerts reported a few other noticeable business trends during the pandemic year of 2020, such as a large increase in phone calls that needed handling and more young, childless couples visiting the orchard. And while apple sales were up from 2019 numbers, jack-o-lantern pumpkin sales were inexplicably down. Above all, the Eckerts found that flexibility was the key to overcoming all COVID-related obstacles.

“At the end of the day flexibility was our most important strength,” Chris Eckert said. ‘We as a family and a business culture love to plan and schedule events, and all that kind of got thrown out the window. The focus became ‘what are we going to do tomorrow and next week.’”

Angie Eckert hopes that by keeping up with COVID-19 retail trends and exchanging ideas with others in their industry, the family business will continue to flourish until such a time it is safe to resume normal operations. “We are looking to redesign our website, which has become the front door of our business. With us now offering pre-sold tickets and curbside pickup, it is apparent our website needs an upgrade,” she said.

Looking back at 2020, the Eckerts saw their restaurant struggle during the pandemic, while other aspects of their agri-tourism business saw huge increases in revenue. “From this we can leverage what we learned in 2020 into 2021 and our marketing,” Angie Eckert said. 

“This creates a huge opportunity for us in 2021 because I don’t think the revenue growth we saw in 2020 is going to go away. The opportunity lies in being able to better focus on managing expenses and planning promotions, and getting our labor costs back in line,” Chris Eckert added. “We now know more about how to manage this business in this time, and we hope to be able to better manage our expenses to take more advantage of our revenue growth.”

The Illinois Specialty Crops Conference was held in a virtual format Jan. 6-8, 2021. To learn more about the conference and specialty crops in Illinois, visit www.specialtygrowers.org.