TL;DR:
If you are white, you will more likely have a great experience at Lee Turkey + leave good reviews on Yelp, and if you are not white, you will more likely have a racial profiling experience and will leave negative reviews. Otherwise, it's a beautiful farm, great produce at very good prices, fun to pick.
Now the full essay:
The produce at Lee Turkey Farm is delicious! And the prices are reasonable and the farm is beautiful.
It's super impressive that this farm is over 200 years old! Keeping a family owned business up and running and profitable through market fluctuations and changing society is pretty amazing.
That said, I think there are few things the family could do to adapt to their changing community and also improve profit while doing it. I will outline them here in hopes that the family reads this comment and considers these changes.
One major change I recommend is eliminating racial profiling when trying to enforce rules. As an example, I am Asian American and was racially profiled during my solo visit - one staff member asked me to "open my fanny pack" to check that I was not sneaking in any plastic bags. The staff member did not check the purse of the white woman behind me in line. If you look at all the Yelp reviews, you'll notice generally that positive reviews of customer service are from white people (see photo or last name), while negative reviews of customer service are from non-white people. As another example, when I went with my fiance, who is white, I was treated much better. And having been to the farm three times, I've witnessed other instances that resembled racial profiling.
A more effective strategy to enforce rules (instead of racial profiling) is through effective and positive communication. This includes:
(1) Provide large, legible signage in different languages. Include information about card, deposit, bucket policy, pay before eating policy, prices for each produce, etc.
(2) Use positive and action-oriented wording in signage. Ie. "pay before eating" instead of "no eating allowed." The former is positive and suggests an action; the latter is negative and suppresses an action. Potentially, work with an editor or graphic designer to work on the signage to make it easy to digest all the information.
(3) Since customers come from diverse backgrounds, hire staff who are multi-lingual and can speak some of these different languages. Or offer volunteering opportunities for multi-lingual staff. From what I've seen in three visits, many of the issues just seem to be lost in translation issues.
(4) Include non-white people in your Instagram photos. Embrace inclusiveness as part of your branding. A hundred years later, what you do today will be part of the Lee Turkey story on your website. Do you want it to say "in the 2000s, we became suspicious of our customers and lived in suspicion forever afterwards" or do you want it to say "in the 2000s, we welcomed new and diverse customers and our business grew by leaps and bounds."
(5) Focus on the positive experience you want to create. It's normal for orchards to charge deposits, so you don't have to explain that the reason for the deposit is to "protect" yourselves from "certain types of people from eating without paying" (this is quoted from your website). When you assign mistakes into the category of "that type of person," you create a barrier to understanding and empathy. Also, if someone does break the rules, kindly tell them "we don't do that here. Please pay, or leave the premises", and forgive them and realize that they can change. We are all trying to do our best, and just as your business is adjusting to the changing environment, your customers are also adjusting to the changing environment.
I would also recommend hiring an outside management consultant to conduct a market analysis to improve profit over all. I sense that the staff is stressed from needing to enforce rules because they think it maintains profit. In reality, there could be an alternative solution to maintaining profit that's much easier. Thus, if the main issue of how to create profit is addressed, perhaps there will be less stress from being suspicious of everyone from certain racial backgrounds.
Overall, I really like this farm and would like to see it succeed for many more centuries to come. I love that you include a history of the farm on their website, it is very cool to read about. read more