Brooke Lucy, owner and founder, Bluebird Grain Farms. | Dasha Denger with White Moss Studio Seattle
Winning the Naturally Seattle Pitch Slam couldn’t have come at a better time for Bluebird Grain Farms owner and co-founder Brooke Lucy.
Sure, it’s only $5,000, but Lucy now moves on to the Naturally Network national pitch competition against other regional winners at tradeshow Newtopia Now in Denver from Aug. 18-20. Bluebird Grain could win $50,000.
The money matters. The exposure matters more.
“It’s about getting the word out. That’s my biggest challenge,” says Lucy, who co-founded the company with her husband, Sam Lucy, back in 2005. “I still feel like I’m not getting in front of the right buyers when it comes to what we have to sell.”
That product line revolves around Emmer and Einkorn organic, ancient whole grains, two of the oldest cultivated wheat species in the world. Both date back at least 10,000 years.
Online sales represent about 40% of company revenue. Business clients, including restaurants, account for 20%. The rest comes from bulk distribution or grocery stores through major distributors, an area Lucy says is primed for growth.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Bluebird Grains got its start in farmers markets in Seattle. Lucy and her husband would drive to the city from Winthrop, a small, bucolic, Western-themed town of roughly 500 residents about 200 miles and four-plus hours east of Seattle.
Bluebird has long outgrown those markets, though Lucy says the business still has customers dating to those days. Her monthly newsletter reaches 28,000 people.
Bluebird Grain Farms offers freshly milled, whole-grain flours, cereals, pancake mixes and baking blends. | Photo courtesy of Bluebird Grain Farms
Consumer awareness, however, remains a challenge. Her biggest competition comes from the likes of Oregon-based Bob’s Red Mill, perhaps the best-known grain brand in the Northwest. Her product is slightly different — whole grain as opposed to pearl grain — but they play in the same space.
Lucy, who retired from her career in education eight years ago to focus exclusively on Bluebird, notes that the company was the first to domestically offer Emmer and Einkorn grains in the United States. The business focuses mostly on West Coast markets but also ships to Canada and Puerto Rico.
THE FUTURE
Bluebird is benefitting from a steadily growing market driven by consumer demand for healthier, less-processed foods and greater awareness of the nutritional benefits of regenerative and organic whole grains. It operates a brick-and-mortar store adjacent to the farm’s new, certified processing facility and hosts several farm tours a year “to get the word out.”
The challenges, though, are immense. Covid completely flipped the business on its head, with direct retail sales becoming the majority of its business. It lost some large food service accounts in Canada the past year and is now focused on securing food service sales on the West Coast.
As for the upcoming competition — Bluebird will compete with 10 other regional winners in Naturally Rising’s network — Lucy knows the exposure could put the company in front of the people who could help take it to the next level, win or lose.
“It’s really about networking and finding those buyers,” she says. “We have 20 years of cultivating customer relationships, and those relationships run really deep. But we are finding there’s a lot more competition.”