{"id":99181,"date":"2019-08-26T16:04:17","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T16:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.microsoft.com\/?p=434132"},"modified":"2019-08-26T16:04:17","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T16:04:17","slug":"from-farm-to-cloud-to-table-butcherbox-serves-up-a-new-approach-to-meat-delivery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/08\/26\/from-farm-to-cloud-to-table-butcherbox-serves-up-a-new-approach-to-meat-delivery\/","title":{"rendered":"From farm to cloud to table, ButcherBox serves up a new approach to meat delivery"},"content":{"rendered":"

The path to a future of mining cloud-based data started in a decidedly low-tech way for Boston company ButcherBox after its founder, Mike Salguero, found himself in a Massachusetts parking lot buying garbage bags of beef from a local farmer.<\/p>\n

Salguero\u2019s wife, Karlene, has a thyroid condition, and the couple wanted to switch to an anti-inflammatory diet including lean, grass-fed meat. But they found little beyond ground beef and the occasional grass-fed steak at their local grocery stores \u2014 hence the parking-lot purchase. That was too much meat for the couple to eat, so Salguero gave some to a friend, who remarked how convenient it would be to have high-quality meat delivered at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the initial spark of the idea for ButcherBox<\/a>,\u201d Salguero says.<\/p>\n

The company launched in 2015, delivering boxes of frozen grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken and heritage breed pork to subscribers, or \u201cmembers,\u201d around the United States. ButcherBox sells only meats raised without antibiotics or added hormones, ships them in 100 percent curbside-recyclable boxes made of 95 percent recycled materials, and prides itself on partnering with vendors that use sustainable, humane approaches and fair labor practices.<\/p>\n

\"ButcherBox
ButcherBox CEO and founder Mike Salguero with wife Karlene and their three daughters.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The company offers 21 cuts of meat and subscription boxes ranging from $129 to $270 monthly, depending how many pounds of meat are included.<\/p>\n

ButcherBox tapped into a trio of hot retail trends: a demand for sustainable products, consumers\u2019 interest in knowing more about what they\u2019re buying, and an explosion in subscription box companies<\/a> selling everything from dog toys to fitness gear, even house plants and hygge kits.<\/p>\n

ButcherBox doesn\u2019t release sales figures, but Salguero says the company has grown exponentially since its launch, even without seeking venture capital. Collecting and analyzing data became increasingly important as ButcherBox expanded, but the limited data the company had was mainly in Excel spreadsheets and didn\u2019t provide the depth of information employees needed.<\/p>\n

Customer service agents, for example, didn\u2019t have access to warehouse data and couldn\u2019t check to see if a member\u2019s box had been filled or where it was. Teams in various departments were pulling data together in ad hoc ways, leading to inconsistent and imprecise insights.<\/p>\n

\u201cDepending on which department it was and where they got the data, everyone had their own truths about what was going on in the business,\u201d says Kevin Hall, ButcherBox\u2019s head of technology. \u201cPeople began to realize there was a need for a single source of truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salguero puts it another way: \u201cPeople became entrepreneurial and enterprising in finding ways to answer questions, but as an organization that\u2019s pretty risky, because we don\u2019t even know if it\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Image
The ButcherBox team at the company\u2019s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So the company turned to Microsoft, adopting Azure as its cloud platform about a year ago. It developed a \u201cdemand plan\u201d that uses members\u2019 purchasing data to determine how much meat must be ordered and replenished in fulfillment centers. It enabled its approximately 70 employees to create and read dashboards using Microsoft\u2019s Power BI data visualization tool. It interviewed more than 100 ButcherBox subscribers, then used Azure\u2019s Databricks service to analyze their feedback and organize it into easily understandable reports in Power BI.<\/p>\n

The interviews revealed a key insight \u2014 that the number one reason people were canceling their subscriptions wasn\u2019t lack of freezer space, as previously thought, but value. Based on that finding, the company implemented an \u201cadd-on\u201d program offering members perks (free bacon!) and specials on certain products, often undercutting grocery store prices on those promotional items.<\/p>\n

More robust data also enabled the company to better determine how much dry ice is needed for each shipped box based on geographic location \u2014 a crucial calculation, since too much ice can cause leaks and too little can mean a thawed shipment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone doesn\u2019t get his or her box or it shows up late, it\u2019s ruined,\u201d Salguero says. \u201cSo really understanding our data \u2014 what\u2019s shipping, where the boxes are \u2014 became the rallying cry of the company in a big way to understand our members and build out our data infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo
The company uses fully recyclable boxes made of 95 percent recycled cardboard to ship its products.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But even the most sophisticated data can\u2019t necessarily provide the type of information gleaned from talking with people face-to-face. Last year, Salguero embarked on what employees jokingly refer to as his \u201cfreezer road show,\u201d visiting members\u2019 homes, asking them about their cooking and eating habits and yes, peering into their freezers.<\/p>\n

The exercise provided useful insights about the degree to which members rely on ButcherBox meats to feed their families, Salguero says, and showed that subscribers who most often use the food in their freezers tend to plan out their meals. That finding could help with tackling one of the biggest challenges facing a company that sells frozen meat \u2014 which is, ironically, to get members to stop using their freezers so much.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people think of a freezer as a savings account,\u201d Salguero says. \u201cIt\u2019s there for a rainy day, not necessarily the place you go if you want to eat dinner tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company is exploring how technology might be used to get more information about what customers are eating, whether through a meal-planning app or other tool, with the goal of prompting them to move food out of the deep freeze and onto the dinner table.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of that is a data problem at its core,\u201d Salguero says. \u201cWe should know what members are eating and in what order. If we do our job well, we\u2019ll know that member A is eating through X and they have a pork shoulder left over, so if we\u2019re going to send a recipe, we should be sending one for pork shoulder.\u201d<\/p>\n

ButcherBox is now focusing on using data science and analytics to provide more personalized service, starting with identifying \u201cclusters\u201d of members who have similar likes and buying habits to determine which products and services to market to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t make sense to show someone beef if they\u2019re really a chicken or salmon member,\u201d Hall says. \u201cWe\u2019re really looking to understand the data so we can serve members in a much more personalized way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo
ButcherBox offers 21 different cuts of meat and a range of custom and curated boxes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since data showed that members who buy certain types of boxes are more likely to leave, the company began proactively suggesting different options to those members and introduced new subscription plans with varying delivery schedules.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re giving people more flexibility to switch to a plan that comes less often,\u201d says Reba Hatcher, ButcherBox\u2019s chief of staff. \u201cGiving people those options has been really helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s approach suits Ismael Santos, who lives in Youngsville, a small city in south-central Louisiana. Santos tried various approaches to get high-quality, sustainably raised meat free of antibiotics and added hormones \u2014 driving to a grocery store more than 50 miles away, buying at local farmers markets, splitting a quarter- or half-cow with friends. None of the options was ideal, so Santos signed up for ButcherBox almost a year ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to get that quality at a good price, and conveniently and reliably here,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can go out and buy beef, but you\u2019re either going to pay a ton or you\u2019re not going to get what you\u2019re looking for sometimes. The cost (of ButcherBox) is good compared with going to a store and buying the same quality and quantity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Santos also tried several meal-kit subscription services but didn\u2019t consider them a good value and didn\u2019t like being restricted to cooking a particular meal. With ButcherBox, he gets the main part of his meal and builds around it, picking up other ingredients at his local market as needed and sometimes adding items to his box, like ribs or breakfast sausage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like that you can change it up,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
The company partners with vendors that use sustainable, humane approaches and fair labor practices.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ButcherBox is still in the early stages of using Azure, but Salguero says the move has already radically changed how employees think and operate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty amazing to see the cultural change because of what we\u2019re doing with Microsoft,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a totally different conversation. People used to sit around a table and say, \u2018I don\u2019t really know what\u2019s happening.\u2019 Now it\u2019s like, \u2018Did you pull the data for that?\u2019 or, \u2018Let\u2019s look at this dashboard and make a decision based on what we see.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe culture has really moved to a reliance on the data that we have,\u201d Salguero says. \u201cPeople trust the data, and it\u2019s only getting better and better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Top photo: ButcherBox CEO and founder Mike Salguero. (All photos courtesy of ButcherBox)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The path to a future of mining cloud-based data started in a decidedly low-tech way for Boston company ButcherBox after its founder, Mike Salguero, found himself in a Massachusetts parking lot buying garbage bags of beef from a local farmer. Salguero\u2019s wife, Karlene, has a thyroid condition, and the couple wanted to switch to an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[182,298],"class_list":["post-99181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-microsoft-news","tag-cloud-computing","tag-transform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}