Scan the shelves at the Beekman 1802 Mercantile in the sleepy village of Sharon Springs, N.Y., and you’ll find every conceivable artisanal, organic, locally sourced product: jam made with heirloom peaches from the Beekman 1802 Farm for $10.50 per jar, peppermint-flavored goat-milk hot fudge made with milk from the farm’s goats for $12, maple cream from the sap of a tree on a nearby farm — free of additives or preservatives, of course — for $16.
Brent Ridge and his husband, Josh Kilmer-Purcell — known as “the Beekman Boys” by fans of their reality show, cookbooks and other public appearances — have built the Beekman 1802 brand on these products and the stories behind them.
The pair are grateful for the success they’ve had. But they’re also aware that selling goat-milk hot fudge for $12 per jar isn’t the path toward big-picture sustainability, so they’ve recently embarked on an initiative with Target to market products from small farms on a national scale.
“The majority of Americans cannot afford a $20 jar of salted grapefruit, no matter how handmade and perfect it is,” Kilmer-Purcell says. “We do sell small, micro-produced things, but lately, we’ve been focusing on a different question: How do we get small farms into the national food chain?”
They bought the Beekman 1802 estate and farm in 2007 and shortly after moving in, they received a letter from John Hall (also known as “Farmer John”), a nearby farmer looking for a new home for his herd of 80 goats. “We had a big, empty barn and a small house that was empty,” Kilmer-Purcell says. “We said, ‘Sure! Come on over.’ ”
Throughout the spring, the goat milk is divvied up between several artisans, who make the cheese, soap and other products off-site. They partnered with neighbor Deb McGillycuddy to make the first batch of their now-famous goat-milk soap. McGillycuddy introduced them to Karen Tenney, a weaver who creates textiles from historic patterns and has a line of linens through Beekman 1802. Tenney introduced them to Michael McCarthy, a local blacksmith who offers beautifully wrought furniture and accessories through the mercantile.
And so on.
Ridge and Kilmer-Purcell began selling their wares online, and in 2010, opened their first brick-and-mortar version of the Beekman 1802 Mercantile in an old hotel building in Sharon Springs. In 2013, they moved into their current space on Main Street — the town’s original mercantile building.
The pair have applied their marketing prowess to an ever-growing array of products and fame has followed. Kilmer-Purcell and Ridge have been the stars of their own reality show, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, on Planet Green and the Cooking Channel; they competed in and won The Amazing Race on CBS in 2012; and they have been profiled in almost every major media outlet.
As the business grew and added more local products, Kilmer-Purcell recalled his dilemma in marketing large food companies — and realized he and Ridge had an opportunity.
“People purchase things they can relate to,” Kilmer-Purcell says. “The more stories we can tell about our craftspeople, the more products people want to buy. We have goats people want to know about. We have artisans people want to know about. The products basically sell themselves.”
The Beekman 1802 website is now full of those artisan profiles, detailing the care and love local producers take with their products and their land. As they started working with more local farmers, their definition of sustainability began to shift. “It doesn’t do any good for a small farmer to struggle to make ends meet for 40 years,” Kilmer-Purcell says. “That’s not sustainable, no matter what the farmer is producing.”
They also began to clearly see the limits of an all-or-nothing approach to sustainability. The products they sold at the store were unimpeachable, but they wouldn’t feed the world, and wouldn’t persuade middle-class families to start eating organic. They needed a way to make small-scale, locally produced food available on a large scale, and at an affordable price.
The Beekman 1802 Farm Pantry line at Target, which entered stores in November 2015, is their attempt to make “farm to shelf” viable in a big way. Each of the 48 products in the line contains ingredients sourced from small, artisanal farms, along with ingredients from more traditional, large-scale sources. And they’re accessible, with many products starting at $3.99.
Kilmer-Purcell and Ridge road-tested the concept in 2014 with their “Mortgage Lifter” heirloom tomato sauces, also sold at Target. They intended to provide the Mortgage Lifter tomatoes — an heirloom variety developed in the 1930s and named for a farmer who allegedly paid off his mortgage from their sales — from their own farm.
They quickly realized they couldn’t come close to providing the 3,000 pounds of tomatoes they would need, so they tapped Denison Farm in nearby Schaghticoke, N.Y., to grow the first year’s harvest. They pledged to give 25 percent of Mortgage Lifter profits to local farms, and Ridge and Kilmer-Purcell say the program has awarded $50,000 in grants since its inception in February 2014.
The Farm Pantry line also gives back a percentage of proceeds and includes a wide array of products, including granola from Schenectady, N.Y.-based Gatherer’s Granola and ranch dressing made with cheese from Three Village Cheese in Newport, N.Y.
When the Farm Pantry line began selling at Target, Kilmer-Purcell and Ridge weren’t sure their fans would buy it. But by January, they had achieved every initial sales goal, and were developing new products, Kilmer-Purcell says. The products hit shelves in 900 Target stores and were in more than 1,400 stores by January.
Kate Miller of Weathertop Farm in Sharon Springs produced 100 pounds of basil for the Farm Pantry salad dressings and says the line has given local farmers a sense of financial stability.
“Even aside from the actual product I sold, the press and PR have led to a lot of ancillary sales,” says Miller, who also sells her products at festivals and farmers markets. “It’s a wonderful way for people like me to get into a marketplace we never would have been able to get into on our own.”
