Happy Turkeys, Friendly People

My husband distinctly remembers his first interaction with DiPaola Turkey Farm. He was at the McCarren Greenmarket for our Garden of Eve CSA pick-up and wasn’t planning on buying anything turkey related. It was a freezing, raining Saturday morning and most people just wanted to get through the day as quickly as possible.  He stopped by DiPaola’s tent for a quick look and the farmers were so welcoming and gregarious that my husband returned home with several pounds of turkey links.

Many market-goers will quickly tell you about how friendly DiPaola Turkey Farms is and how well they treat their birds.  The positive comments led me to seek out DiPaola Farms for a one-on-one interview.  On a frigid day in late January, I chatted with Dan Deleo, husband to one of the DiPaola cousins.  The cold didn’t seem to have any visible effect on his friendliness.  Despite the chill, we ended up talking for more than an hour.  DiPaola’s market and business philosophy can be summed up by this statement by Deleo: “If my customers are happy, I’m happy”.

Deleo became involved with the family farm in 2002 after being layed off from his job in customer relations.  DiPaola Turkey Farm was started in 1948 by the father of the current owner, Art DiPaola.  After the war, Art’s father worked as a potter and decided to buy a piece of property in Hamilton Township, NJ.  This 5-acre piece of property became DiPaola Turkey Farm.

The number of turkeys raised on the farm varies by season. The lead-up to Thanksgiving is considered “in season”, when they’ll raise about 15,000 birds.  It takes the turkeys 10-14 weeks to reach an average market weight of 12 pounds. The turkeys are your classic domestic large breasted white turkey, and have access to food (primarily soy and corn) and water at all times.  The birds are quite capable of walking around (unlike the reports one can read about confined birds being unable to move) and go outside to “peck around” daily.  “You can hear them all hours of the day and night clucking!” says Deleo.

Because DiPaola is a small, well-regulated farm, the turkeys are raised on the property from birth to death, with all of the processing done on-site.  Dan Deleo works on that processing line, as the grinder.  In one day, he can grind anywhere between 3,000 pounds and 7,000 pounds of meat.  “When [customers] ask me about the ground meat, I know what goes into it.”

After I heard Dan’s market day schedule, his friendliness and knowledge base became all the more impressive and humbling.  He gets to the farm at 4:20 a.m to load the truck.  He arrives at Union Square Greenmarket around 6:20 to set up and he starts breaking down the stand around 6:00 pm (“unless I sell out”, he adds).  He’ll get back to his house around 9:00 pm, only to wake up at 4:00 to start the cycle over for the Saturday market. “I just do it—I don’t know,” says Deleo with a shrug.  In addition to working at the farm (and his exhausting hours), Deleo is also back in school, studying marketing and finance.  I spotted a textbook near the cash register which he was planning on reading when things were slower.

The long hours don’t put a damper on Dan’s firm belief in the value of treating his customers with warmth and respect.  Deleo compared buying a product at a farmers’ market to trying to buy a car.  “What makes me crazy as a car buyer is to deal with a salesman who [doesn’t] know squat about the car,” he says. “I made a point to try and learn everything about our product.”  Dan recognizes that if he treats a customer poorly at the market, they may just walk right by next time and head to the heated Whole Foods.  DiPaola Farms recognizes that in everyone’s busy day-to-day lives, there’s real value in the customer connecting with a warm and friendly person.

—————————

Q: How do you determine the price of your turkeys?

Dan Deleo: “Feed—feed prices are driven by the price of fuel.  When the price of diesel spikes, the price of feed goes up.  A fuel surcharge…drives your price structure.  The feed is from a company in Pennsylvania.  Art [DiPaola] is very specific with his feed:  no growth hormones, no antibiotics; at times he’ll pay more money to get what he’s looking for.”

Q: What is your favorite way to prepare turkey?

D.D.: “I have access to all of these products, but the only thing I bring home are thighs.  If you ever come to my house, I pound them into cutlets and serve them up.”

Q: What is the best part about selling at a farmers’ market?

D.D.: “I really enjoy this; it’s the most fun job I’ve ever had…in my entire life…because you get to deal with people.  I worked in New York City for IBM and I was one of the 21 million people who commuted here but I had no concept that people actually lived here.  The coolest thing with the market is that you’re dealing with people who live here.  This is their park.  Getting to know people on that level versus breezing by them on a subway station is really interesting.  You also deal with the farmers.  If you were to interview each one of these people, everyone’s got a story.”

—————————

Where to Buy: 13 markets this season, with an additional 2 in the warmer months

Farm Address: 883 Edinburg Road Hamilton Township, New Jersey 08690

In May, I’ll be visiting the farm to see the newborn chicks and get a better idea of how the farm operates.  I’ll be sharing many pictures and a brief write-up after that visit.

Happy Marketing!

-Meaghin