A year ago, Anna Riby was contemplating what to do when the youngest of her three children started school.
‘Professional freedom!’ screamed – but only between school drop and pick up. And she still had to meet the unpredictable, unpaid demands of the family’s mixed 1,300acre farm.
Today, Anna’s drawing a wage, is there for her kids, still supporting the beef, sheep and arable enterprises – and fielding inquiries from fellow producers across the country who want to duplicate the success of her on-farm vending business.
The speed with which the idea for Stonehills Farm Pantry formed, was funded and flourished still shocks her. “There was no lightbulb moment,” she says. ”But it fell into place really quickly. From friends talking to us about it at the Yorkshire Show to getting a grant and launching was just six months. In 10 months we were making a profit.”
Between 7am and 7pm, her mobile doesn’t stop pinging with notifications of customers accessing the self-service machines, housed in a former farm building in the tiny village of Barmston, on the Holderness coast. One dispenses frozen cuts of grass-fed beef from the family’s award winning herd of shorthorns alongside lamb from its flock of poll Dorsets, while a chiller is stocked daily with locally produced staples, including milk, eggs, bacon and bread.
“I thought people would use the vending machines mainly for convenience,” says Anna, who’s seen the retreat of village stores around her and the closure of the last local butcher. “But infact, it’s been people searching out grass-fed beef – many more than I thought.”
Maybe that shouldn’t have surprised her.
“People had asked us for years if we were going to sell our own meat. But a farm shop was out of the question. We would not have been able to fit that into the farm and family life,” Anna says as the kids play a scrap game of cricket in the yard and pester for some of the delicious farm-made ice-cream she’s selling from Cherry View Ice cream at Cherry Burton.
A very useful 'add-on'
The simple setup was funded almost entirely by a £17,200 grant sourced through the Invest East Yorkshire business team, part of East Riding District Council, which also provided a package of support that included invaluable social media and marketing advice.
“I didn’t have a background in marketing and that’s key to everything,” says Anna, who’d built her career in the bloodstock industry after graduating from the Royal College of Agriculture.
The Panty is not, she insists, a diversification, but a very useful ‘add-on’ – a second income stream that returns 35-40% more profit on the beef than the farm’s traditional wholesale routes to market, which at one point included the Morrisons’ Scheme.
“The meat is exactly the same, but provenance and breed are lost in that supply chain,” says Anna, who benchmarks her prices against premium retail butchers – although the range of cuts she offers, from Thor’s hammer to Barnsley chops, are rarely found on one counter in the high street.
“We choose a slightly different specification for the vending machine and we like to kill heifers if possible because the eating quality is better. The herd is autumn and spring calving, but, because we’re selling frozen it’s easy to maintain all-year-round sales anyway. The lamb is the one I have to think about the most.”
An award-winning herd
The direct-to-consumer sales have stimulated requests from other local retailers and caterers who are now also buying direct, thanks to awareness around the eating quality of extensively grazed shorthorn beef that the Pantry has created.
Established soon after the farm exited dairying in the early 2000s, the Stonehill herd won the National Herd Award from the Shorthorn Beef Breed Society in 2024. In fact, it was quite a year for silverware. Anna’s father in law Geoff Riby, who runs the cattle with husband Chris, was also given the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Yorkshire Post’s annual Rural Awards.
Among the finalists in another category for the Post’s awards that year were Richard and Julia Morley ,who launched the machine-only farm shop Pantry in the Paddock on the back of their free-range egg business in Thorpe Le Street four years ago. Now one of the biggest automated farm shops in the UK, they were the inspiration for Anna’s venture, and she’s aware there’s plenty of scope to expand on it. “There are a lot of other initiatives we have talked about. The most obvious is going online,” says Anna.
Unlike the Morleys’, Anna’s passing trade is hugely influenced by Stonehills’ location, close to one of the busiest routes to the coast and the vast stretch of sand that runs south of Bridlington with its ribbon of popular holiday parks. If she wants to grow sales further, she needs to build a year-round relationship with those customers.
An ecommerce version of Stonehills Farm Pantry is something that the Invest East Yorkshire team are keen to help her pursue. “People who have bought it from the machine, could then get it sent home to them,” says Anna. “I’m well aware that I’m sitting on something that could be really big, but the limit at the moment is my time.”
Using technology to track sales
Currently, the vending machines are solving that problem. The Husky Intelligent Freezer and Intelligent Fridge, which rely on RFID-tagging technology to track sales rather than weight-sensitive shelving, which can glitch, were supplied by farmer-owned JSR Vending in Scotland. Anna was impressed by the installation, performance and follow-up service. They give her remote access to the machines via an app, allowing her to keep an eye on inventory and respond immediately to any problems.
In the time we spent talking, no one had any difficulty following instructions to operate the machines. In fact, most visitors were intrigued but pleasantly surprised by the whole experience. On the rare occasions when Anna’s has been called to attend, though, it’s been due to user error.
Balancing the competing and unpredictable demands of a busy farm, young family and a second business is a common conundrum. Which is probably why she’d been inundated with calls from other farmers curious about her experience. “The number of messages we’ve had is colossal,” she says.
Anna suddenly remembers she needs to collect straw to bed down the pedigree Texels she’s taking – with a car-full of kids – to Carlisle sheep sales the following day. She just needs to restock the milk first – and sort out those ice-creams. Then she’s off, in a whirlwind of busy-ness.
If anyone’s qualified to grow a thriving, multi-facetted food-from-the-farm enterprise (diversification or not), it’s her.
