Hart County Amish businesses navigate marketing, tourism and technology.news

As he puts his bow away, the video screen gives Gingerich a nearly perfect score. As the owner of Trophy Ridge Archery and Outdoors, this should come as no surprise.

What is surprising to passers-by who have visited Gingerich’s shop, and many others in the surrounding area of ​​Mammoth Cave National Park, is who is behind the register.

About 600 Amish families live in Hart County. The Amish are a Christian community who chose to live a simpler life with limited technology and modest clothing. The Amish are not monolithic. Conservatism has his four main subgroups: the Swartzentruber Amish, the Old Order, the New Order, and the Beechey Amish.

The Hart County Amish belong to the Old Order. This means using horses and buggies for transportation and using the Pennsylvania German dialect for worship and daily conversation. Community decisions are made by the local church and bishop.

They also gather for worship in private homes, generally avoid digital technology such as mobile phones and the internet, do not use electricity, and adopt traditional attire such as head bonnets and modest dresses. They differ from the wider British (non-Amish) society in that they wear plain clothes for women, plain clothes for men, and often bear beards if they are married.

In 2005, the first Amish business, R&S Salvage Grocery & Bakery, opened in Hart County. As the Amish population grew, so did the number of businesses. Today, Hart County is home to about 20 Amish businesses, from delis and bakeries to greenhouses, outdoor gear and hardware stores.

The Amish found success as tourists from the area’s caves and road trippers descending from nearby Interstate 65 surged to visit their establishments.

“Amish businesses were also embraced by British culture and they knew it was a viable option,” said Rachel Wright, executive director of Horse Cave/Hart County Tourism. .

Susan Miller sits behind her desk in the R&S Salvage Grocery & Bakery office, backlit by windows that allow natural light to fill the room. Elsewhere in the shop Miller runs with her husband Robert, the bakery Honey Her buns and freshly baked donuts smell sweet, brimming with discounts and bulk merchandise. Go through big boxes and aisles where locals catch up on the latest news.

The grocery store was originally her husband’s idea, Miller said.

“At first, I was like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ but since he started, we’ve been enjoying it,” she said. “Your lifestyle gets busier, but I’m still having fun. I’m a people person.”

Many of the people Miller meets are travelers from out of state. She said it’s interesting to learn about where they live and the lifestyle they lead.

“People ask a lot of questions, and we try to answer them as best we can,” Miller said. I think it’s like going through Amish country and seeing what it’s like.”

The grocery store has a credit card machine, but no computer. Miller orders most of the time over the store’s phone, but when that’s not possible, he uses a fax machine to avoid ordering online.

Ordering fax machines is also key to the block’s newest business, Miller’s Hitching Post. Mark Miller started the equestrian store with his son in October 2022 after selling the adjacent metal shop he ran for 12 years.

Quite a few businesses have stopped accepting phone orders, Miller said, complicating matters for Amish businessmen who avoid email and the Internet as much as possible.

When people want to e-mail Miller, they actually e-mail a company in New York, who then faxes the message to Miller. If Miller wants to reply, he writes the message on paper and faxes it back.

In some cases, that workaround is not sufficient. “Some stores only let you order online,” he says Miller.

For cases like these, Miller hired a non-Amish employee to come twice a week, whose responsibilities included processing the necessary online orders. It can be a hassle, but it’s worth it, he said.

“Being Amish is our way of life, it’s our choice. For me and my family, I feel it’s a good choice,” Miller said.

Marketing is another area where the lack of internet can hurt Amish businesses. If Farmwald’s Dutch Bakery & Deli wasn’t right off the interstate and next to a major truck stop, owner Joe Farmwald says the business would never have been so successful.

“Location is important to our business,” says Farmwald. “People don’t want to stray too far from the interstate when they travel.”

Farmwald’s is somewhere between Cracker Barrel and McDonald’s, Farmwald said. A steady stream of customers, including tourist families and truck drivers, wait in line to order freshly baked pies and pastries, deli sandwiches, and homemade jams before being seated.

Farmwald said they usually noticed the girls with head coverings and occasionally asked questions. Not long ago, many monks visited Firmwold the day after a group of Catholic nuns visited.

“They were wondering how we live. ‘So who you meet and what people think and the questions they ask are really interesting.'”

Farmwald’s opened three years ago with the intention of dedicating itself to making donuts from scratch and a small breakfast menu. However, explosive growth since the outdoor adventure tourism boom of mid-2020 has led to expansion.

During the peak summer tourist season, Farmwald’s sees 800 to 1,000 customers per day. In the first year she got customers from all states and her 13 countries.

“For the first four to five months, it seemed like they needed a filling lunch, a hot meal, etc.,” says Farmwald. “So we switched to it and then started making more dinners and more pies and just expanded from there. And it’s still growing. I don’t know.”

Farmwald’s is built for tourists, and he estimates that at least 90% of its summer customers are tourists. They come from highway billboards, word of mouth, or Facebook.

The Amish don’t use social media, but Rachelle Wright maintains a Facebook page for each of Hart County’s tourist Amish businesses. About three years ago she joined R&S Salvage Groceries.

“They were marketing in a normal non-digital way, which helped get information out there where people were already,” Wright says. “I knew that tourists were very interested in what these businesses were doing, so my desire to help them came from there.”

Susan Miller’s grocery store was busy before Wright started helping out, but she said she’s noticed a big improvement since. When she got a half-truck of cat food last week, she said she was able to sell it all by posting to her 6,500 Facebook followers at R&S Salvage Grocery. said.

Earlier this month, a man drove four hours from Tennessee to buy an archery bow from Zingerich based on Facebook comments, he said. He sees more customers from far and wide each year as word of mouth goes viral in person and online.

Gingerich is an entrepreneur like any other entrepreneur. He has a patent pending for a deer feeder he built from scratch. He does his own marketing and hosts monthly shooting competitions at his three shooting ranges at Trophy Ridge Archery and Outdoors: an indoor range, an outdoor range, and a video range with 33 different scenarios.

Like other properties, Gingerich has a fax machine for email and there is no internet on site. If you want, you can go to the public library and use the computer.

He said the differences between Amish and non-Amish business owners widened in past generations as non-Amish experienced an astronomical leap while the Amish community technically remained largely the same. .

“In this day and age, it’s harder. There’s a bigger difference. If you go back 20 or 30 years, the technology wasn’t that advanced,” Gingerich said. “But when it comes to every day you come here and talk to me and I talk to you, there’s not much difference between us – it’s the way we choose to live.”