When Ben first met our lending team in 2014, his company had approximately 10 employees. They harvested sap, boiled it into syrup, and sold most of their products wholesale to retailers. They produced about 5,000 gallons of pure maple syrup that year and also purchased syrup from local farms.

Then in his mid-20s, Ben had seen exponential growth for his maple products business since his dad helped him hang 13 buckets on maple trees in Temple when he was 5 years old.

But, his business was starting to face a few obstacles as it grew.

First: Maple producers are at the mercy of mother nature. Ben taps trees as early as January but sap stops and starts flowing over the next few months as temperatures fluctuate. When maple trees bloom in spring, it marks the end of the season.

Secondly, as the number of new wholesale customers increased, so did the need for enough cash flow to purchase syrup at good prices and fulfill orders.

“We didn’t have a lot of assets to borrow against, and we were very new in business,” Ben said.

Third: he kept most of his business in his head and needed better systems for his finances.

When Farm Credit East suggested Ben approach the Community Loan Fund for a loan, he got more than he expected. 

“To find someone who could listen to my story and my ideas for where I wanted to take my business — and actually fund it — was huge,” he said. “I would say that’s the largest difference between [the Community Loan Fund] and a conventional bank.”

He received a loan from our sustainable food and farms program that was paired with personalized business coaching.

With support from his coach, Ben implemented a costing system that provided more detailed information about the company’s profit margins by product and customer, improving his financial systems and reports. He also secured bigger customers, like Hannaford supermarkets.

“We started to really identify what the business was and the value of it,” he said.

By 2015, he had increased revenues by 20 percent. The results — and his dedication to improving his business practices — helped him secure additional financing in 2015 and 2016 from the Community Loan Fund, along with a loan from Farm Credit East to build a new warehouse.

Although the headwinds facing agricultural businesses are strong, Ben is confident about maple’s timeless popularity and the Ben’s Sugar Shack brand.

“People know who we are,” he said. “We feel that people might pay that extra dollar to buy our maple syrup off the shelf.”

This year, Ben’s Sugar Shack tapped 29,000 trees. Ben wants to tap up to 50,000 trees by 2027 (72 percent more than this year) and eventually add on to The Maple Station Market.

Looking back, Ben said the Community Loan Fund’s support played a large part in his early career.

“We probably wouldn’t be here if we didn’t secure some of those funds,” he said. “But it wasn’t even so much about the money for us ... it was about the training they brought to us in that time.”

Although he’s achieved many of the milestones he mapped out for Ben’s Sugar Shack, he also measures success as a business owner in smaller ways.

“Early off in my career, it was hard to take a day off and know things were going to be okay when I got home,” he said. Now, “I can leave this facility and know that it runs great and everything is going to be fine when I get back.”