Some advice for small business owners from a 50-year-old family farm
- Define your purpose. For Saunders Farm husband-and-wife co-owners Mark Saunders and Angela Grant, creating community, connection, and fun helps guide decisions, from introducing new attractions to succession planning
- Be open to new ideas and learn from industry peers. Mark and his family stay connected to their industry peers around the world. These connections have inspired the family to launch haunted hayrides and a tulip festival, giving visitors new reasons to come to the farm
- Get creative in the face of challenges. When pandemic-related restrictions disrupted their signature haunting season, the family launched a socially-distanced holiday season event, which has since expanded and has become an annual tradition
- Think ahead about seasonal cash flow. Saunders Farm sells discounted tickets to its Halloween-themed FrightFest and PumpkinFest event in January to help bring in revenue when the farm is closed to visitors
- Build a relationship with your business banking team. Saunders Farm's long-standing connection with TD has helped the family explore more tailored banking products as the farm grows
Mark Saunders' email signature tells you a lot about how he runs his business.
The co-owner of Saunders Farm – the 50-year-old family farm Mark runs with his wife, Angela – doesn't call himself a CEO or any other c-suite designation.
Instead, he's the Director of Fun.
It's a role he takes seriously. But more than that, it's a philosophy that's helped him and his family grow their farm into a three-season destination, summer camp, and thriving business that employs hundreds during their peak fall season.
"Our mission is to be the most amazing family farm in the world, or the universe, whatever you want to choose," he said. "And our vision is to create amazing fun, food, and memories."
Over the past 50 years, the Saunders Farm fun has remained consistent as Mark and his family expanded and pivoted to help their business grow.
How Saunders Farm got started
Mark's parents, both teachers, moved their family to the 100-acre farm in 1976. They had dreams beyond simple country living. They wanted their farm to be a place where people could build connections.
"We wanted the farm to be a destination for people to enjoy," said Mark.
They started by offering pick-your-own strawberries – something of a seasonal delicacy five decades ago. By 1982 they had 25 acres of strawberries.
"We didn't pick any of them ourselves," said Mark. "We had lineups of cars coming to the farm."
At a conference in Niagara Falls, Mark's dad Bill went to a session that would change the trajectory of his business. The topic? Haunted hayrides. After Bill convinced his wife, Anne, to go for it, they opened their first haunted hayride in 1992. About 1,000 brave souls showed up for Saunders' inaugural Halloween experience.
"We were just a little bit gobsmacked by the demand," said Mark. "Now, I would say we're most known for our haunting season, which gets more than 100,000 visitors in just under 200 hours of operation in the fall."
That first haunted hayride has expanded into a full FrightFest, with stage shows, multiple haunted attractions, DJs, and a daytime experience called PumpkinFest.
Taking over the family business
Mark started talking about taking over the farm 15 years before he and his wife actually bought it from his parents. In that time, he graduated from the University of Guelph in 1989 and spent three years teaching in Europe, including in Prague during the Velvet Revolution and the rise of democracy in what was then Czechoslovakia.
"I just came back completely fired up, seeing that anything is possible," said Mark.
The farm was growing and he wanted to make it his life's work. Angela, also a teacher, took a year off to work with him on the farm. She never went back to the classroom.
"We became incredibly fulfilled by the work, the community, and the impact we have," Mark said.
Now, he's thinking about succession planning again – this time about what might happen after he and his wife retire. For him, like many of the decisions he and his wife make, it won't be guided purely by business. Together, they'll think about how to keep the community spirit of Saunders alive.
An abundance mindset
Saunders Farm and TD go back decades to when a group from TD hosted a retreat on the farm in the middle of RRSP season – or the dead of winter in Ottawa. The retreat was held in one of Saunders Farms' big log buildings, and outdoors where participants took part in team-building activities.
"That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship... I would say it was the branch that made the first connection and I think that's one of the things that's really strong about the model with TD," said Mark, noting how colleagues at his local branch will still ask about the business, especially around key moments, like beginning of haunting season.
When Mark and his wife took over the farm, they moved all their business accounts to TD and their small business banking specialist helps them navigate different products that might be helpful as they grow, expand, and pivot.
COVID, Mark explained, presented a real challenge for the business and with advice from their TD small business specialist, they applied for government grants.
And, they pivoted when they couldn't host their usual haunting season due to pandemic-related restrictions. In 2020, they debuted their first-ever Country Christmas, or socially-distanced light stroll around the farm.
That event, brought on by lockdown necessity, has become a yearly tradition that now includes live shows and more communal activities – and plenty of holiday lights. Around this time, they launched an on-site cidery, which now also supplies bars and restaurants in the region, and they planted an apple orchard, which should be operational next year.
Last year, inspired by their farming peers in the U.K., Mark and his wife introduced a tulip festival with 500,000 flowers; they just planted an additional 1 million bulbs for spring 2027.
Mark admits that as a seasonal business, their cashflow isn't always consistent, especially when their doors are closed to visitors. They've gotten creative over the years. They release discounted tickets to their Halloween-themed FrightFest and PumpkinFest events in January to help keep cash coming in.
For Mark, mindset is important. "I renamed my document on my computer to call it Abundance instead of Cash Flow. Every time I see it, I see "Abundance" at the top and think it'll come to us, we just need to do the work and think creatively," he said.
"Some of our hardest times, especially during COVID, we were the most creative… I think since 2020, our income has quadrupled so that sort of was a real shot in the arm for us to be more creative and be more ambitious."
And for Mark, those creative and ambitious plans often start with maximizing fun for visitors.
