Kether Scharff-Gray Email & Phone Number

Bellingham, Wa, Us

Bellingham

Mainstem Malt is a craft malt company focused on the viability of family farms, vitality of rural farming communities, and on-farm, landscape-scale conservation. I strategize and oversee all aspects of operations including forecasting, planning, budgeting, finances, and hiring. Because we are a small team, I am also responsible for managing and executing day-to-day operations. In the late winter I work with farmers, plant breeders, and a seedhouse to source seed and contract acreage with Salmon-Safe certified growers. As the crop matures, we connect with buyers and build supply agreements for the following year’s malt. After harvest, I plan transportation and production with cleaning partners and toll-maltsters. When malt is finished, I coordinate LTL freight as well as bulk pneumatic truckloads to customers in the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain West.

La Conner, Wa

Hedlin Farms is a mid-scale family farm growing grain, market vegetables, and seed crops. I rebuilt Hedlin’s website, strategized a CSA revamp, and implemented more robust marketing and merchandising of their farm stand to improve profit. Using a combination of user-friendly, flexible, cloud-based programs I collated, updated, and documented all procedures relevant to the farm stand including daily operations, staff management, customer service best practices, purchasing standards, inventory management, quality control, and intra-farm communication.

Bellingham, Washington Area

Uprising Seeds is a small-scale farm focused on open pollinated, organic seed production. I guided their migration to G Suite. To improve user experience among wholesale customers, I drafted, edited, and implemented a new ordering platform that was filterable, sortable, and easy to reference. I worked to tidy and standardize Uprising’s data and record keeping system with the goal of transitioning to a long-term information warehousing solution.

Viva Farms is a non-profit organic farm and farm incubator. I standardized their grant reporting process to improve accuracy, timeliness, and ease of collaboration among staff and partners. I ensured that the data was relational, query-able, and had built-in visualizations for at-a-glance status updates. I developed and managed a communications strategy to sync the narrative and messaging across social media platforms and the website.

Bellingham, Washington Area

ACME Farms + Kitchen is a meal kit delivery service focused on local and organic products. I built and maintained relationships with 200+ growers, fishers, and ranchers in the Pacific Northwest. Together we planned production and cultivation specific to Acme Farms + Kitchen. I overhauled internal systems of budgeting, purchasing, and inventory and I managed our extensive database of vendors and products on our internal ordering platform. With more than $2 million in sales per year, I oversaw a $20,000-$30,000 weekly budget. I supervised and mentored 4 general managers and buyers at distribution hubs in Oregon and Washington.