When Seven Sons farm needed space for seasonal inventory fluctuations, they chose Interstate Cold Storage. The warehouse team fully supported their needs and vision, helping them to grow 10X in less than 10 years.
When Blaine Hitzfield and his brother took ownership of Seven Sons farm from their parents in 2007, the pasture-based cattle operation covered just 250 acres — a modest size in Indiana farm country, where neighboring commodity farms often reached 1,000 acres or more.
With two parents, five younger brothers, and two growing families that depended on the farm, they knew that their survival depended on making major changes to reach more customers and increase production.
The whole family rolled up their sleeves, tending the farm, driving for hours to deliver orders, and learning everything they could about livestock production, sustainable soil practices, sales, and business management.
“We had a self-serve farm store that we never locked with a calculator on the counter. Customers would get what they wanted and leave cash or a check.”
-Blaine Hitzfield
Along with increased production came other hurdles, such as how to store an increasing number of products. In the early days, onsite cold storage was a good solution. There was plenty of land, so adding another standalone freezer when they ran out of space wasn’t a problem. But as they grew, managing their meat storage across multiple freezers became more time-consuming, and they needed a way to handle another issue — seasonal fluctuations.
Farming is a tricky business that depends on life cycles. If Blaine and his brothers wanted to increase or decrease production, they couldn’t wait to see how customer demand would be next year; they had to plan their changes 12-36 months ahead. At a certain point, it didn’t make sense to add on more and more standalone freezers that could either be left empty or — even worse — not have enough capacity to meet their needs.
The solution seemed obvious; Seven Sons should find an offsite cold storage facility located in Indiana that could accommodate their surplus supply.
But this proved to be more challenging than expected. They tried a few different cold storage warehouses close to their processing facilities, but they soon found that being a small customer made them less desirable — and less desirable customers always had to compromise.
That’s when Blaine and his brothers called Interstate Cold Storage.
Seven Sons didn’t have much to store at the time — only 20-30 pallets — but the team at Interstate Cold Storage made them feel valued. The brothers were blown away by how much the warehouse team was willing to educate its new customers on best cold chain practices and customize its cold storage services to accommodate their needs.
Interstate Cold Storage customized 4 key capabilities to meet Seven Son’s niche business needs:
The brothers also appreciated the familiar, close-knit team at the warehouse. The same people answered the phones. The same workers were on the loading dock. As trust began to develop, they moved more and more of their inventory to the facility.
They’ve been great. We only had 20-30 pallets and didn’t even have palette IDs. They educated us, got us up to speed, and treated us like a big customer.”
-Blaine Hitzfield
In 2019, their inventory had a major fluctuation. The brothers had overestimated demand and created a surplus. Interstate Cold Storage easily accommodated their excess inventory, but Blaine and his brothers were struggling to find customers who understood the value of their sustainable farming methods so they could grow their home delivery operation. They stored their products and continued working to get more sales.
| Year | Acreage | Pallets stored | Employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 250 | 20-30 | Family only |
| 2025 | 500 | 200-300 | 40+ |
Finding Interstate Cold Storage couldn’t have come at a better time. When the pandemic shuttered other businesses and sent people into isolation, a large number of customers were suddenly searching the internet for pasture-raised meats that could be delivered, contact-free, to their homes. The brothers suddenly had more demand than supply, onboarding thousands of customers within 2-3 months.
Their small internal team expanded to include outside workers, and their storage needs at Interstate Cold Storage grew from around 20 pallets to almost 300.
Interstate Cold Storage was happy to assist the growing business’ requests — even pulling all inventory and bringing it to the loading dock for the Seven Sons team to manually count on multiple occasions.
The future is bright for Seven Sons. Their 250-acre family farm has doubled in size and now features an innovation center. They offer home delivery across the 48 contiguous United States and know that Interstate Cold Storage will be standing by, ready to help them handle whatever the future brings.
