Going The Distance For Quality

Dan & Jerry’s Greenhouses, an operation in Monticello, Minn., uses about 10 DosaCart fertilizer injectors from Dosatron within its greenhouse walls for production purposes. But Dan & Jerry’s actually owns about 220 Dosacarts.

So what does it do with the others? It distributes the majority of them to its retail customers to keep up with fertilizing once product is out of Dan & Jerry’s hands.

“We wanted our customers to feed the product at the garden center level,” says Jerry Quaal, co-owner and CFO of Dan & Jerry’s. “We saw what was happening at the chain store level. So we distributed the DosaCarts and said we want the trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials you’re getting from us fed once a week.”

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Dan & Jerry’s distributes its DosaCarts to retailers around the middle of April, and its customers use the fertilizer injectors through the end of June.

“We’re doing this with all our customers who use pay-by-scan,” says Quaal, who indicated Dan & Jerry’s began distributing DosaCarts to its retailers seven years ago. “Technically, until (the retailer) sells it, we own it. So we want them to help maintain the plant material so it looks nicer and lasts longer.”

Before Dan & Jerry’s distributes its DosaCarts each spring, two or three of the operation’s employees spend a week going through injectors to make sure they’re working properly. Dan & Jerry’s sales reps then gather stores together and show retailers how to operate the machines.

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“They’re very receptive,” Quaal says when asked how retailers react to using DosaCarts. “We hear positive comments when retail customers come in and see they’re running a fertilizer machine and fertilizing the plants. There’s nothing but good plants then.”

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