Old McDonald Comes to Zoom
Local animal sanctuary offers Zoom meetings with farm animals
California’s shelter-in-place order made many businesses, including animal sanctuaries like Sweet Farm, shut down. And because the farm could no longer give tours to visitors to earn enough to keep the farm running, it was forced to get creative.
Sweet Farm decided to take advantage of this by offering cute llamas and other farm animals up for hire—digitally. Referred to on their website as Goat-2-Meeting, the service is dedicated to offering visitors a chance to see some farm animals from the comfort of their homes.
At this point, students have grown accustomed to broken microphones, unstable Internet and interruptions from family members when virtually learning. But Half Moon Bay’s Sweet Farm is looking to add a dash of llama to the list of Zoom university oddities. And even more oddly, it has a solid business model to make it happen.
For those interested in Zooming with the service’s critters, Sweet Farm offers a range of options. The first two are targeted at friends and family zoom gatherings. A 65 dollar donation to the sanctuary earns a 20-minute virtual tour for up to a group of six people. A 100 dollar donation will earn you the same tour, but for an unlimited number of people. In the description, Sweet Farms labels these options as “great for parties, happy hours, and family events.”
Now, instead of being disappointed by a boring zoom call with that out-of-touch aunt from Delaware, young kids will be able to see a range of adorable animals. Dubbed “animal ambassadors,” these animal guests include goats, llamas, sheep, pigs, cows, turkeys, and even llamas.
The second group of choices is aimed at the corporate sector of Zoom calls. After all, what corporate meeting couldn’t use a goat to spice things up?
For a 100-dollar donation, the first choice from this group gives any meeting a 10-minute animal cameo to “bring smiles” to a few co-workers faces. For 250 dollars, Sweet Farms will give your business a virtual corporate tour, and with 750 dollars, you can get the VIP treatment, complete with a tour led by Anna Sweet, the Executive Director of Sweet Farms.
Since the Goat-2-Meeting project kicked off in March, over 300 meetings have been bombarded by llamas. Even multiple Fortune 500 companies have hired the service.
Most notably, to give relief to some schools and others in need, Sweet Farms has also given free virtual tours.
It appears that these Zoom calls with farm animals are high in demand because Sweet Farms put up a notice that, due to the limited number of animals available to hire, customers must join a waitlist to get their desired time. To combat this issue, Sweet Farms has also teamed up with other sanctuaries to offer more animals for more online video calls. And the success of this has been an inspiration for other farms looking to bring smiles to visitors trapped at home.
Among the many societal changes brought about in recent months, the fact that it is now possible to have a goat call into your online business meeting and spice things up is certainly a hilarious new change for the better. Maybe the next time you have a birthday or happy hour, make your Zoom call more fun and help some cute farm animals in the process by virtually visiting online sanctuaries like Sweet Farms.