A regenerative farm that makes cider
Heartwood Farm & Cidery is a 42-acre regenerative farm in Erin, Ontario, farming since 2004. They make small-batch craft ciders and Heartwood Sparkle, a non-alcoholic line made from Ontario fruit. Around the GTA, they deliver to their own accounts in electric pickup trucks.
Hundreds of direct accounts. A team too small to call them all.
Heartwood's model is hyper-local: win in their own backyard and keep the accounts direct. Keeping up with every one of those accounts was the hard part.
- Too many doors to call. Hundreds of cafes, bars, grocers and restaurants, one small team.
- Follow-up doesn't scale. Account management was, in Matt's words, "the less scalable thing from a human capacity standpoint."
- Direct by choice. Many brands hand everything to a national distributor. Heartwood keeps its own accounts.
Matt Steinman, on covering every account in-house:
“It's impossible at this point for us to call 700 doors.”Matt Steinman, Heartwood Farm & Cidery, Sep 2026
An AI agent on every store
Heartwood's team keeps its top accounts. Opener gave the other 400+ stores each their own agent, with our team reviewing every message before it goes out.
- Puts more of the range on the shelf. Each agent knows what its store already carries and pitches what it doesn't, like the new Concord grape Sparkle.
- Wins back quiet stores. Stores that stopped ordering months or years ago get a reason to come back.
- Reads each store's own rhythm. No fixed 60- or 90-day rule. The agent learns, in Kieran Klassen's words, "how frequently a customer orders."
- Hears what stores say. Feedback from every account lands in one place. "It's not just a sales tool, it's also an intelligence tool," says Matt.
Stores that already had Heartwood now carry more of it
new SKU placements in stores already carrying Heartwood
Jun 18–Sep 28, 2026 vs same window 2025
stores carrying Concord grape
Jun 18 – Sep 28, 2026
revenue growth from the stores their agents manage
Jun–Sep 2026 vs Jun–Sep 2025
“We don't really need to prove the ROI anymore.”
“It works.”Matt Steinman, Heartwood Farm & Cidery, Sep 2026
In the three-year plan
Matt is writing Heartwood's next three-year plan with Opener in the sales piece. "The account management thing, that is what I view as the future of our sales cycle." Next up: going back to Ontario stores that never replied, and reaching stores Heartwood serves through distributors.
"It is very impressive for me as a self-proclaimed AI skeptic," Matt says.
