Family-run webshop gives farm-slaughtered organic chickens a boost.

During Denmark’s lockdown, the South Jutland webshop Gaardmester benefited from many citizens giving up trips to the supermarket and choosing to buy food online. In this way, Gaardmester built up a solid customer base that became so fond of the webshop’s organic chickens that they continued ordering products—even after corona loosened its grip on the country and Danes began shopping in physical stores again. “Growth during corona was almost explosive. Everyone was confined, and that led people to shop online, where they discovered how much you can do through a screen,” says Anders Duus, who leaves it to Sille to describe Gaardmester’s fairly simple purchasing philosophy: “Organic produce is our core value. Gaardmester is primarily organic. Period. Then there are a few fish products, game and some specialities that we cannot get organically, and if a Danish version of a product exists, that is the one we stock in the webshop,” says Sille Duus. ### A local farm abattoir came at just the right time During its first years, Gaardmester sold organic chickens from small producers such as Gothenborg, Kongeå Kylling, Varde Ådal and Vendsyssel Fjerkræslagteri, but in 2024 something happened that proved decisive for Gaardmester. The couple found the ideal business partners in the same-age organic farmers behind the Dalsgaard & Barsøe chicken concept. At Skyttegården—just a 15-minute drive from Gaardmester—they had established a micro farm abattoir where the chickens have access to exceptionally large outdoor areas and do not have to endure a long journey to the slaughterhouse. During the busiest weeks, they now slaughter 1,400 chickens. A large number are sold directly to professional kitchens, but the agreement with Nikolaj Dalsgaard and Andreas Barsøe has also given Gaardmester’s chicken sales additional momentum, as customers suddenly had more chicken products to choose from. ### Orders freshly slaughtered chickens every week “Every week we prepare a cutting list, and perhaps we need 300 chickens cut into portions. But if we only need the breasts, they will usually have sold the thighs to some restaurants, while the carcasses go to a third customer. In other weeks, we can use all the cuts. Then we receive breasts, thighs, carcasses, hearts, livers, feet and necks, and customers like it when they feel that we are making something special for them that they cannot get anywhere else,” says Anders Duus. Organic chicken has been Gaardmester’s most important signature product since the organic online shop opened more than 10 years ago. That has not changed, even though retail sales of organic chicken in Denmark have been under severe pressure in recent years. It is often possible to buy four conventional chickens for the same price as one Gaardmester chicken. This price gap is a major challenge, and the chains that sell whole organic chickens from Denmark typically charge 150–160 kroner for a chicken weighing 1.1–1.4 kilograms, but that is not a chicken Gaardmester wants to sell. ### Goes to work immensely proud “Marketing and storytelling are among the things we have spent the most time on from day one. We owe that both to our customers and to our many Danish meat producers, and it is something you lose when you shop at the supermarket. There may be a label with a nice picture of the producer on the tray of meat, but that is where it ends,” says Sille, who believes that grocery chains spend far too much time talking about organic and Danish products compared with how few products they actually carry from Danish organic farmers. “What is exciting about the online world is that you can communicate a great deal of data on a small platform like Gaardmester. We know exactly where all our products come from, who produces them and how they are produced. It makes me immensely proud every morning when I go to work, because I know that we only sell products we can stand behind 100 percent.” ### Everyone helps out here Today, both she and Anders Duus make their living from Gaardmester. So does Sille Duus’ younger brother, who is employed full-time in the packing department, along with a couple of part-time employees in flex jobs. When things get hectic, her part-time-employed mother also lends a hand. “It is a bit like on a farm when the harvest has to be brought in—everyone helps out,” says Sille Duus, who reports that Gaardmester’s revenue rose by 40–50 percent in 2025 and that she expects the same growth this year. If this development continues, it will not be many years before Gaardmester outgrows its current packing facility and warehouse. They are located at a country property a little east of Haderslev, where the couple moved in 2021 with their four children and Sille Duus’ parents, Lene and Kim Qvist. The latter was principal of Kalø Organic Agricultural College before taking up his current position in 2018 as CEO of Dansk Økojord A/S, so Sille Duus certainly inherited her passion for organic farming. ### Very talkative customers Together, the family has built a huge 500-square-metre straw-bale house that provides the setting for the lives of three generations, where work and leisure are often closely intertwined. The house’s central kitchen and living area offers a view of the beautiful South Jutland countryside. It is from here, at the kitchen table and often with a child by her side, that Anders and Sille Duus run their webshop, where close dialogue with both customers and producers is an important key to the growing number of loyal customers. “We have some lovely, but very talkative customers who want to know about the products and how to prepare them, so the conversations can become quite long,” says Anders Duus, who is primarily responsible for customer service. ### Customers are getting younger “Today, the typical customer is a woman aged 50 or older who lives in one of the country’s larger cities. If you had asked me two years ago, I probably would have said 60 or older. Since then, however, we have reached a younger segment, down to the 40-plus age group, and we are very pleased about that,” says Sille Duus, who is also extremely satisfied with customers’ average order, which amounts to 1,400 kroner. “We are proud of that, because it is a large amount in our industry.” The customers range from a single person receiving cash benefits who prioritises organic and quality products to—Sille Duus does not hide the fact—that most of Gaardmester’s customers are financially comfortable. This means they do not focus as much on price and are willing to pay 300–350 kroner for a frozen organic chicken weighing two to three kilograms. According to the couple, that is the right size for a slow-growing chicken. “That means the chicken has lived a longer life with high standards of animal welfare and access to the open air in a chicken run planted with poplar trees. Of course, it also means that the price is higher, and it is our job to explain to customers why a chicken should cost 349 kroner,” says Anders Duus, who has gradually learned that during a busy working day it is important to set aside time for the couple’s four children, aged between one and 10. ### Returning to their roots “Family is our most important core value, and before we moved here, Anders and I lived with my parents at the organic farm Topkærgaard just outside Aarhus,” says Sille Duus. At Topkærgaard, the family ran an organic farm shop and produced organic eggs, but during corona they changed the farm shop to a self-service model. Sille Duus, who is trained as a multimedia designer, was expecting her third child at the time and began dreaming of opening an organic webshop so she could use her education. It would give her and Anders Duus more time to spend with their children, whom they had enrolled in a school in Haderslev, where both families originate. They therefore had no doubts when they heard in 2020 that Gaardmester was for sale, and they have never regretted the purchase. The coming months through January are Gaardmester’s peak season. The company has already received approval for plans to construct a larger commercial building on the property if growth continues.