Future-proof your knowledge.
Optimize your product presence.
Make the most of your time.
Build your resilience.
Secure your legacy.
Custom training design, knowledge product design, & skill preservation solutions for farmers, specialty food producers, craft beverage makers, agricultural service & product providers, food content creators…& the orgs and institutions that support them.
If you're like most folks in the agriculture, specialty food, and craft beverage sectors, you feel these truths in your bones: your time is precious. Your knowledge is complex. Communities and individuals are relying on your success. Your products or services are rooted in story as much as skill.
What you know and make isn’t just your business - it’s a part of your legacy.
The expertise and top-tier offerings you've cultivated through years of experience isn't just valuable for the future of your business or org and the people who rely on you - it’s essential for the future of your whole industry.
But preserving your expertise for the future (and making time to share it effectively in the present) can feel overwhelming - maybe even impossible.
You know that you want to share your skills, resources, brand stories, and knowledge with the people who can elevate your mission and benefit from your expertise.
Maybe that’s your online audience. Maybe that’s employees, distributors & retailers, or an R&D team. Maybe it’s heirs or an apprentice. Maybe it’s your clients or customers. Maybe it’s industry colleagues.
You want to contribute to a bright, resilient future for specialty food, craft beverage, or agriculture and you want to enhance your own business success and resilience in the process…
…but where do you start?
Does any of this feel familar?
You produce craft-quality foods, beverages, farm goods, industry support, food content, or related consulting that requires thoughtful attention to reliable processes, best practices, effective storytelling, and audience/client loyalty.
Your success is tied to customer or industry partner trust, satisfaction, and enthusiasm.
You worry about losing hard-won know-how when seasoned employees or expert contractors - yourself included - retire or move on.
You’re an expert in your field but you wonder if there are easier, more reliable, more consistent, more effective, and more profitable ways to share your brand knowledge than how you’re doing it now.
You sometimes dwell on how unforeseen circumstances could hurt your legacy, your workflow, your profits, your team, or your audience/client trust and satisfaction.
You feel energized and hopeful after conferences, trade shows, or learning cohort experiences, but you wish you could feel that connection to peers and professional support all the time (and maybe without having to travel far to do it).
You hate being sold on one-size-fits-all solutions for your unique situation. (Honestly, you hate being sold to at all. Don’t we all?)
That’s where I come in.
If any of this rings a bell, you’ve probably already wished for ways to solve these issues…but you likely either don’t have time to bring plans to life, or don’t know where to start.
But here’s what you DO know:
You want the solution to be collaborative - not consultant-y.
You need an industry-aligned partner - not a generic service or ChatGPT answer.
You deserve to have your expert knowledge preserved and shared - and not just in hours-long recorded meetings and PDFs that will collect digital dust.
Hi. I’m Jack Thomas.
WorkPlay Learning Design helps farmers, specialty food & beverage producers, food creators, ag/food authors, and the businesses & orgs that support them turn expertise into clear, reliable, engaging knowledge-sharing ecosystems.
Led by veteran learning designer and Vermont farmsteader Jack Thomas (she/they), WorkPlay builds best-in-class knowledge product solutions for people who love food and all that goes into bringing it to the table. With a client portfolio representing over $186M in distributed operating budgets, my field-tested experience is ready to support your farm, specialty food company, personal brand, or organization.
From proprietary skill preservation assets to for-profit online courses; from onboarding and apprenticeship pathways to SOP systems; from educational marketing that strengthens trust in your products to industry-only online learning and collaboration spaces - WorkPlay designs and builds systems, assets, and online communities that address challenges, improve your profit ecosystem, share resources, spread brand awareness, support growth, and create accessible spaces for year-round education and collaboration.
My work lives at the intersection of agriculture, foodcraft, durable learning, and sustainable business success. I help growers, craft foodmakers, food industry creators, and the nonprofits, businesses, & associations that support them preserve essential skills, improve training, reduce inconsistency, diversify income, and share the knowledge and essential storytelling that keeps their businesses strong.
When people clarify what they know, communicate it well, and share it effectively, they gain and retain dedicated workers and audiences, improve output quality, and build more viable businesses. In the process, our working lands, craft food/beverage economies, and online food communities gain resilience, sustainable growth, and limitless potential.
If you believe that education is part of the core infrastructure of a thriving food system, you’re in the right place. Read the full About page to learn how WorkPlay can support you, your business, or your organization.
When we work together, you’ll…
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Preserve essential knowledge, stories, and skills, ensuring they're never lost or diluted - no matter what the world throws at you. Your communities, your teams, your profits, your clients, your resilience, and perhaps even your business legacy depends on it.
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Stop repeating yourself. Capture your expertise once, and train or launch products effectively forever in a way that honors your time and makes your knowledge accessible on-demand for the people you support. Your time is precious - use it to deliver personalized training and hands-on skills assessment…not remind Sam how to change a keg for the third time this week or manually email another sourdough guide to a customer.
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Standardize best practices, recipes, and solutions across your operation. This will ensure excellence no matter who is doing the planting, brewing, distilling, butchering, or baking that day. If we want consistent customers, we have to offer consistent product. If we want consistent organizational and business outcomes, we have to have consistent org and business inputs.
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Boost employee satisfaction, knowledge/skill retention, and pride in their work through engaging, professional-grade training resources. Turn online audiences into evangelists for your brand. Not everyone learns the same - seeing something done once or reading a PDF doesn’t work for everyone. When your training and knowledge products honor that, everyone succeeds, everyone feels seen, and everyone feels pride and purpose in their work and life.
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The usefulness of what I create for you and your team goes beyond your back of house or your online course. Microlearning is a trending marketing tool and educational marketing assets enjoy higher-than-average engagement, so sharing select content from your assets (or creating dedicated educational marketing) is a great way to build customer/audience connection. For the vendors and distributors who bring your product to the public, engaging story-based assets that go beyond the sales sheet increase their capacity to sell your products in memorable ways (and keep your SKUs sticky in their minds).
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If you’ve ever thought about launching an online course, digital knowledge product, or interactive learning community, there’s never been a better time. Sharing your knowledge and stewarding a space for collaborative learning isn’t just existentially rewarding - it can also be a great way to diversify the income ecosystem of your farm, brand, company, or organization.
…but don’t take my word for it - take theirs:
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"You'd be hard pressed to find someone as capable an architect of course curriculum as Jack. She was instrumental in building relationships and trust with our creator community and...beyond that, she's a great person to be around."
Mark Borum, Partnerships @ Nift
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"You were the rockstar that kept my project on track!"
Keith Johnson, Owner @ Keith Johnson Custom Woodworking
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"Jack is one of the best course curriculum managers I have ever worked with. [She's] also a whiz at audience data analytics, onsite directing/producing instructional video content, and...is truly an amazing person to work with."
Jess Catorc, CoFounder @ Carry
