What to Know
Ballerina Farm influencer Hannah Neeleman is no stranger to controversy, but her $260 cutting board seems particularly outrageous to some of her followers.
Ballerina Farm’s Scalloped Cutting Board is made from solid maple and is handcrafted locally in Utah in collaboration with The Harvest Board. In a video explaining the product’s pricing, Hannah admitted that the cutting board is “expensive. She seemed to justify the product’s high price though.
On TikTok, people argued that the cutting board isn’t actually worth it.
TikTok creator Rustic Hippies told her followers that she’s confident the Ballerina Farm cutting board isn’t worth it. Admittedly, she doesn’t have the cutting board, but she said she doesn’t need to try it out.
According to her, it’s a “face grain board,” meaning it’s made using “the weakest part of the wood.” Because of this, the board will bow and warp, she argued. “That is exactly what I’ve seen on my feed. People holding up this board and it’s already warped and bowed because it sat in their sink and it got wet and it dried and now it looks awful,” she claimed.
@rustichippies I’m sorry I’m not trying to hurt someone’s commission, but I do believe lying to people about this product only makes you look bad. It’s $260. That’s not cheap but it’s a cheap product. #sales #commission #honesty #choppingboard #charcuterie ♬ original sound – Rustic Hippies
In the comments, a lot of people agreed with her. “$260 for a cutting board in this economy is WILD,” one person responded. Another wrote, “I can’t stand anything Ballerina Farm. They are multi millionaires and act like an old school farm family.”
On Reddit, people criticized Hannah and her husband, Daniel Neeleman, for acting like they’re ordinary farmers. One person called them “total frauds,” and others accused them of being “greedy.”
One critic wrote, ” I just see this as an extension of the farmer/middle class cosplay bulls—. Only now it’s chef cosplay. Just go be rich.” Several people have also pointed out that Ree Drummond’s Pioneer Woman line has a similar looking cutting board for sale at Walmart for about $15.
Hannah responded to the backlash.
In a pretty lengthy video, Hannah explained that yes, the cutting board is expensive. She said the cost is high due to the cutting board’s size and weight, and the fact that it was made locally.
“I actually got this board a few years ago — I think it was three years ago,” she stated in the video. “A local mom dropped it off, and she was like, ‘My husband and I make these. We handmake them. And I wanted you to have it.’ She was honestly one of the most genuine people I had ever met, and she’s actually a good friend of mine now.”
Hannah continued with, “But she came up to me this summer with tears in her eyes and was like, ‘I cannot believe that you’re selling these cutting boards at the rate that you are because it’s really changed the dynamic of our family and our family business.'”
The high price is not because they’re influencers, she said.
She also addressed the critics who say that she and her husband are not actually homesteaders and call them frauds. Though they’re certainly “newbies” who have made a lot of mistakes, she said, they are not “upping the price because [they] have an audience online.”
As another example of this, she pointed to the croissants they sell. A box of 30 costs $144, which seems like a lot. But a local chef makes each croissant by hand and “takes really intense pride in these croissants,” she explained. The price is also higher due to shipping costs.
She added, “It wouldn’t be exciting or fun or fulfilling to me to cut corners on things and sell them at a lower price because they’d move quicker. And so there are a lot of decisions we make in the business that really ensure quality in our products.”
