Eight Ways to Save Hours on Your Pack Line This Summer

Summer means longer days… and more hours at the pack line. Keeping large inventories organized and fulfilling custom orders for your shoppers takes work. With the amount of time and labor you spend packing orders, expanding sales channels or offering more variety to your customers may seem impossible.

Delivered Fresh is an online food hub that aggregates products from over 60 local farmers and delivers to hundreds of homes each week. For Delivered Fresh, managing their produce pack line started to get out of hand during the explosive growth of online ordering at the beginning of the pandemic.

But by stepping back and analyzing their process, Delivered Fresh was able to make a series of small changes that ultimately reduced their pack line time by 40%. How did they do it? Read on for eight ways Delivered Fresh is saving time on their pack line this summer—and how LFM can help.

Delivered Fresh uses Local Food Marketplace’s software to power their online hub. From generating pack lists to creating delivery routes, LFM’s features help support hubs, farmers, and markets grow without increasing time and labor costs. Reach out today to schedule a software demo and learn more about how LFM can help you save time and take on more orders.

Eight Ways to Save Time on Produce Pack Lines

1. Where to Start: Analyze your Process.

At the heat of the pandemic, the six-person order fulfillment team at Delivered Fresh was sometimes working past one in the morning to pack weekly orders. So how did they reign in this process to their current system, which takes a fraction of the time? According to Operations Manager David Nowacoski, the first step was to figure out what wasn’t working.

We started to time our process from the moment we received products to the moment they were out the door. And then we started looking at every step and asking, how can we make it better?”

By analyzing their current process, the team at Delivered Fresh was able to identify bottlenecks in the process. David encourages businesses to get out a stopwatch and time your process.

David advises food hub managers to identify exactly what is slowing you down before making any changes. “Don’t try to implement something unless you know the problem you’re addressing.”

After fully analyzing their process, the following adjustments saved Delivered Fresh hours of time on order fulfillment.

2. Count and organize product as soon as it’s received.

Simplifying your packing process starts from the moment a product enters your warehouse.

Common mistakes in the receiving stage include not counting incoming product. If a shipment is misdelivered or incorrectly harvested, that’s something you’ll want to know as soon as you receive the product—not on delivery day when you realize you’re short a case of carrots for your wholesale orders.

The Delivered Fresh team uses LFM to generate a pick list to double check and organize producer deliveries.

Delivered Fresh works with over 60 producers—so organization and communication with each producer is key.

We asked David: How do you streamline communication between the hub and all your producers?

That’s something that Local Food Marketplace has taken care of for us from day one. From the automated pick list going out the door, to the ability to just send a message to all the producers—we don’t need to add anything to the equation. LFM’s system handles the communication piece really well for us.” – David Nowacoski

3. Pre-pack: Break down larger cases right away.

Rather than immediately putting cases of food into storage when they arrive, the team breaks down the products into smaller sizes. For example, a 50-pound box of potatoes will get broken down into one-pound bags, which are easier to grab later and toss into bags for customer orders.

This way, they know how many cases of each product to set aside upon arrival for larger wholesale orders. After that, they can focus on breaking down the rest of the larger cases into smaller sizes for customer orders.

Weighing and packaging vegetables as soon as they arrive at the hub is a huge time saver. And the team uses a picklist generated by LFM to make sure they have the right amount of product available for final orders.

4. Plan Your Routes Efficiently!

Delivered Fresh doesn’t wait until the day of to plan their delivery routes. Luckily, this process is made easy through LFM’s integration with Routific. This routing software is able to quickly plan efficient delivery routes that help drivers hit the most stops in the least amount of time and mileage.

After generating a series of routes in the system, the team creates a summary sheet for the delivery driver that lists the address for each stop, as well as customer names and phone numbers.

5. Decide what works best for your packing lists: Paper or Digital.

Even in a digital world, paper has some advantages.

The staff likes to use paper for the convenience of quickly checking off items, circling products that haven’t been packed, writing notes in the margin, or carrying the list around with them to the walk-in freezer – where carrying iPads wouldn’t be practical or possible.

However, digital does come in handy for Delivered Fresh. Delivered Fresh sells some products “by the pound” rather than “by the each.” Selling by weight can trip up many online ordering systems, but it’s not a problem with LFM. The staff at Delivered Fresh weigh out products sold by pound when packing orders, and then use an iPad to edit weights directly on customer order forms within LFM. This automatically updates and calculates prices.

 6. Create Stations on Your Pack Line

The day before delivery, the Delivered Fresh team starts packing orders.

To efficiently manage your pack lines in a bustling hub like Delivered Fresh, assign different staff to each of the sections of your inventory space, such as freezer, walk-in cooler, or dry goods area.

At Delivered Fresh, the staff splits responsibilities into three areas (freezer, fridge, and shelf), and then generates pack lists for each staff member. The checklists are sorted by product to make it easy for staff to pull orders together.

We really need to be as quick as possible packing orders, and being able to sort by product on LFM is perfect. We can sort the packing list just for frozen items for our staff working in the freezer. For stuff like that—LFM just works perfectly.”

LFM offers versatile sorting options for pack lists, allowing grouping by order, product, customer location, route, producer, or packing order.

An LFM-generated packing list grouped by product.

7. Save the fragile products for last!

You’d never want your cashier at the grocery store to put a loaf of bread on the bottom of the bag. Apply this same logic to the order you pack customer orders.

We don’t prepack eggs. We wait until just before they go out the door to avoid breakage. And we don’t prepack bottles of milk because they’re just too bulky. So staff will circle those items on the shelf so the packers of the truck know to grab those items.”

8. Pack/Load Products in Reverse Order of Delivery

Once bags from all three stations are filled, they are added to a small cooler for each customer. Coolers are placed in the fridge in reverse order of delivery, to be ready to go in the truck the next day.

On delivery day each Thursday morning, the team follows a Route Summary Sheet to place orders in the truck in the most logical order—so that the first order to be delivered is the last one placed in the truck.

The small amount of time planning and arranging the correct order to load up the van can save delivery drivers hours of time a week when delivery product.

9. Double Check Products as You Load the Van

The last thing you want is to leave an order behind! Even if you team has packed every order perfectly, you should still double check to avoid mistakes.

When loading the van, the driver at Delivered Fresh uses a Route Summary Sheet from LFM to confirm that every order makes it to the truck.

We all make mistakes – but a strong inventory management system makes it easier to correct them. If the Delivered Fresh team finds some leftover products after the van has been loaded, they can sort orders by product within LFM to check which customers were meant to have that product.

The Results:

Prior to streamlining their process, Delivered Fresh needed three dedicated delivery days to get all their orders out the door. After analyzing bottlenecks, the hub delivers the same number of orders in just two delivery days. Getting their fresh food sooner has made a world of difference to Delivered Fresh’s customers.

Ready to find time savings that even your customers will notice? Reach out to LFM today to learn more about how our software can help you streamline your process.

How LFM Can Help.

Looking to cut down your time on the pack line? Here are just some of the features that are helping hubs like Delivered Fresh cut their packing time by over one third this summer:

• Automated Pick and Pack Lists
• Efficient Route Planning
• Automated producer and customer communication

Join us for a free demo to learn more.

Check out the resources below to learn more about how LFM is helping local food grow:

• Learn how farmers are using data to grow profit.
• Looking to save time? Here’s how to gain 20 hours a week.
• Check out our free Guide to Increasing Average Order Value
• Read about how LFM helps one food hub work with over 50 producers:
  • “What helps is that LFM is organized in a way that as producers, we list inventory ourselves, set prices, and describe our own products. We maintain the transparency of sourcing—you can see where every product comes from and customers value that.” –Kate Donald, Stout Oak Farm
• Want to keep up with all things Local Food Marketplace? Join our email list!

The post How Delivered Fresh Cut Produce Pack Line Times by 40% with Local Food Marketplace first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

New LFM Feature: automatically generate a “What’s in the Box” Email.

Effective communication with your farm share customers is key to keeping them coming back season after season. Do you keep your customers in the loop after they sign up for your shares?

If you aren’t already sending a “What’s in the Box” email—start now. Not only does this email let your customers know what to expect in their upcoming share, it’s also an opportunity for you to build engagement and grow revenue.

To help our customers save time in their busiest seasons, Local Food Marketplace has recently added a feature that automates this process. Customers licensing the subscription module can schedule an email that will generate and send this email for all customers and share types. Interested in licensing the subscriptions module? Contact us today!

What’s a “What’s in the Box” Email?

A few days before farm shares are ready for pickup or delivery, send out an email that lets them know what local products you’ll include in their “box” this week.

Excerpt of a “What’s in the Box” Email generated by LFM.

Sending a “What’s in the Box” message before each share reminds customers to confirm their orders and to pickup their shares. Consistent emails also help further establish your organization as an exciting part of their weekly or monthly routine. Many shoppers look out for this email before planning meals for the week! The more that customers engage with your products in this way, the more likely they’ll be to sign up next season.

Combine this email with other materials that set CSA customers up for success. For example, post recipes on your website so that shoppers can get ideas for what to do with the food they order from you!

Customizable Farm Shares

If you offer customizable farm shares, use this email to remind members to make their final product selections. The “What’s in the Box” email should include a list of substitution options, and a link back to your storefront to customize their farm share.

By bringing customers back to your online storefront to customize their shares, not only will they be happier with the final contents of their box, they’ll also be more likely to add more items to their order.

Customers appreciate flexibility to accommodate their preferences, as well as transparency and communication through this consistent email.

Local Food Marketplace believes that transparency with your customer is key. That’s why we’re helping to streamline your process with automated emails. To learn more about how LFM’s software can grow your business, schedule a demo today.

Increasing CSA Engagement

To recap, here’s how sending a “What’s in the Box” email can help keep your CSA members engaged:

• • Drum up excitement for their upcoming farm share
  • Encourage members to visit you site – and add more products to their order
  • Establish communication from your farm as a consistent (and exciting!) part of their weekly routine

Looking for more ways to grow your business and save time? Check out some free resources for farmers and food hubs:

• • • Read about how LFM helps one food hub work with over 50 producers:
      • “What helps is that LFM is organized in a way that as producers, we list inventory ourselves, set prices, and describe our own products. We maintain the transparency of sourcing—you can see where every product comes from and customers value that.” –Kate Donald, Stout Oak Farm
    • Looking to save time? Here’s how to gain 20 hours a week.
    • Check out our free Guide to CSA Retention
    • Want to keep up with all things Local Food Marketplace? Join our email list!

The post How To Boost CSA Engagement & Grow Revenue with One Recurring Email first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

In 2015, Small Farm Central coined “CSA Day” to recognize that February is the most popular time of the year to join a CSA (aka Community Supported Agriculture). Since then, the CSA Innovation Network has expanded this day into a full week in February dedicated to supporting and promoting Community Supported Agriculture. Please check our the CSA Innovation Network’s CSA Week page to learn more! There, you can sing up for the The CSA Innovation Network’s free toolkit, and add your farm/organization to the CSA Week Participants Map.

CSA Innovation Network CSA Week Page: https://www.csainnovationnetwork.org/csa-week 

When is CSA Week this year?

The CSA Innovation Network will be celebrating CSA Week from February 19 to February 25, 2024. If you’re running a CSA, this will be the week to focus on engaging with your customers. If you’re a local food advocate, this is the time to support local food producers by signing up for farm shares, and spreading the word both in person and online! Here at Local Food Marketplace, we’re proud to support local food producers.

We’ve put together some stories and resources to help you prepare for CSA week–see below! In the meantime, is your business ready for growing season? Local Food Marketplace provides software to manage both traditional and customizable CSAs. Learn more by scheduling a free demo today!

Start Here: Free Guides to Help You Retain Customers and Sell More

One of the benefits of local food for the consumer is forming a relationship with their food producers. By focusing on these customer relationships, you can create lifelong farm share subscribers. Check out the guides below for expert advice and proven strategies to retain your CSA customers, and to increase the value of these relationships.

1. Cultivate Customers & Grow Value: A Guide to CSA Retention

2. Increasing Average Order Size: A Farmer & Food Hub’s Guide

Resources from CSA Innovation Network

“CSA Day” was first started by Small Farm Central. The CSA Innovation Network has gone one step further to promote a full CSA Week from Feb 20-26. Check out their site for a free digital toolkit to help you promote your CSA: https://www.csainnovationnetwork.org/csa-week

Farm Share Success Stories

Learn how Farmers & Food Hubs are Running their CSAs.

Creating Customizable CSAs with Fiddlehead Farm

Check out Heather Coffey’s step-by-step guide to using technology to sell fully customizable CSAs.

“Customizable subscriptions are a no-brainer for me,” says Heather. “[Fiddlehead Farm’s CSA members] are making the commitment to local and the commitment to eating what’s in season, so I can at least give them the choice of everything that’s in the garden.”

 

Flexible CSA Payment Options with Upswing Farm

“We use our LFM-powered site to offer our CSA on a sliding scale at three price points. I think this brings awareness to the fact that everyone deserves access to fresh food. And if the total isn’t in balance at the end of the year, we use funds from the community support tier to donate extra CSAs to food pantries. This way we are deliberately donating high-quality, varied produce that we could have sold for a profit—not just the stuff we grew too much of.”

Expanding Sales Channels with Blue Sky Organic Farms

Today, Blue Sky Organic Farms operates a large CSA farm share program, participates in four weekly farmers markets, sells to a large wholesale client base, and runs an on-site farm store full of local food and products from other Arizona-based producers.

“Before we implemented LFM, only CSA customers could buy online. Now, anyone can pick up an order. And since LFM accommodates our whole inventory, we could expand our other product offerings to CSA customers.”

How Do I Market My Farm Share?

If you’re getting ready to sign up CSA customers this February, you’ll want to harness your website & social media to tell your store. Check out these blog posts for some marketing tips to help you promote your CSA effectively.

1. Social Media Strategies to Maximize your Online Store

2. How to Use Press Releases to Promote Your Online Store

3. Farms & Facebook Pixels

4. MailChimp Integration for Powerful Marketing

5. How Quality Photos Drive Sales

How do I Chose a Software to Manage My CSA?

Running a CSA requires incredible attention to detail and organization. If you’re like many farmers, you’ve managed to do everything with Excel, QuickBooks, and email so far — but sometimes managing everything this way can feel like more trouble than it’s worth. Technology can help lighten that load.

Winter is the perfect time to onboard a new system that can help you stay organized, increase sales, manage data, and grow your business. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to LFM to schedule a demo to see our software in action and learn how we can help your business. In the meantime, read on to learn about how software can help you manage your CSA.

1. New Feature – “Subscription Builder” for Farm Shares

2. Evaluating Online Sales Platforms

What tools do I need to run a successful farm share?

A user-friendly website

 A way to manage deliveries or pickups

 Flexibility and customization options for customers

Easy inventory management

 Email communication with customers

Local Food Marketplace offers all of these tools in one single platform. And we’ve even added new features especially for those farms and food hubs that offer CSA shares & subscriptions.

If you have any questions about how LFM can help you to set up your farm shares for success, just click here to set up a free demo call.

More Resources to Help Upgrade Your Farm Share Subscriptions:

• • • • Here’s How Local Food Can Join the Subscription Economy
      • Cultivate Customers & Grow Value: A Guide to CSA Retention
      • How Farmers are using Data to Increase Profit
      • Growing Sales and Sliding Scales: An Interview with Upswing Farm
      • A Farmer’s Guide to Online Orders

Still searching for a CSA software solution? Meet with us for a free demo!

The post CSA Week Resources first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

For CSA farmers, finding technology to support their unique needs can be a challenge. We recently sat down with Heather Coffey of Fiddlehead Farm to talk about how LFM helps her offer CSA (community supported agriculture) shares all year long to families in Ontario.

Heather Coffey of Fiddlehead Farm

LFM Customer Profile: Fiddlehead Farm

• • • An organic vegetable farm in Prince Edward County, Ontario
    • Founded by Stephanie Laing & Heather Coffey in 2012
    • Grows over 50 varieties of vegetables on 11 acres, with a small team of staff
    • Provides farm shares to 300 CSA members

Fiddlehead Farm is committed to promoting a sustainable food system by following organic practices, as well as committing to offering seasonal vegetables to its CSA members all year long. As Heather puts it “We feed people year-round because people eat year-round.”

Read on how Local Food Marketplace (LFM) makes it easy for Fiddlehead Farm to sell customized farm shares online.

Creating Customizable Farm Shares with LFM’s Subscription Builder

Why Customize?

One of Heather’s priorities for selling local food online is a platform that can accommodate Fiddlehead Farm’s unique CSA format. With the help of LFM’s newest Subscription Builder software features, the farm is able to give CSA members the power to fully customize the items in their farm share.

“Customizable subscriptions are a no-brainer for me,” says Heather. “[Fiddlehead Farm’s CSA members] are making the commitment to local and the commitment to eating what’s in season, so I can at least give them the choice of everything that’s in the garden.”

Subscription Builder: How it Works

Heather walked us through the step-by-step process of using Subscription Builder, how it helps her to sell shares and to support her farm’s mission of a more accessible model for local food.

Each week, Heather puts together a box of produce worth around $25 or $35. A few days before members pick up their shares, they have the option to add, remove, or replace certain items in the share. LFM’s software will then adjust their price accordingly. This is important to Heather.

“I want them to pay for what they’re getting. And I don’t want them to pay for anything they’re not getting. Subscription Builder allows us to ensure that we are only charging members for the vegetables they’re getting, and not penalizing them for wanting something different or for not wanting as many vegetables this week. We grow food and I want it to be eaten.”

The Process: How to List Subscriptions For Sale

Each week, Heather goes out into the field to list what’s for sale this week, “I list things on my clipboard—sometimes I take my phone to update it live but usually I just write it on my clipboard first. LFM automatically fills all the leftover inventory from the prior week, and then I scroll through the list to see what inventory I need to adjust for the current week.”

Customers are able to edit the items in their weekly subscription from Fiddlehead Farm.

LFM makes it easy to keep inventory up-to date: “All the products I have listed are already there. The products are already listed from last week if I didn’t sell them all. So it’s really easy to update on a weekly basis what is actually available for my customers.”

Next, Heather sets up her weekly farm share in Subscription Builder. “The software shows me the total value of the items going into the shares.  Sometimes I edit the value because I want to keep my shares at $25 or $35 a box. Then I just say ‘create orders’ and the system just puts all the vegetables into people’s carts for them.”

“Every week I fill the basket with what I think is the best of the garden. I love the control I have for filling those baskets. It means that I can rotate different crops through to make sure members get a good taste of the fields throughout the season.”

The Process: What the Customer Sees

Once Heather choses what’s in the box each week, she uses Subscription Builder to provide full flexibility for her 300 CSA members.

“And then customers have whatever time I’ve specified to edit what’s in their box. They can use the pencil to change the number of products, they can use the trash can to take something out, and then they can click on continue shopping to add other items into their cart.”

Specific LFM Features that Fiddlehead Farm Loves

Heather shared with us a few reasons that LFM stood above the competition when it comes to selling local food online.

1. A Price Point That Doesn’t Punish Growth

Heather appreciates LFM’s straightforward pricing system, where we never charge a percentage of sales fee.

LFM’s business model makes sense from my perspective. You build the platform, I pay for it on an annual basis. I get the software and the volume of my members or sales doesn’t change what you’re providing me. And I really appreciate that LFM is not charging me a percentage cut of my sales, which is brutal and so true of most other platforms. That’s very important to me.

Heather also finds LFM’s help documentation for customers quite useful. “I’ll have a question, and in a couple of clicks I’ll be like ‘yes! This is it!’. And that’s really good.”

“You’ve got a really amazing online support manual, which makes it much easier to go in and answer my own questions and figure out how things work. There are lots of screenshots, which helps.”

A veggie box from Fiddlehead Farm!

2. A Supportive Team

“One of the things I really like about LFM is that it’s a small tech support team—It’s not like I’m talking to ten different people all the time. It’s an established platform, there’s not crazy bugs to deal with. You guys know what you’re doing, you know how to do it.”

3. Common Goals

Heather sees shared goals between Local Food Marketplace and her own farm.

“So much of our farm is based on efficiency, what makes sense, and what’s simple to do. It feels like LFM’s approach to running an online system is very similar to my approach to running a small farm. It just makes sense.”

4. Control Your Own Data

Heather appreciates using a flexible, customizable platform that truly feels like her own. “I have control. I can do pretty much everything.”

Having access to sales data and reporting is also hugely helpful in making decisions from season to season. “The platform provides the sales data and information we need to modify our production based on what people are actually eating.”

Because at the end of the day, “we don’t want to produce more, we want to produce better.”

Expanding to Other Markets

Planting at Fiddlehead Farm.

LFM’s unique inventory management capabilities have also allowed Fiddlehead Farm to expand its sales to wholesale markets.

“LFM has really provided me with a more professional way to go about selling wholesale.

The same inventory I’m listing for CSA is available for wholesale orders. This was a really big win for us—We have not had a solid wholesale system yet, and there are a number of local restaurants who want local food. I’m happy to help them get it, provided we have a system in place.

I’m happy with the system and the way it’s working, so I feel confident to take on those extra restaurants, which I didn’t feel capable of until joining LFM. So it really boosted our ability and confidence in pursuing other sales opportunities as well.”

Heather’s Advice for Transitioning to a New Software Platform

For Heather, “the transition to LFM was a no brainer.” If you’re considering changing your software platform, feel free to contact us for a free consultation. And read on for Heather’s advice.

Firstly, try to plan ahead so that you’re onboarding before your busy season, not in the heart of summer.

Secondly, set up a FAQ page for your customers.  Local food shoppers will have a range of tech knowledge or experience with shopping online. To help her customers shop more smoothly, Heather set up an online FAQ. “I’m in the field, so I’d like to give my customers all the tools to answer any questions they have on their own.”

Finally, plan some office time for your first few months “live.” There will always be a learning curve for both you and your customers when settling into a new online system. Setting aside some time early on to really set things up the right way can make all the difference. 

Heather advises, “The more your can get to your customers answers before they ask the question the better!” This is where communication via emails and an online FAQ come in. Now that Fiddlehead Farm is fully setup in LFM, Heather is impressed by how few emails she gets from customers. And she doesn’t have to spend too much time online either “The actual time I spend using the LFM portal is maybe three hours a week. It’s mostly working out the details of what I want to include in my veggie box that ties up my time. Once I get to the input stage, it’s nice and quick!”

Looking for more ways to grow your business and save time? Check out some free resources for farmers and food hubs:

• • • Read about how LFM helps one food hub work with over 50 producers:
      • “What helps is that LFM is organized in a way that as producers, we list inventory ourselves, set prices, and describe our own products. We maintain the transparency of sourcing—you can see where every product comes from and customers value that.” –Kate Donald, Stout Oak Farm
    • Looking to save time? Here’s how to gain 20 hours a week.
    • Check out our free Guide to CSA Retention
    • Want to keep up with all things Local Food Marketplace? Join our email list!

The post Creating Customizable CSAs with Fiddlehead Farms first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

If your CSA is like most, customer retention is your biggest challenge. Are you keeping and growing customers from season to season? It takes an investment of time, effort, and money to get customers to sign up, and every year they stay with you, the returns on that investment grow. Read on for advice on how to do just that.

Retaining CSA Customers Year After Year:

The following tips are excerpted from our free e-book “How to Cultivate Customers and Grow Value.”

1. Start Early.

It’s never too soon to start selling next year’s shares to your current subscribers. Consider offering them an early bird discount on next season’s share. Keep in mind that you don’t have to cut into your margins in order to offer a discount. By making the cost of later sign-ups slightly more expensive, you can create a perceived discount for early sign-ups.

2. Build Healthy Connections Through Marketing.

Marketing to your existing customers can seem crazy, but it’s essential to cultivating the lifetime value of your relationships with them. Every additional season your customer stays with you cuts down the cost of acquisition.

Read More: Social Media Strategies to Maximize Your Online Store.

3. Be Responsive to your Customers.

Late fall is the perfect time to ask your customers what did or didn’t work for them this season. Ask in person, or share a short and simple survey via email. Be sure you ask your customers how likely they are to sign up next year—and why. Their feedback can be the key to helping you understand any changes you may need to make before next season.

You can find these tips and so much more in our resource: “How to Cultivate Customers & Grow Value: A Guide to CSA Retention.”

What tools do I need to run a successful farm share?

A user-friendly website

 A way to manage deliveries or pickups

 Flexibility and customization options for customers

Easy inventory management

 Email communication with customers

Local Food Marketplace offers all of these tools in one single platform. And we’ve even added new features especially for those farms and food hubs that offer CSA shares & subscriptions.

If you have any questions about how LFM can help you to set up your farm shares for success, just click here to set up a free demo call.

More Resources to Help Upgrade Your Farm Share Subscriptions:

• • • • Here’s How Local Food Can Join the Subscription Economy
      • Cultivate Customers & Grow Value: A Guide to CSA Retention
      • An Interview with Blue Sky Organic Farms
      • Growing Sales and Sliding Scales: An Interview with Upswing Farm
      • A Farmer’s Guide to Online Orders

Still searching for a CSA software solution? Meet with us for a free demo!

The post Solving Your CSA’s Biggest Challenge first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

We’re so excited to let you know about new software features to help you manage your customized CSAs, farm shares, and subscriptions!

There are many ways to sell online, but typical e-commerce platforms can’t accommodate the flexibility and variation of local food. Here are just some of the ways that LFM’s subscription software can help you:

Scenario: You’re a looking to offer your customers more selection options in your weekly farm share.

Community supported agriculture is a tried-and-true way for shoppers to support local farms. But someone who’s new to local food might be intimidated by a mystery box full of unfamiliar veggies. When it comes to their grocery list—not every shopper wants a surprise! But with LFM’s “Subscription Builder,” customers can see exactly what’s in this week’s share, and even customize it!

Our software makes it easy for farmers to designate substitution products for shoppers to trade with other items in their farm share. Allergies and preferences are no problem! Plus, shoppers can even tack on “extras” to their weekly share—like that fresh strawberry jam or local honey. Get your customers shopping your whole catalog, and keep growing your sales!

Products sold in subscriptions are tracked in the same way as everything else you sell—that means real-time product availability, pick lists, packing lists, sales reports, and more!

Communicating with farm share members is a snap: send out a weekly “what’s in the box” email straight through LFM! Members can receive their box as is—or customize week-to-week!

Scenario: You’re a food hub manager using farm shares to promote many different producers at once.

Farm shares can be a great way to bundle food from many farmers into one easy-to-order product. But managing these shares can be time consuming. That’s why LFM’s new Subscription Builder features were designed with food hubs in mind.

With Subscription Builder, food hubs can create farm shares directly from items already listed by your farms. Pair products from many different producers to create an exciting and varied farm share! And shoppers can always check the LFM storefront to learn the source of each product.

These products will also auto-populate on pick tickets for producers. Take the guess work out of ordering from producers, and let them know exactly how much to harvest!

Plus, see your average order size grow as your loyal share members check out the site each week to see what veggies to expect—and to tack on some extra treats and value-added items while they’re there!

Is Subscription Builder right for me?

These subscription features are just another way that LFM brings all of your sales channels to one place. From flexibility for customers, to increased sales for you, Local Food Marketplace is truly an all-in-one solution.

Are you a current customer looking to license the Subscriptions module and start using these new features? Please contact us today!

Still searching for a CSA software solution? Meet with us for a free demo!

More Resources to Help Upgrade Your Farm Share Subscriptions:

• • • • Here’s How Local Food Can Join the Subscription Economy
      • Cultivate Customers & Grow Value: A Guide to CSA Retention
      • An Interview with Blue Sky Organic Farms
      • Growing Sales and Sliding Scales: An Interview with Upswing Farm
      • A Farmer’s Guide to Online Orders

The post New Feature – “Subscription Builder” for Farm Shares! first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

Plus, some new subscription features on the LFM platform

In 2019, businesses offering subscriptions grew five times faster than other companies (source: the Subscription Economy Index). This trend has only grown during the pandemic. Customers are seeking out convenient ways to get their favorite items (without spending more time in the store).

Where does local food fit in?

For local food, subscriptions are nothing new. Community supported agriculture (CSA) farm shares date back to the 1960’s and 70’s. Early CSAs were an effort to support small farms in the face of growing industrialization. In the pandemic, demand for CSA shares exploded when consumers faced food shortages, health worries, and a desire to support local businesses.

What’s new for local food? With all the subscription offers out there (from food to cleaning products to entertainment), customers have come to expect more options than ever.

As a local business, it can feel daunting to compete with big box stores or global corporations. But that doesn’t mean you can’t offer the customization, flexibility, and personal touch that your customers are looking for. That’s why Local Food Marketplace has been listening. We asked food hubs, farmers, and market managers what they’re looking for to better manage their farm shares, and we’re so excited to tell you about some new features coming soon.

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CSA Management Software Features:

To help your customers:

Subscriptions are now customizable! Customers now have the flexibility to decide what their farm shares look like. Maybe they don’t love carrots, and would rather trade out for some radishes. Or you can have shoppers add on an extra bag of spinach, or throw in a jar of locally made jam. You can give shoppers the option!

To help you!

A single point of inventory: The kale in your weekly veggie box, and the kale sold by the bunch on you online store? It’s all pulled from the same inventory. So LFM’s software will generate simple pick lists that tell you and your producers exactly how much to harvest.

Keep an eye on your inbox to learn more about these features. Not getting our email updates? Drop your email here.

Are you a current customer ready to start using subscription features? Contact us today!

More Resources to Help Upgrade Your Farm Share Subscriptions:

• • • • Cultivate Customers & Grow Value: A Guide to CSA Retention
      • An Interview with Blue Sky Organic Farms
      • Growing Sales and Sliding Scales: An Interview with Upswing Farm
      • A Farmer’s Guide to Online Orders

The post Here’s how local food can join the subscription economy first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

Accounting is complex. It’s even more tricky when your business distributes fresh food—something impossible to perfectly predict. And for a food hub purchasing from five, ten, fifteen or more different farmers? That’s a lot to account for.

To help you keep up with these purchases, Local Food Marketplace offers an integration with QuickBooks Online (QBO). This feature has already helped our customers manage accounts receivable in QBO. And we are excited to let you know that we just added a helpful new feature to this integration.

Last week we told you about how a food hub can easily pay their producers through LFM’s software. From this same place, you can also create QBO bills. That’s right, quickly manage accounts payable without any messy data exports or manual data entry—saving your team hours of time every week.

How does this help food hubs & online markets?

• • • Everything in one place: The marketplace software creates these bills based on the pick lists and purchase orders generated in LFM. So there’s no need to export files manually in order to reupload to your accounting platform.

• • • Save time: It really is just the click of a button. Save staff hours and spend more time growing your business.
    • Save money: When your system is integrated, there’s less room for error. Let us help you avoid costly accounting mistakes.

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How does it work?

LFM is more than just an online store. We help our customers streamline their business from start to finish. Manage your orders & inventory, sell online, pay producers, track payments, and more! The producer payments accounting is based on purchase orders and pick lists. It’s also easy to make adjustments, or group payments by multiple pay periods. Would you like to learn more?

Looking for more ways to grow your business and save time? Check out some free resources for farmers and food hubs:

• • • Read about how LFM helps one food hub work with over 50 producers:
      • “What helps is that LFM is organized in a way that as producers, we list inventory ourselves, set prices, and describe our own products. We maintain the transparency of sourcing—you can see where every product comes from and customers value that.” –Kate Donald, Stout Oak Farm
    • Looking to save time? Here’s how to gain 20 hours a week.
    • Want to keep up with all things Local Food Marketplace? Join our email list!

Are you a current LFM customer? This new payment feature is available to customers licensing the QBO module—check out the latest Release Notes to learn more. Or reach out to our team to learn more.

The post LFM Feature: Create Bills in QuickBooks Online first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

New: Save time on producer payments

You love helping connect shoppers to local food. But keeping track of payments owed to each of the farmers and vendors you work with can get tricky. If you manage a food hub, you know time consuming. it can be to track what you owe, create bills, and issue a payment. You also know how costly an accounting error can be when all of those clunky spreadsheets you use don’t add up.

All Local Food Marketplace, our mission is to help our customers save time, so you can focus on what you do best: growing your business. That’s why LFM’s latest new feature will allow food hubs and farmers markets to directly pay producers for what they owe on pick lists and purchase orders.

Schedule your free Demo!

How do producer payments work?

LFM is ONE system for all things local food sales. Producers list what they’d like to sell on an LFM-powered market. Customers order the food, and LFM uses these orders to generate pick lists/order forms for the vendors. For many e-commerce sites, this is as far as the process goes. But LFM is more than just an online storefront. LFM keeps track of the cost owed by a market for these pick lists to vendors. Then, LFM provides a user-friendly page where markets can see, at a glance, everything they owe to producers. With just a few clicks, you can make adjustments to payments, mark orders as paid, and send an electronic payment directly to producers’ accounts. And you can even create bills in QBO! Pay for one week at a time, or bulk pay across multiple order periods.

Producer payments accounting page on LFM.

What does that mean for you?

Saved time for you AND your producers.

• • One food hub customer reported spending more than 40 hours a year calculating and issuing payments to just ten producers! Cut this time down to a few clicks of a button!
  • No more switching between various spreadsheets or systems. LFM offers ONE place where you can see what you owe or have paid at a glance.
  • No more costly accounting errors from entering data by hand.
  • Producers can receive electronic payments faster than ever.
  Order, pay, and track, all with one system. Ready to learn more? Schedule a demo. 

• Check out part 2 of our payments feature updates: QBO Integration.

• Looking for more ways to grow your business and save time? Check out some free resources for farmers and food hubs:

  • Time is Money: How to Gain 20 Hours a Week
  • Quadrupling Customers & Saving Time: An Interview with Profound Foods
  • Check Out our Free Guide to Online Orders

The post New: Save time on producer payments first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

Read on to see how Local Food Marketplace (LFM) helps Upswing Farm offer more flexible CSA payment options, as well as keep a personal connection with a growing customer base.

LFM Customer Profile: Upswing Farm

Brittany and Kevin Overshiner of Upswing Farm. Source: https://upswingfarm.com/innovative-partnership/

Upswing Farm, Pepperell, MA
Farming Since: 2016
LFM Customer Since: 2020

Farm Facts:

• Certified Organic, Locally Grown
• Owned by Brittany and Kevin Overshiner
• Four seasons of farm shares
• Sliding scale CSAs with monthly payment options
• Over 400 Summer CSA members
• Moved locations twice in the past two years, yet still increased sales

How does LFM help you grow?

• Saving hours on admin time
• Modern, professional website
• Easy and flexible monthly payments from CSA members
• Customers feel connected through personal accounts—and keep coming back to order

Want to learn if LFM is right for your business? Schedule a free consultation with us!

Interview with Brittany Overshiner

LFM: Thank you so much for speaking with us. Would you be able to give me a little background about your farm?

Brittany: Of course. We’ve been in business since 2016. Right after leaving a job as a farm manager with a nonprofit, I was offered the opportunity to lease land in Ashland, Massachusetts. That’s where we got our start in a year long partnership with White Barn Farm. We started small, with a 50 member CSA. Now, we have 4 seasons of vegetable shares, with 220 members in the winter, and we’re expecting 450 members for this season’s summer share.

In that time, we’ve had some land access challenges. We lost that first lease at the end of 2019, and during the start of the pandemic we were farming at three different sites, until we finally in January of 2021 secured farmland about an hour from our original site. So we’ve moved twice in the past two years, yet still managed to increase sales.

We’ve moved twice in the past two years, yet still managed to increase sales.

LFM: I’d like to hear more about your farm shares. Could you talk about your subscriptions and tiered pricing system?

Brittany: We offer our CSA on a sliding scale at three price points: standard, reduced, and “community supporter.” This way, if price point is a barrier, someone can opt for the lower tier and that’s supported by others who opt in for the higher level. I think this brings awareness to the fact that everyone deserves access to fresh food. And if the total isn’t in balance at the end of the year, we use funds from the community support tier to donate extra CSAs to food pantries. This way we are deliberately donating high-quality, varied produce that we could have sold for a profit—not just the stuff we grew too much of.

LFM: How does LFM help support your mission?

Brittany: It’s a really great feature to have a payment plan that I don’t have to manage. My goal is to make participating in a CSA more accessible. There are so many barriers to that, not everyone has the cash access to pay a seven hundred dollars in January for all their fresh food in the spring and summer. So to be able to offer customers the option of paying $80-100 a month, that’s way more manageable. I really enjoyed last year just logging in to LFM once a month and processing all the cash. It makes cash flow steadier for me, and payments more accessible to the customer. Being able to stagger the payment plans for each share is great—and I spend so much less time invoicing.

I really enjoyed last year just logging in to LFM once a month and processing all the cash—and I spend so much less time invoicing.

LFM: What was this process like before LFM?

Brittany: When I first started selling CSA shares, it was just a Google Form, and then I would enter that info into QuickBooks and send out invoices. The only way people could pay was with check. But I live in a modern world, and lots of people want to be able to point and click and be done. Being able to have people shop online is key, but part of why I chose LFM was because customers also have personal accounts. This makes it easy for customers who’ve ordered from us before to also pop into their account and preorder for our seedling sale or other popup sales. They already have that personal account [on LFM], so there’s more of a feeling of membership.

LFM: How have your customers reacted to purchasing your shares through LFM?

Brittany: Having an online site [through LFM] feels so much more professional than a Google Form. It’s a more modern way to interact. And containing that online ordering in a personal membership feels good to consumers.

Want to learn more about using LFM’s subscription module to sell your CSA shares more effectively? Schedule a free consultation with us!

Screenshot of Upswing Farm’s website, powered by Local Food Marketplace. Source: https://upswingfarm.localfoodmarketplace.com/Subscriptions

The post Growing Sales and Sliding Scales: An Interview with Upswing Farm first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.