We spoke with Becca Perrin, the Food Hub Account Manager at Green Mountain Farm to School, to learn more about how to start when selling to schools, how new federal and state funding is changing the landscape, and why food hubs play an important role in farm-to-school work. Fill out the form below to read the case study right away!

The post NEW Farm to School Case Study – Green Mountain Direct first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

Local Food Marketplace offers an unmatched reporting database to help food hubs, farmers, and markets easily analyze their data—with no additional fees. Here are just some of the 30+ reports that LFM customers are using to grow their profit:

Sales by Product

Which of your fruits and veggies sell best? Generate reports to see exactly which products you are selling the most (or least). So, you can focus on producing what your customers want the most.

“The platform provides the sales data and information we need to modify our production based on what people are actually eating.”

-Heather Coffey, Fiddlehead Farm.

Read More: Creating Customizable CSAs with Fiddlehead Farm

Sales by Location

You’re putting the work to get local food out to the community. But are you visiting the most in-demand locations? Use this report to determine your most profitable distribution locations, so you can create a delivery schedule that’s worth your time.

Take your data one step further by using reports to find out which products sell best at each location. If strawberry jam sells better than blueberry at one of your mobile markets, you can know which flavor to stock for that location!

Sales by Customer

Understanding your customer is key to your success. Quickly export customer reports to learn which of your customers are buying the most, and when. This data can help you decide when to time your next marketing push to restaurants. Or even whether to dedicate your resources to a different type of customer entirely.

 “We almost doubled our sales, because we were buying and selling retail instead of just moving it through wholesale. LFM made this big shift possible!”

-Katie Nixon, Kansas City Food Hub

Read More: Food Hub Success with Kansas City Food Hub

Pounds of Food Distributed

For organizations that rely on grant funding, end-of-year reporting or RFP data collection can be quite tedious. LFM’s sales reports can be generated in an instant. Quickly export data on how many pounds of food you were able to distribute over the last year. You can even run comparative reports to show how much you’ve grown from one period to another.

“The built-in reporting functions have made it so easy to keep track of year-to-year data. I highly recommend LFM to anyone operating a flexible subscription-based program!”

-Operations Manager, Corbin Hill Food Project

Wrapping Up

Good data is important—that’s why LFM makes it easy to export and analyze your own sales data. And LFM’s customizable dashboards give you a quick glance what’s coming this week, how much you’ve sold, year-over-year data comparisons, and more. Are you ready to make better business decisions in 2023? Reach out for a free consultation today.

Looking to learn more about increasing profit? Check out our free Farmers Guide to Increasing Average Order Size for expert advice on increasing the value of every online order.

The post How Farmers Are Using Data to Increase Profit 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.

What is Average Order Value and Why Does it Matter?

Average order value (AOV) measures the average amount your customers are spending each order. In other words, a higher AOV means that more customers are spending more money at your store per visit. It’s a key part of your revenue equation:

(Number of Orders) X (Average Order Size) = Revenue

By focusing on increasing AOV, your business can grow even when the total number of customers and orders remains the same. In fact, a business can even lose customers, and still grow its revenue.

By reading this guide, we hope you’ll find both small and big ways to encourage your current customers to order more, each time they visit your online store. You’ll grow your revenue, and you’ll also nurture your relationship with your customer base. At the end of the day, it’s good customer service.

Where can I get the guide?

LFM’s latest whitepaper is now available for free instant download! Just share your email below, and you’ll be able to download the guide and start reading right away!

The post Increasing Average Order Value: A Food Hub & Farmer’s Guide first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

With all the different ways you sell your products, you need an online sales system that is as flexible as your business. LFM makes it easy to customize dynamic price lists for each of your different customer types. Best of all? We offer unlimited price lists across all packages—no extra fees for more price lists!

Unlimited price lists are one way to customize your shoppers’ experience. For example, maybe your retail prices are slightly higher than wholesale due to the work required to box smaller quantities of product. With LFM, you can list each product one time, and use different price lists to automatically display different prices for each customer type.

To learn more about using LFM’s software, request a free demo! 

Custom Price Lists for Unique Customers

In addition to setting a price list for each of your customer types you can even set unique price lists for specific shoppers. Here are some examples:

1. 1. One of your customers is a local high school that can only purchase GAAP-certified produce. No problem! Create a custom price list that limited their shopping experience to only relevant products. And the rest of your customers can still shop everything else!
   2. You’re working with a local restaurant that is only interested in Certified Organic products. Customize their viewing experience to only see what’s organic.
   3. You’re happy to grow certain products for a long-time loyal customer, but don’t offer them for sale to everyone else. Create a custom price list with those items–for that shopper only!
   4. Create a custom list that only displays fresh fruits and veggies to your grocery store producer buyer customers!

Here are a few reasons to use multiple price lists for online sales:

1. There’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach to local food.

So why use a platform that forces all your online customers to shop in the same way? With LFM, it’s up to you what products and prices each type of customer can view and purchase on your online store. And there’s no limit to the number of different price lists you can create.

2. Grow your sales opportunities. 

LFM makes it easy to sell online to more customers than ever. We recently spoke to a customer who did just that—growing from one online sales channel to four.

3. Let the software make it simple.

Let LFM do the work for you – list an item for your sale ONCE, and the platform will automatically calculate and update the different prices for all your customer types. Multichannel sales doesn’t need to mean multiple software platforms. With custom lists, LFM can help you sell to many different customers all in one place!

4. Get Creative! 

We’ve created a flexible system that local food providers across the country are using in unique and innovative ways. One example is Upswing Farm’s sliding scale farm share. Read on to learn how Upswing Farm uses LFM to let shoppers chose between three different price levels based on what they can afford to contribute for local food. 

The post How Multiple Price Lists Can Help You Sell More 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.

Get My Free Demo!

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.

Join our mailing list!

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.

Are you making in-person sales at farmers markets, your farm store, or pickup locations? Managing these orders can get overwhelming quickly, leading to extra work manually recording payments, not to mention balancing your inventory records with your order management system. Wish it was simpler?

Local Food Marketplace offers integration with Square. In addition to our robust order management and online payment processing, you can also easily manage in-person sales with your Square app! By using a Square reader to take payments, your LFM store can also serve as a point-of-sale system for in-person sales.

Learn more about how LFM can help you make in-person sales!

Why does LFM offer integration with Square?

With up to 60% of shoppers preferring cards over cash in the US (according to Travis Credit Union’s 2020 survey), shoppers have come to expect a credit card option for everyday purchases.

With this integration, you can easily manage in-person sales with your Square app. Whether you’re creating orders at your farmers market, your farm store, or letting customers add extra items to their online orders at pickup, you can quickly and conveniently create an order, process payment and maintain accurate product availability—whether you made the sale in person or online.  

How can using Square integration with LFM help your business?

• • • Manage a single inventory from ONE platform. Don’t do your job twice! There’s no need to create a new inventory through a Square store – all of your Square transactions will be tracked in your LFM store automatically.
    • Keep an up-to-date inventory. Once Square and LFM are connected, your LFM inventory will reflect live, accurate product inventory, based on sales in-person through Square and online through your LFM storefront.
    • Increase efficiency. No more hours spent reconciling invoices from your sales at the market; this integration automatically records Square transactions as paid orders in your LFM admin.
    • Increase sales and order size. Shopping doesn’t need to stop with an online order! When customers come to your farm store, pickup site, or market to pick up their online orders, give them the chance to purchase extra items that they browse in person.
    • Track all of your sales info in one place! This integration allows you to gather in-person sales information in LFM. That means all of your info is in one place for more in-depth sales reporting!

Here are Some Ways Customers Use this Feature:

• • An organization with a mobile market can bring their Square-enabled tablet on the go, take orders, and still have the convenience of tracking all those sales through LFM!
  • Maybe your customers have already paid for a weekly farm share. When they come by your farm store to pick up their order, maybe some freshly harvested strawberries catch their eye. Ring up this add-on purchase through your Square reader, and your LFM inventory will also be updated!
  • Searching for a point of sale system for your farm store? LFM has it covered! Use the tips below to configure your LFM store front to serve as a point-of-sale system and take credit card payments with a Square app on a mobile phone or tablet.

More Resources to Help Upgrade Your Sales:

• • Learn more about integrating online & offline sales.
  • Read about another useful LFM integration with email marketing platform Mailchimp.
  • Read about a farmer that uses LFM to create a unique “farm share” where customers can purchase credits in LFM that can later use in person at the farm store.
  • A Farmer’s Guide to Online Orders

The post Getting the most out of Square Integration first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.