Long Lane Farm - Building a New Farm Business (And Selling Out!)
When starting a New Farm, there is a never-ending “to-do list” to get your business up and running day one. Many Farmers put all their energy into cultivating their products and making infrastructure investments to support their on-farm operations. It takes endless hours, lots of labor and a lot of money to make it happen.
Unfortunately, many New Farmers forget to build Buyer demand before their Farm products are ready for harvest. As a result, when their initial Products are ready many New Farmers are left scrambling to find Buyers and capture sales.
In this Farm Spotlight, we’re delighted to capture the wisdom shared by Camille of Long Lane Farm in an episode of the Direct Farm Podcast: Keeping it Simple: Starting a Successful New Farm.
Working for 10 years at another Farm, Camille is an experienced Farmer. However, she recently ventured out to start a New Farm business: Long Lane Farm in Warren, Rhode Island.
Camille chose to get started upfront with Barn2Door - before her first harvest - to help tackle some of the most important items to run a profitable farm business.
Cash Upfront.
Camille operates a Produce Farm with a long growing season in a market with strong Buyer demand for local products. However, waiting for harvest before collecting her first order would cost a lot of money and create uncertainty. Long Lane Farms chose to offer CSA Subscriptions to their Produce Boxes for upfront payment before her season actually started. She sold out (and now has cash in hand to fund her business).
“We had the intention of doing 50 CSAs memberships and we sold those out. People kept asking, so we opened up 10 more. Those sold out, too. So we're at about 60 members now; and, we feel like we definitely could have sold more.”
Easy to Use.
Managing multiple CSA subscriptions, Buyer details, order requests (can I skip a delivery?), and assembling a pick-and-pack list can take a lot of time. Handling orders manually (via phone, email or text), takes on average 7+ touches per customer. If you’re a New Farmer and looking to save time, while growing your business, Barn2Door makes it turnkey to collect orders, payments, and enables Buyers to manage their own details. Long Lane Farm has found that software can make it easier for Farmers and Buyers alike.
I've come to realize that keeping it as simple as you can while also trying to keep it profitable is key to our success (and happiness). So it's a hard line, but to really have a great quality of life and give as much great food as we can to the people.
- Farmer Camille
Direct Delivery.
As 1 in 3 Americans order Groceries online, Buyers have become accustomed to a variety of fulfillment options - namely Pick-up and Delivery. Farmers that choose to offer Direct Delivery have the highest gross revenue (on average) versus Farms that only offer Pick-up. Why? Because Buyers are creatures of convenience and will opt for whatever is easy (and, they’re willing to pay for it). Long Lane Farm chooses to use Barn2Door’s integration with Routific to make door-to-door delivery a snap.
“Selling subscriptions through Barn2Door has just really helped streamline our operations. And, you know, the number of CSAs for each day just comes right up on the pick list. That's really useful! And, because we do deliveries using the automatic sync with Routific has really made doing that much easier. It's just all in one place.”
Branding.
Your Farm is competing with billion-dollar brands that target your customers everyday. Building a strong Farm Brand on all channels - web, mobile, social and email - is critical to your brand awareness and Buyer loyalty. Working with 1000’s of Farms across all 50 states, Barn2Door has become the largest partner in America with Squarespace and Mailchimp, to provide best-in-class Brand assets for Farmers. Barn2Door also offers custom-designed Farm Logos to ensure New Farmers can stand-out from the Big Ag commodity producers. Long Lane Farm chose to have Barn2Door build is website, email templates and create new logo for their Farm business.
The Barn2Door Design process is really great. We worked with their Design team to give them several ideas and different colors we were thinking about. They designed it all and then we had a video call to review everything and to give feedback. It was a really quick process. Now we have our website, email templates and the logo on our New Farm sign and T-shirts. When you do a logo with Barn2Door you get all the different photo formats, too, which are sent over a bunch of different color options. It's definitely a lot more than what I expected. It was really easy to put it on labels and kind of anywhere that we want.
- Farmer Camille
Focus on What You Do Best.
As a New Farmer, there are a million details to manage. If you attempt to do it all, you will eventually burn out. Recognize what you do best and enlist help elsewhere to grow your Farm business. Leverage software to simplify your operations, and utilize an Accountant to manage the books. Focus on Farming and lean into building a loyal base of Buyers in your local community. Long Lane Farm has done a fantastic job in their first year of operations - selling out - by building upon a historic Farm Brand that is recognized and well respected in their local market.
“Our focus is to continue growing our CSA. This winter, we hope to take it closer to 70 people, and keep that going into next year to increase our sales. At Long Lane Farm, we are focused on getting our soil and our farm where it needs to be to grow food, increase sales at our farm stand and then increase our CSA in the coming seasons.”
If you’re a New Farmer seeking like-minded people committed to sustainable agriculture and feeding their local community, then consider Barn2Door. We provide an all-in-one solution for Farmers selling direct – online and in-person.
Watch this 5-minute video, if you’re curious to learn why successful Farms run on Barn2Door.