Farmers Market Closed? How to Sell your Food Today
We know times are tough for Farmers right now. The recent measures to counteract coronavirus will hurt many businesses—but are especially painful for Farmers given food products are perishable, and typical sales channels (farmers markets, restaurants) have gone cold. Produce continues to grow, and animals are still thriving despite market conditions; Farmers need to sell their food.
Expecting Farmers to sit on their hands and food products to sit-on the shelf to “wait out” this pandemic is NOT an option. More importantly, everyone still needs to eat—and local food is the most nutrient dense and healthy option!
While many Farmers have built great relationships and strong businesses face-to-face offline - diversifying your channels now and selling online across all digital channels is more important than ever. The survival of many Farms will depend on the steps you take now to build a healthy and robust online presence—including an easy shopping experience.
The good news is that your investment online will continue to benefit you long term. Whether it is this pandemic, adverse weather or a slow season, by supplementing your ‘offline’ farmer market sales with online purchasing, you are reducing the risk to your business by adding more purchasing channels. Too, adding your brand and store to online channels sets you up to further engage current customers and even reach new customers—many of whom don’t regularly attend farmers markets and / or who prefer ordering online.
As the largest Farm vertical software provider in the US, we have the data to tell you where to invest your time and dollars. The bottom line is if you want to maximize sales, you need to be selling on every channel.
More than 65% of all online food sales are originated and completed on Mobile & Social (combined). The remaining 35% is fairly evenly spread across the Web, Emails and Newsletters. As a result, every one of these 5 online channels represent more than 10% of your Farm’s potential revenue. Most Farms can’t afford to give up any of that revenue potential.
Moving online enables your Farm to communicate with your current and prospective Buyers across every channel. Everyone has different buying habits, and meeting your customers where they shop most frequently will translate to more sales (and happier customers).
Many of the Farmers we serve at Barn2Door are actually having record sales due to a surge in online sales. See what this Farmer had to say:
“We are so grateful we have our online store up and running at this time... thank you so much for your help in getting us online this year. With markets being threatened to close we are so grateful we have a way to communicate and sell our products online directly to our customer base!” - Organic Farmer (FL)
If you’re looking for more tactics to implement to help spur sales, read: 3 Tactics to Help Your Farm Succeed in Light of Coronavirus Impacts.
At Barn2Door, we’re doubling down to help Farms at this critical time. If you’re not a Barn2Door customer and want to get set up quickly online to serve Buyers, learn how it works here (including 4:33 video).