How Farms Avoid the Freezer Business & Drive Upfront Demand
For a local business or new Farm starting out, getting customers through the door can be difficult. Without a reliable customer base and consistent demand, this often means that when products are harvested, you’re moving them into freezers until they’re sold.
At Barn2Door, the most successful Farms move products directly from the processor (or out of the dirt) to customers’ doorsteps. Farms drive 100’s of orders before items are harvested or processed, enjoying upfront cash and avoiding cold storage and freezers altogether. How? They build demand for their products in advance.
Think of a book launch, movie premiere, or restaurant opening. With a target release or opening date in mind, they leverage marketing activities to create buzz, drive pre-orders, and generate bookings for the launch. With restaurant openings, social media and other channels are used months ahead of opening night to promote the business, engage the community, pre-sell seats, and drive FOMO (the fear of missing out). When opening a restaurant, the goal is to ensure a full house (and line out the door) long before the first plate hits the table.
Farms can learn from restaurant openings to drive upfront demand (and revenue) for their products before they’re processed. Why is this important? Because when Farms move products into customers’ hands immediately after harvest or directly from the processor, you have less inventory to manage, create a simplified business model, and cut costs by moving products out the door faster.
Here are two tips to avoid the freezer business, drive upfront demand, and build a loyal customer base in your community:
#1: Allow Customers to Pre-Order Products
Farm Pre-Orders have become a secret weapon to bankroll revenue going into the season because items are pre-sold and guaranteed to be moved. As Americans love securing Farm-fresh products in advance, taking time to promote your items and building “hype” will be essential to setting your Farm business up for success (from the get-go).
Customers ask to pre-order our tomatoes in December! To incentivize more Pre-Orders, we give a discount and guarantee they’ll get the season's first harvest. They love it!
- Farmer Joe, California
Driving demand for your products (even before you have items to sell) is critical to increase revenue stability, drive cash flow, and avoid the freezers. By using different channels (web, mobile, social, email, and in-person opportunities) to engage various audiences, you’ll gain a loyal customer base, generating pre-purchases to products that haven’t been harvested or processed yet! This fuels upfront cash flow for your business, and customers secure their orders from your Farm. Here are three tactics you can use to drive demand for your products and encourage pre-purchases:
Build Your Social Media Presence: People love to feel connected and involved in your story. Post on social (Facebook and Instagram) sharing updates about the Farm or upcoming products. Use the 3 E’s (Educate, Entertain, and Ecommerce) to post a balanced mix of information. It’s never too early to start posting on social – even if you don’t have products yet! (See this Podcast episode: From Shipping Container to Kitchen with B3 Roots)
Collect Customer Emails: Farms have seen up to 80% of weekly orders come through a single email. Use a QR Code, manual sign-up form, and LinkTree in your social media to collect emails from potential customers. Then, promote your Pre-Orders in a monthly or bi-weekly newsletter. Tip: send consistent emails to stay in customers’ inboxes (instead of promotions or spam folders).
Leverage in-person Opportunities: Hand out flyers to potential customers at different events – farmer’s markets or local schools - and post them in community centers or local businesses. Share that you’re accepting Pre-Orders for the season and include a QR code to subscribe to your Farm newsletter.
#2: Retain Customers with Farm Subscriptions
Today, reliable access to food is a major concern for many Americans. Farmers are finding that with Food Subscriptions, they lock in recurring orders while offering customers food security for their families. Subscriptions also make it easier to plan inventory and processing dates in advance. When you know how much is pre-purchased or committed for a given period, align your fulfillment dates accordingly, skipping the freezers altogether.
Our subscription box program gives us tons of sales that we were missing at the markets. When we opened up for delivery, it just exploded! Today, our subscriptions are paid for before we even pick the produce.
- Organic Farmer
The most successful Farms drive up to 80% of recurring revenue with Subscriptions. Identify which products customers buy repeatedly or are always in demand (i.e., eggs, dairy, ground beef, chicken, etc.) and create a simple Farm Box Subscription. Give customers the option to Pre-Order a Seasonal Subscription (i.e., a Subscription that will run for a set term like 3-6 months). This will help determine demand in advance and plan inventories accordingly, making it easier to deliver products to customers’ hands when products are fresh.
Avoiding the freezer business and focusing on revenue-generating activities like Pre-Orders and Farm Subscriptions will give your business peace of mind with certainty that your inventory is paid for and will be moved when harvested.
It's great when people pay upfront for their Subscriptions. In the past, we had to take out a big credit line from the bank and invest in the fields. Now we get cash upfront for next season by mid-October or November!
- Produce Farmer
When you focus on building your Farm Brand across all channels, you’ll build a diversified customer base and more local awareness in your community. Alleviate the concern of stagnant inventory in the freezers by doubling down on a strategy and fulfillment schedule that delivers products straight from the processor to customers’ doorsteps.
Barn2Door provides an all-in-one solution to grow and manage your Farm business. If you’re curious to learn why successful Farms run on Barn2Door, watch this 5-minute video.