Simplify your Farm Delivery Day
Farms selling Direct-to-Market find success in offering convenient pick-ups and home delivery options to local Buyers. This can spur purchases from busy customers, attract new Buyers through word-of-mouth marketing and reinforce their support of local businesses. Farm delivery day does not have to be a stressful ordeal. Simplify your delivery day routine with systems designed to prep all orders in advance.
Laci of Tagge’s Famous Fruit & Veggie Farms in Utah serves over 1,000+ CSA members with software from Barn2Door, which is built for Farmers. Instead of spending hours a day prepping orders, she can now streamline her fulfillment process, please Buyers and save time.
Listen to Tagge’s Delivery Day process:
Preparing Orders for Fulfillment
Prior to Barn2Door, Laci Tagge’s mother would spend around 4 hours each day on the computer to prepare deliveries. Using spreadsheets to organize hundreds of orders, track communications and maintain various boxes was all-consuming and nearly impossible. Their Farm growth was constrained by the manual efforts (and time) to track and manage their CSA program.
By implementing Barn2Door, Tagge’s Farm could track all of their inventory, orders, buyers, payments and fulfillments in one place. Orders could be updated and tracked without time-consuming back and forth communications. They no longer chase down payments or update Buyers on inventory changes, as their Barn2Door-powered online store automatically charges Buyers for their Subscriptions and updates customers when a product is sold out.
Using the Pick List from Barn2Door, Tagge’s harvest team will pull orders for a given week. Farm employees are split into groups with Pack Lists and auto-generated labels to prepare and pack the CSA boxes. Laci checks the boxes once they are packed and labeled, which includes box contents, and Buyer details. The boxes are loaded into a truck depending on where they are being delivered, and a driver will fulfill those orders. The Pick and Pack Lists include all the details necessary to allow workers to separate orders by fulfillment type and location.
Customer information is automatically saved whenever a Buyer completes a purchase from Tagge’s online store. With the Barn2Door + Mailchimp integration, contact details are simultaneously added to the Farm’s email list. Laci can send order reminders or updates for pick-ups and deliveries with ease by enrolling Buyers in a targeted campaign. This keeps Buyers in-the-know, and saves Laci time on individually contacting every purchaser.
Choosing Pick-up Locations
Tagge’s Farm offers pick-up locations in neighboring cities, to provide convenient fulfillments for a range of Buyers. Pick-ups are free for Buyers, and allow for their orders to arrive closer to home, without having to pay for delivery or drive to the Farm. Customers will offer their house as a pick-up location for the convenience of having their box delivered to their home for free.
For a pick-up location to be established, Tagge’s Farm requires a minimum of 10 CSA boxes to be picked up from a given house. This ensures that it is worth the cost of driving to deliver the boxes to the home. The house must have a shaded area, such as a covered porch, garage or tree. The driver will set up the boxes for Buyers to come and pick-up on a given day and time.
With 60+ pick-up locations, Laci utilizes Barn2Door to simplify the process of harvesting produce, packing orders, splitting them up for drivers and dropping them at specific houses. Barn2Door software takes out the manual guess-work and helps her maintain and manage several pick-up locations and orders.
Offer Delivery for a Charge
Buyers who choose direct-delivery of their CSA boxes on their doorstep are charged a $15 delivery fee. This covers the cost of delivery drivers and gas, while offering the added convenience that more affluent Buyers see value in paying.
Laci finds that these affluent Buyers are typically her busiest, who cannot make time in their schedule to drive to a pick-up location. Because of this, they also add-on the most products to get the full value out of their delivery (increasing the size of her average order).
With the Barn2Door + Routific integration, delivery locations automatically populate in a mobile app, giving drivers the optimal routes to provide efficient deliveries. Laci can split up deliveries by driver, so every location is covered, without the need to print out maps or figure out the most efficient directions on their own.
Marketing to Local Buyers
Tagge’s Famous Fruit and Veggie Farms builds hype for CSA sign-ups through marketing and FOMO (the fear-of-missing-out). Potential Buyers may see Farm boxes posted online, recipe shared or neighbors picking up their orders and want to purchase their own CSA.
Pick-up locations serve as a marketing opportunity as anyone who drives by pick-up houses will be exposed to Tagge’s Brand on their boxes and packaging. This expands Laci’s reach outside of her local community to surrounding cities - marketing and securing Sales at the same time.
Laci encourages Buyers to post her Farm Boxes on apps like NextDoor to promote and market to neighbors. Potential customers will trust the opinions of their local neighbors, spurring loyalty for Tagge’s Farm (while also increasing density for fulfillment). Buyers are also encouraged to share their purchases on social media. Potential customers have FOMO seeing what other Buyers get in their box, encouraging a purchase.
Read: Double your CSA Members
Laci includes recipe cards in their CSA boxes and in email newsletters to make Buyers more comfortable cooking with their produce. She knows that not every customer will know how to prepare each item, so she wants to make it as simple as possible, building trust for the brand and encouraging repeat purchases.
Buyers are reminded to order boxes, try out new dishes and share their products via email. Barn2Door automatically syncs contact information into Mailchimp to create campaigns with product recommendations tailored to each Buyer (based on those with similar purchase habits), spurring more loyalty for future purchases.
Selling Value-Added Additions
Add-on Purchases allow Tagge’s Farm to secure additional cash flow from their CSA Subscriptions. If Buyers are choosing to deliver or pick-up their boxes, they will see the value in adding-on products to save a trip to the Farm, or make their delivery fee worthwhile. Laci offers a range of add-on products - from in-demand crops to pantry staples (jams, salsas).
Laci can push any extra products through add-on offerings, or simply include them in the CSA boxes for that given week. Using a Farmer’s Choice model gives her the freedom to pair items together and pack in produce, instead of individually crafting hundreds of boxes chosen by Buyers.
Add-on Purchases allow Buyers to show their loyalty to your Farm, choosing to spend extra money with your Farm and get more of their grocery list in a single order. Marketing add-ons through email or social media can create FOMO for other Buyers, especially if you only sell limited produce when it is added-on to a CSA box. Buyers will be pleased to purchase extra of their favorite product, and your Farm will appreciate the extra income.
Conclusion
Your Farm delivery day does not have to be lengthy hours of chaotic assembly and fulfillments. With software built for Farmers, you can streamline the process with organized inventory, orders, payments, pick-and-pack, and delivery optimization. With Barn2Door, Laci Tagge is able to serve 1,000+ CSA members, saving time and increasing revenue.
Barn2Door offers software for Independent Farmers to create and promote their brand, sell online and in-person, and save time managing their business. If you’re curious to learn more, watch this 5-minute video.