Your Cart is the New Box

Introduction

Buyers expectations have changed dramatically over the past decade. As a Farmer, you should be aware that the goalposts have shifted. Your Farm’s success going forward will be dictated increasingly by buyer demand for convenience.

Here’s the good news: if your Farm keeps pace with evolving buyer demands, it will translate to (i) more sales for your Farm, (ii) increased cash flow for your Farm and (iii) happier customers.

Here are the facts.

Subscriptions are Everywhere

Your buyers today have subscriptions for everything in their personal lives. Netflix for movies. Spotify for music. Dollar Shave Club for razors. In fact, Amazon now prompts your buyers to subscribe to anything that is a recurring purchase (e.g. deodorant and water filters).

Food is no different, and your buyers are not going to stop eating. Shopping for the same thing every week, every month is a hassle. Your buyers want it to be easy. A weekly subscription for milk and eggs, a bi-weekly subscription for produce, and a monthly subscription for proteins solves that problem.

Your buyers expect ordering to be easy, and they expect food delivered right to their door. Buyers will gladly pay for home delivery and 90% would prefer to buy from a local Farmer. 

Read this Blog post to learn how this Farm made Door-to-Door delivery profitable on their first attempt.

If you’re operating your Farm the same way as last year, then expect the same results. If you want to change your Farm’s trajectory, then change the game (because the rules have changed, too). 

In 2019, 5% of Americans ordered groceries for home-delivery; in 2020 that number is expected to quadruple to 20%. Your buyers’ expectations are constantly evolving.

Think Outside the Box

CSA’s started decades ago, it was a pioneering movement—years ahead of the Internet and one-click shopping experiences. At its infancy a CSA “subscription” to a box of vegetables for the coming season was a novel idea.

CSA Software emerged that capitalized on the ability to manage “box” subscriptions, and evolved to accommodate “choice” selection for what goes in your box any given week. Some CSA Software solutions even claim to “personalize” a box for each customer based on buyer preferences (e.g. “opt-out” of kale).

Here’s the problem. Buyers don’t want ‘choices’ to be constrained to a box. 

Buyers utilize a cart to pick and choose individual products they want to purchase from every retailer on the Internet. Buyers want to buy any product that catches their fancy at any time (e.g. an “opt-in” model). Why would a Farm try to force a different experience for consumers who spend billions of dollars online everyday? More importantly, why would your Farm want to pay for CSA Software that limits how much a customer spends on products from your Farm? 

If you limit your customers to a “box” model CSA, you’re constraining your growth. Essentially, CSA Software caps your customers’ spending (and takes a % of your sales).  Why not make it easy for your buyers to purchase more of your Farm products? (Ironically, buyers do love bundle boxes!)

Your Cart is the New Box.

So, what’s different? At Barn2Door we’ve designed software to enable Farmers to offer subscriptions on all their products (for any duration or interval). So, while you may encourage your customers to sign-up for a bi-weekly vegetable delivery for 6 months, they can add 3 weeks of berries when they’re in season, and eggs that they can add anytime to their purchase (one-time or as additional subscription). Voila! You just sold more Farm products.

Best of all, you’re giving your buyers what they want—the ability to manage their own purchase decisions. Don’t leave “match-making” your customers boxes to a third-party CSA Software. That is completely incongruent with every other buyer experience on the Internet.

The results for your Farm? More sales. More cash flow. Happier customers.

Barn2Door does not mark-up any of your products. We don’t take any percentage of your sales. And, we don’t charge your buyers any fees. It is your Farm products, your hard work and your money. You’ve earned it.

If you’d like to learn more, watch this short 5 minute video of how Barn2Door serves Farmers across the country. You’ll see why Barn2Door has become the largest software provider empowering Farmers in America to sell direct to their customers. 

If you want to read a more in-depth take on the topic, you can download this ebook: Is the CSA Model Broken? Think Outside the Box.