Announcing! Barn2Door Point-of-Sale
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we unveil and discuss the newest feature at Barn2Door, Point-of-Sale (POS). Hear from the CEO & Founder of Barn2Door, Janelle Maiocco, as well as Product Manager Anthony, and UX/UI Designer Jeremy, as they share how Barn2Door POS will help Farmers increase sales by being able to take any order anywhere, anytime, in-person or online.
-
[00:00:00]
Rory Loughran: Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast. I'm Rory, your host for today's episode. We've got a great conversation for you today with the Founder and CEO of Barn2Door, Janelle Maiocco, as well as Barn2Door's Product Manager, Anthony Maiocco, and Jeremy MacRae, a UX/UI Designer at Barn2Door.
Welcome Janelle, Anthony, and Jeremy. It's really great to have you all here. To start out, Anthony, could you tell us a little bit about your job at Barn2Door and the role you play in making software a reality?
Anthony Maiocco: Sure. So hello, my name is Anthony, I work here at Barn2Door as the Product Manager [00:01:00] and in short that means I am part of the team that is helping decide on what we're going to build next, right? And not just what we're gonna do next, but kind of how it's gonna look and how it's going to operate, what requirements are getting laid out for it.
So, going through, we solicit a lot of feedback from our Farmers. We track all the different feature requests that they might make. We have a whole system for that to make sure that anything that comes into the Support Team or the Account Managers or the Onboarding Managers is being captured. And then eventually kind of percolate it up to us to consider and we'll even reach out to folks and solicit feedback too, as appropriate.
Rory Loughran: Yeah. We know that feedback from Farmers is definitely a super important part of the process, especially for you guys on your team.
Jeremy, how about you? What's your role at Barn2Door and what's the role you play in making all this come together into software that Farmers can use?
Jeremy MacRae: Yeah, hi my name is Jeremy McCrae. I am the User Experience Designer [00:02:00] here at Barn2Door, and essentially my job is to take the features that the Product Team is working on and bring it into the digital world by mapping out the functionality and the process and the experience of the feature to ultimately designing the actual user interface our customers engage with and utilize, hopefully in the most positive way possible.
Rory Loughran: Awesome, yes, definitely always in the most positive way possible there, Jeremy.
Well Janelle, our listeners, if they've looked at the title of this episode, they've seen that this is all about Point-of-Sale and I know you have some exciting news for us.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, I think the secret's now out, isn't it? We are offering Point-of-Sale for Farmers. This has been a labor of love, something we've been working on for a long time, and certainly something that's been on our scope to build for Farmers for sometime. So releasing it to the market.
We have beta landing, you know, sort of the first version of it landing. And then in early 2023 it will be available readily to all Farms. But we're really excited about it because Point-of-Sale is a [00:03:00] really important place where Farmers are taking sales from their customers. They both, obviously with the Barn2Door account, they can have online sales and it's an amazing experience where people can self-serve order from a Farmer at any time online.
But how great to then expand that tool set, if you will, for Farmers to be able to now take sales: credit card, cash, check, you name it, any kind of payment anywhere, anytime, whether they're in person or online, and it's all out of one account.
Rory Loughran: That's huge. I know this been something that a lot of people have been waiting for a really long time, so it's super exciting to have it coming out. But to backtrack slightly, POS is really gonna change the game, in terms of Farmers being able to, like you said, sell anywhere to anyone, anytime.
So why is this something that we're just now debuting?
Janelle Maiocco: Because it takes a long time to build really amazing things, Rory, and truly that's why, I mean, we needed to really lay the groundwork in our initial platform, chill out for online sales because we know that is how buyers buy today, right? They're [00:04:00] online. They like to buy, they like subscriptions, they like to purchase things online, they like to shop anytime from their Farmer.
But we also know that some of our Farms, not all of them, but many Farms also have opportunities to take orders and to transact with customers while they're on the road. One of the original mantras of Barn Door was we want to not only be a one all in one solution for Farmers to run, like literally run their Direct-to-Market business, but the important factor then is not only all the moving parts of what it takes to run a business, but to be able to transact with any customer at any time, anywhere, right?
And so this really sort of fulfills that promise of the original vision of Barn2Door, of this is all you need whether you're POS, whether you're in person, whether your people are shopping online, whether it's a chef, whether it's a consumer, whether it's big units or small, like literally it doesn't matter, it's covered. And to make it that seamless and easy for Farmers and especially for their buyers to be able to easily purchase from them, is and already [00:05:00] proving to be a game changer, but we know that POS is just going to complete that picture and that vision.
Rory Loughran: I'm curious, what is the process like of building out POS? I know, Anthony, you kind of mentioned that a lot of this starts with those feature requests. But from there, walk us through the process of what this looks like.
Anthony Maiocco: Yeah. so the decision to pursue and prioritize developing a Point-of-Sale system has been on our radar for quite a while. It's always been a goal of ours to be able to provide a system that can comprehensively manage and help conduct commerce for our Farms. And while we have had the chance to really lean into the online store and being able to conduct online orders and pre-orders for Farms and manage subscriptions and things of that nature, many of the Farms that we work with do have a very real physical presence and interact person to person with their buyers and in a way that we want that to offer [00:06:00] the opportunity for that experience to be unified between their online store and inventory and their in person store and inventory so that everything talks and plays nicely.
So, of course on the actual feature request side, this was something that we had quite a few requests over the years, and it was just a matter of, kind of, finding the right timing and it of course made its way to the top of the list and that's what's brought us here today.
Rory Loughran: Yeah, definitely. I know POS is definitely something that I feel like we've always heard requested of Farmers or one of those things that's like, Oh man, I wish that inventory that I use, another POS device could sync with Barn2Door. So it's really great this is finally coming and that it's been prioritized by Farmers and that's why it's been prioritized by you guys and your team.
Jeremy, can you take us through, you know, once it goes through Anthony and his side and the decision to make this a priority and take that feature request and make it a reality. Walk us through your side of the project and what that looks like.
Jeremy MacRae: Yeah, so, the whole process was really cool. Essentially, you know, I'm given a BRD, which is a Business [00:07:00] Requirement Document.
It's filled with requirements and functionalities and requests to basically account for when I'm going through the design process as we're building out this feature. And I essentially, kind of, designed a wire frame version of every screen of POS and a wire frame version is essentially a low fidelity, sort of gray scale version, kinda like the blueprint, like an architect's blueprint of a building. No frills, no color, no, finalized design, but just screens to kind of show the structure and the functionality of what we're designing.
So with all these kind of low fidelity wire frames, I put them in all the different sections that would be POS. And then Anthony and I, we worked really closely together on the project. We walked through every screen, every section over and over again. You know, had so many discussions about the behavior of the screens, the functionality, making sure everything was accounted for.
And sort of once we got to this place of feeling like, hey, we have [00:08:00] this, we could like globally, from a high level perspective, see POS in this low fidelity form, we felt confident that we could now bring it into the high fidelity design world. So then I got started on that and that kind of takes us to where we are now with this version of POS that's ready to be tested.
And so, yeah the process has been really cool.
Rory Loughran: Yeah. It's so cool to hear about that Jeremy, and I think myself and the other listeners are probably learning a lot about this process. But it's so cool that you guys start with that low fidelity, like you said, that blueprint, and then move from there to kind of that stage two of actually building out what it's really gonna look like.
And so it is really cool to hear and it definitely sounds like you guys have this process down, but it is a time consuming process. I know you guys have been working on this for a really long time. Well, what are some of the feedback pieces that Barn2Door was getting that kind of led to the creation of this feature?
Janelle Maiocco: I think it's just being engaged with our Farmers. We just see how they sell, how they want to sell, what's helping them be successful. And again, it's just an exciting opportunity to [00:09:00] extend the ways that they can take money, right? And create sales and engage customers in an easy way. And frankly, we want the transaction to be that simple. We want the inventory to be that simple. We want them to be able to manage their finances in one place, like all the orders and everything else.
And so if that's easy, then the Farmer, is relieved of worrying about a lot of minutia and details and administration. And if you can take that away, then they're spending more time engaging with their customers, you know, worrying about other parts of the Farm because frankly they have a lot to do.
Rory Loughran: Anthony, when would you kind of trace back the origins to starting to work on POS and the two of you getting started on this project and what are you most excited about in this finally being released and finally come and do fruition after such a long period of time?
Anthony Maiocco: The first work that went into building out a Point-of-Sale system happened well over a year ago at this point. Our first kind of documents that we were delivering was in September of 2021. But even before that, we were starting to [00:10:00] gather the different requirements together, partly based on the functionality that already exists on the platform, like support for variable weight items and different tax tools that we have.
But then, also getting a good sense for kinda what our Farmers come to expect from whatever experiences they already have in the real world, kind of in those cases where they're already conducting commerce with their customers. So, our first documents, again, were in those wire frames, were delivered in September of 2021.
And from then until now where we are. Now in late 2022 the process as Jeremy shared, has seen a lot of iteration. We also, you know, we were not only refining how it would look, but also making decisions along the way in terms of functionality and tweaks and changes that we decided to make along the way.
Jeremy MacRae: Yeah, totally. At note too, [00:11:00] prototyping is kind of sprinkled throughout the whole experience. I would set up a little low fidelity prototypes and wire frame form. We would do some specific sections. Maybe, you know, I wanted to show how would this actually behave if you're clicking through it.
So, different levels of prototypes throughout the whole experience was also kind of part of this process as we've been working through it the last year. So definitely an important thing to call out, I think.
Rory Loughran: Well yeah, and like I said, I'm definitely learning a lot here. This is so interesting to hear how many different stages of testing and of, like you said, prototyping and trial and error there is throughout this process. And I think one of the main things I think I'm learning here is that software, it takes a while.
There's more planning that goes into it. I think sometimes we probably think that these things just are coming out all the time because software companies are releasing things all the time. But these new features, these things take time. And so it's really great to hear kind of the full story behind this feature.
On that note I'm curious, I know Point-of-Sale is not something that's new to Farmers. I go to the Farmer's Market, I see [00:12:00] people using all kinds of different POS systems. But what is it that makes Barn2Door's POS capabilities unique?
Anthony Maiocco: So the Barn2Door Point-of-Sale system, it's going to present an opportunity to have a shared inventory count across all the different places that a Farmer might be selling their product. So that's kind of easily point number one and one of the biggest factors that kind of came into consideration when we were designing this whole thing and one of the most commonly asked for features in the requests that we've been tracking.
But secondarily, there are also a lot of benefits that kind of come with working with Farmers in particular. There are a lot of different cases to consider when looking at set price items or variable price items, right? Are you charging for carrots per bunch or per pound or something like that? Which the system can accommodate for.
There's also a lot to be said for the support for different types of fulfillments because we [00:13:00] do have folks who are doing different pickups at different locations or even doing delivery, whether that's from one restaurant to the next, and being able to capture that effectively and in a way that's reportable, is something that we certainly looked to prioritize.
And then the other piece is really just making sure that the point sale, it's going to be compatible with everything else the Farmers kind of see and expect in our online system today, in terms of the ability to charge taxes as they would expect or not charge taxes. Cuz we do work with a lot of folks who are selling nontaxable goods.
And then the final piece too is the ability to sell across pricing sheets, which is something that Barn2Door has kind of distinguished ourselves on for quite a while. But the ability at the point-of-sale to flip between your retail and your wholesale pricing sheets and two very easy clicks is something that you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere.
Rory Loughran: Yeah, Anthony, I know that's something that a lot of Farmers are gonna be really excited about, [00:14:00] especially those folks that are working with wholesale accounts. That'll be so great to be able to switch between that and your private store or your public store, and then also being able to switch to wholesale.
That's such a game changer for folks, especially like, I'm just imagining if you're out doing deliveries and maybe you're allowing people to add on items when you show up, to give that delivery and to be able to have your wholesale accounts deliveries mixed in with your retail account deliveries and being able to switch that with your POS system and maybe add a few sales on the spot as you're making deliveries is really cool and convenient.
Yeah, amazing. Well, Janelle, one other kind of added benefit of this POS that I know, and I'll have you explain it, not me, but what does this POS system offer in terms of set pricing versus variable weight pricing?
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, that's actually a really great question, right, to understand the pricing opportunities. So I would say one of the big pieces of feedback from Farmers, as we work very closely with a lot of Farms when we're building new features that we want it to be meaningful to them.
So we're like, what do you need? And it clearly, one of the missing [00:15:00] factors in some of the other systems that Farmers are currently using and excited to switch from are that you can't actually do pay by weight. So like, if you're a Farmer at a Farmer Market and you need to weigh your pasture poultry, or you wanna weigh, you know, the apples even.
You can't do that with other systems today. And so the fun part, of course, with Barn2Door is you can actually use it the way you need to, which is you can actually weigh an item, enter in the amount, it'll calculate the price for you based on weight, and then you can charge the buyer right there, right then and there in person.
So very exciting. So number one huge difference. Probably one of the things the Farmers are most excited about besides the time savings of one account, is literally that pay by weight. But you brought up another good point, which is other opportunities from a pricing perspective. So take a, let's say a single chicken, for example.
You have a whole chicken you're gonna sell. You can have a set price. You can sell it for $25 flat. A lot of our online sales, like we'll see a lot of Farmers that'll just do $25 per bird because it's easy, right? It's just super simple. People love easy when they're [00:16:00] shopping online. But in person, they might want to actually weigh the bird.
It might be 3.4. It might be 4.4, you know, and so they can do that at the market. They can quickly switch, do it price by weight and charge exactly per weight. And frankly, if their neighbor shows up and they're like, yeah, but I really like you and I'm gonna give you a discount, they can actually put a custom price in and be like, Just for you, it's 20 bucks, right? So they can literally have the opportunity to elect to use the price very quickly on the fly, on the spot, in person through their POS Barn2Door.
Rory Loughran: That's really cool. And I love that special pricing too, if you're having some kind of, if you just, I know sometimes folks are just like, I need to move some and so they'll put a discount on something and they'll run it for like one weekend at the market. So having that special pricing would be a great use case for that as well.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, absolutely. Anything we can do to help.
Rory Loughran: So I know with an advanced feature like this, we've talked about a lot, it took a while. And I'm sure there have been a lot of challenges through that process. Like we said, you guys have been working hard at this for over a year now.
So what are some of those primary challenges you guys face when developing [00:17:00] Barn2Door's Point-of-Sale?
Anthony Maiocco: When looking at the development of the Point-of-Sale application as a whole over the course of a year, especially, there are a lot of different nuances that we had to consider over the course of our development. Of course, trying to determine how to elegantly display differences between set price and variable weighted items, and especially allowing folks to switch between those while still accounting for inventory accurately was a design challenge that we had to overcome.
Beyond that, through all steps of the process, we had to translate from what was initially Farmer feature requests and some ideas that we had into a set of requirements in a BRD, and eventually kind of handing those over to Jeremy and kind of to work through the UX and even pass that to our Engineering Team.
So kind of there are multiple different sets of hands that touches and making sure that we're maintaining the original [00:18:00] intent of kinda what the Farmers are looking for through all of that is something that we have to check ourselves on constantly to really make sure that we're serving our Farmers as fully as we can.
Jeremy MacRae: Yeah. I mean, you know, even though we had everything so well mapped out, we still had to make adjustments along the way based on feedback loops, internal testing, and maybe just accommodating for things that we might have missed along the way.
I mean, as a designer, inconsistencies, it just, I constantly recheck screens over and over again, probably to an obsessive, on an obsessive level. But it's just sort of that refinement process. It's a challenge and that's gonna be a challenge I think with any product or feature you're working on. So, it kind of comes with the territory, but it's hard to walk away from something.
There's a saying in design where it's like, "a design is never done." You're always looking at it with new eyes and fresh eyes, and sometimes you need to know when to walk away and just say, hey, this is amazing and how [00:19:00] many more little tweaks can I make pixel by pixel?
So that was a little challenging just to go through that refinement process.
Rory Loughran: Yeah, I love that idea, Jeremy of looking at it with fresh eyes and Anthony also, like you were saying, making sure we're staying true to that original intent of what Farmers requested and what they needed out of this feature and making sure that it's gonna serve those needs, that those needs are met. That's really, really a cool way of approaching it and I think making sure you are always approaching it with fresh eyes helps to stay on track.
Jeremy I'm sure too with Point-of-Sale being like an extension of Barn2Door really and the experience that a Farmer is having with Barn2Door, I'm sure there's a lot of checking and making sure that POS is an extension of that Barn2Door experience that Farmers are already accustomed to. Is that correct?
Jeremy MacRae: Absolutely. POS is an extension of the Barn2Door platform, an extension of essentially the sphere that is barns Barn2Door that we're constantly building and yeah, POS is an absolute bridge to what our current sellers are used to, [00:20:00] and to take that into consideration during the design process and accommodating for the fact that it's an extension of what exists today.
It definitely was challenging, but it was always at the forefront of our mind as we were working through the project.
Rory Loughran: Certainly, and keeping that experience consistent. I know that's always something that we're big on across kind of all areas of Barn2Door and our brand really.
Janelle, I know I've been in calls with you, with other Farmers and they'll talk about features like POS and I've heard you say things before like, if you want a feature, trust me, I've been wanting it for probably longer.
Cuz all these things they do, they take time. And so I'm sure as kind of this building process has been going on, you've had like an ideal use case of this or like, man, I can't wait to hear a Farmer say that they did this with POS.
And so I'm curious, what does maybe one or two of those use cases that you're really excited, once this is out in the wild, to hear Farmers, how they're using it?
Janelle Maiocco: There's two, but first I'll tell you the Farmer Market one is the obvious one, right? Like, great, we've covered that like very real situation. [00:21:00] Sales channel where Farmers are showing up. But we also have so many Farms, and this is the one of the two. We have so many Farms that are doing door to door delivery or they have local pickups.
And so one of the things I'm most excited about is literally, like I said, if they have that in their holster, like have it ready so that in those situations when somebody wants to buy something extra or you're showing up with a turkey and they wanna buy a second one, you know, that you have those situations where you can just, you know, run the card.
Like it's done on the fly, on the spot. It's so easy that the drive and the like local pickups and impromptu delivery, extra purchases, I'm super excited about.
And then I would say the other one I'm really excited about because this has been just a vision early on from Barn2Door, is just enabling all sales for Farmers in every channel and we'll continue to push that envelope, by the way, is when a Farmer will come back and be like, done.
Like whether it's in person, online and they're doing it and it's easy and it's just able to track their whole business. That's the shoulders down and the [00:22:00] big sort of sigh relief to know that we have not left a part untouched in terms of what we can do from a capability standpoint to help those Farmers literally run their entire business end to end.
Rory Loughran: Yeah. Yeah. Being able do sales online, go to the Farmer's Market, collect more sales with POS, while orders are also still coming in online. That's, yeah, that's the goal.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. All. Yeah. Maybe That's the third one, right? Like it's all happening at once. Like you're swiping POS, people are shopping online.
Rory Loughran: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: And it's all like, you know, it's all doing exactly what it's supposed to, absolutely.
Rory Loughran: Definitely. Awesome.
To wrap things up here for Jeremy and Anthony, do you guys wanna talk us through how a Farmer can go about setting up their POS device and how will that connect to their store?
Anthony Maiocco: So if a Farmer is interested in utilizing the Barn2Door Point-of-Sale, It is going to be something that is included with all levels of the Barn2Door subscription. There's no extra cost that will be associated with that each month or anything like that. Of [00:23:00] course there's still gonna be costs associated with buying the reader itself.
But to that end, once the reader is purchased and once it arrives in the mail, then you'll have the opportunity to kind of first download the Barn2Door Point-of-Sale application. And there's a whole flow in there, where you can connect the Barn2Door app to the reader. And then once the reader's connected, then all you need to worry about at that point is getting customers to your stand.
So, it is quite seamless. It's gonna work from the inventory you already have built out in your store, plus some extra flexibility because there's even custom items if you really need them there in person if you don't have something built at on your store, you can still, you know, collect funds for it there in person as you need to and really just hit the ground running.
So if you have a active Barn2Door store, then you get your reader, download the app, get it all connected up. Then you're squared away and ready to go
Jeremy MacRae: Yeah, [00:24:00] simple. Sign in with your Barn2Door credentials. Boom. You're good.
Rory Loughran: Simple, and easy. That's what we love to hear. I know I always appreciate that in any form of technology and I feel like anybody having to use a new technology always does as well.
As a final question to wrap things up here for everybody. I know we've talked about this kind of in different stages throughout this conversation, but to wrap it up, how is the Barn2Door Point-of-Sale feature gonna be a game changer for Farmers? What's the end all take away?
Anthony Maiocco: The Barn2Door Point-of-Sale application is going to allow Farms to consolidate their inventory and maintain it in one place while serving their customers across all different environments that they might encounter and to sell to them, not only for pre-orders online, but orders there, live in person, in a way that accounts for inventory and reporting that is unparalleled by anything else in the market.
Jeremy MacRae: [00:25:00] Yeah, I'd say, I mean, all the points we kind of touched on earlier, it's just a quick and fast ease of sales. Being able to make sales mobilely on the go and still essentially be attached to your store and your inventory. And I just overall, I think this is gonna equal more sales.
And so I think our our sellers are gonna really benefit from POS.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, It will just make it easier and ideally because it is easier for people to purchase directly from Farmers and gives Farms another opportunity to sell. Actually, I should mention, we did a survey with a couple hundred of our existing Farmers saying, hey, this is coming, do you want it?
And we had one in three Farmers raise their hand and say, I want one, who had not previously been using a POS device. So this is huge. So for the folks that haven't done it before, this is just an add-on opportunity for them to swipe a card when they're in person. And so it just will make it that much easier. It could potentially open up more opportunities for sales, like carry that thing with you, put it in a holster if you have to, but [00:26:00] like, let's get those sales to those Farmers wherever they are.
So we're very excited about that, number one. And then number two, I think this POS secretly or not so secretly, I've been waiting for a long time for this to be built, right?
It just, it takes, you know, resources, money, investments, engineering time. But to build this and build it well, was really important to have it be seamless. Not to have it be a separate account, a separate experience, a separate everything. We wanted it to be all in one. That was very important to us at Barn2Door.
Because again, if we're all about saving the Farmer time and making it easy and about their brand and about their customers have experience to buy conveniently, like it needs to be all one. And so we took the time to get that done. And what that will do, it will save them time, it will give them more opportunities for sales, and finally for us, it's, again, it's that promise of, you can use Barn2Door to manage and run and grow your entire direct to market business no matter where there's a transaction, between a Farmer and their buyer. And it doesn't matter if the buyer is wholesale, [00:27:00] retail, private, special, anything, and it doesn't matter if they're in person, online anywhere.
And so POS literally completes that promise that we've been working so hard to achieve, so that we can help Farmers be successful in their local communities.
Rory Loughran: Yeah, it's really exciting. It's kind of like after this, all the bases are covered.
Janelle Maiocco: I'm so excited.
Rory Loughran: Awesome. Well, thank you Janelle, Jeremy and Anthony. I really appreciate your guys' time in doing this and I'm so excited for this to get out and live to Farmers and to start hearing the stories of how they're using it out in the wild and at markets and during deliveries.
It's certainly a really exciting feature to finally land at Barn2Door.
I want to extend my thanks to Janelle, Anthony, and Jeremy for joining us on this week's podcast episode. Here at Barn2Door, we're humbled to support thousands of Farms across the country who implement sustainable agricultural practices and support their local communities.
To learn more about the Point-of-Sale and how it can benefit your Farm, go to barn2door.com/pointofsale. [00:28:00] To learn more about Barn2Door, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your Farm, go to barn2door.com/resources.
Thank you for tuning in, and we'll see you next week.