Announcing Ongoing Subscriptions on Barn2Door
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we unveil and discuss the newest addition to the Barn2Door web store, Ongoing Subscriptions! Hear from the Founder and CEO of Barn2Door, Janelle Maiocco, and Software Engineer Developer Allison Merth on how Ongoing Subscriptions will help Farmers save time, offer buyers convenience, and generate more sales for their businesses.
www.barn2door.com/resources
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
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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 one of our Software Engineer Developers, Allison Merth.
Welcome Janelle and Allison. It's great to have you here. And Janelle, I just found out we've never had you on the podcast before.
Janelle Maiocco: That's crazy. I know. It's time. It's overdue.
Rory Loughran: Yeah. The CEO of the company. First time, I gotta make sure I'm on my game today.
Janelle Maiocco: Now that you know that though, you're gonna be putting me on here all the time.
Rory Loughran: Yeah. Well, today we're focusing in on the topic of subscriptions. We've got some exciting news around subscriptions for Farmers with the Barn2Door [00:01:00] platform, but to start out what are subscriptions and how do they benefit Farmers?
Janelle Maiocco: I think everybody out there knows what a subscription is and we all subscribe to most things. Whether it's through Amazon or on Netflix or Spotify, et cetera. Subscriptions for Farmers are really an important, exciting thing, and I have to say it's been really a labor of love in terms of our software development for Farmers to be able to offer subscription to their buyers.
So when a farm has an online store and one of their local buyers will go on there and be able to subscribe to items, that means they're signing up once, paying with a credit card once, and then that is the gift that keeps on giving. It shows up every week or every month, whatever the farmer chooses to provide in terms of the frequency.
But it's great for buyers. We're all used to it. And so building that for Farmers has just been critical in terms of their ability to offer that in their e-commerce store.
Rory Loughran: And as you mentioned it has been a labor of love at Barn2Door, but certainly been something that we've had for a long time, but it's been continually changing and improving.
So Allison, How have subscriptions previously [00:02:00] worked with Barn2Door and what are some of the different types that people could choose from? Or how are some different ways people might utilize those?
Allison Merth: Yeah. So subscriptions were originally designed and implemented on Barn2Door with seasonality in mind.
So you can think of like a summer CSA, community supported agriculture, where you might for 12 weeks get a different box of veggies every week just for the summertime when that produce is in season and that would be the end of it. And then maybe you'd sign up again for the next year. So there were a couple different ways to pay for that.
You could have your customers pay upfront, the whole 12 weeks right at off the bat, or have your customers charged every week for the length of that subscription.
Rory Loughran: How have Barn2Door's subscriptions been unique from other software solutions? Cuz there are other people out there that offer a way to sell online or even offer subscriptions.
How is Barn2Door's unique?
Janelle Maiocco: I would say the seasonality is absolutely checkbox number one, in terms of it being unique from a time based perspective. Another unique feature or part of how subscriptions [00:03:00] can work for Farmers on Barn2Door is there's there are many times when Farmers want to offer the ability for their buyers to pay upfront.
And so if there is a 20 week subscription or a 10 week subscription, whether that's to vegetables every week or beef boxes or bundle boxes once a month. They might wanna say, "hey, you have an option to pay a year in advance or pay all of those 20 weeks before day one even begins." That can be a really great opportunity for Farmers to get basically upfront cash flow.
And sometimes that means they're using that same money to invest in the products that they need to get started, so it can be a really fantastic opportunity for people to even further support their local Farmers by paying up front for that time based subscription.
We also offer Rolling Subscriptions, which is something else you'll find out there. One thing you have to realize, with softwares you need to match what exists out there. So having subscriptions that you can just sign up for any time and just start subscribing, people are used to that exercise when they're shopping online.
And so when we're building for Farmers, we wanna match [00:04:00] what buyer's expectations are with regard to subscriptions. And so that's what we're developing now increasingly, which is not only do you cover the unique instances that Farmers have in terms of upfront or time-based subscriptions or seasonal, like berries might be only four weeks and, you know, proteins might be all year and micro greens might be every five or six weeks.
And so that's all built in and really exciting, but you also need to provide the standard procedure, if you will, out there in the wild, in terms of e-commerce because you and I are used to that so we're gonna go towards that any chance that we get. Rolling Subscriptions, forever subscriptions that just don't even have an end, those are pretty normal use cases out there too.
So you have to build for both, right? That's the fun part of being able to focus on an entire industry or entire group of folks, Farmers in our case, who we can build specifically to their needs and help them win.
Rory Loughran: Definitely. A really cool differentiator about Barn2Door is that subscriptions are built [00:05:00] in. This is something that, you know, some other platforms you have to pay additional for or other platforms you might lose a percentage of what you make on subscriptions to be able to use a subscriptions feature.
Obviously we're always working on this product to make it better for Farmers. So Allison, what were the questions or requests from Farmers that led to the existing changes that have already taken place with subscriptions?
Allison Merth: So probably one of the bigger changes that came as the product evolved and people told us, you know, what they were looking for was the late enrollment feature. So maybe you have that summer CSA that starts at the beginning of June and goes through September, but Farmers wanted a way for buyers to sign up, you know starting in July, get sort of a late start to it.
So that was a pretty big release and a help to the Farmers who still had produce to sell and didn't wanna be limited by when their buyers could sign up.
Rory Loughran: Yeah, definitely just kind of removes the pressure of having a deadline for the Farmer and for the customer as well.
So Ongoing Subscriptions, this is kind of the big thing on our doorstep now that we're [00:06:00] pushing out. Janelle, what is Ongoing Subscriptions and how is it unique from other subscriptions that are Farmers can already use in the platform?
Janelle Maiocco: So Ongoing Subscriptions essentially means you can sign up to subscribe to a Farm product at any time and just, it's in perpetuity.
And so that, that gives the buyer the confidence that they're gonna have milk on their doorstep, eggs on their doorstep every week or protein bundles or four chickens every single month. Whatever it is, cuz the Farmers can choose to offer different sizes of bundle boxes, they can offer different frequencies.
And the consumers love that. And so the ability to sort of lock in for those consumers and be like, "wow, I've got, I have my source of poultry. I have my source of grass fed beef. I'm set with farm eggs." I don't know about you, but when I buy from our Farmers, I love walking through a grocery store and being like, "yep, nope, not buying poultry here. I already got my eggs. It's really empowering for consumers to have that opportunity to just lock in essentially the major items in their cart and just keep going.
Rory Loughran: Yeah, definitely. Then that's a [00:07:00] really great way to, to look at it, really. So you kind of mentioned that this is a kind of a win-win for Farmers and for the consumers. How does that benefit both really on both the Farmer's side, as well as their buyers.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. I mean, clearly the buyers love it. We just get great food all the time, which is just amazing and the feel good of supporting local food, because there's a lot of consumers out there who are particularly passionate about the food system and what that looks like in the future. And not necessarily having it be about distribution and big box stores and a lot of storage and a lot of fuel, frankly. And so when people are empowered and it's easy for them to support local in a persistent manner, that's a big deal. And let's not forget, it all tastes better too.
And so there's so many benefits clearly on the buyer side, from nutrition all the way to the food system, to the Farmer. And then on the Farmer's side, I think this is one of my favorite things about being part of Barn2Door and helping build this company is that when we do subscriptions well, and people subscribe to Farmers, [00:08:00] Farmers have recurring sales.
And so month over month, week over week, they already know that they have X number of dollars in the bank. And it's recurring sales that essentially equals a sustainable business. Like we have some Farmers who, 70% before they go into the next month of the next week, is already sold. That just means you get to sleep better at night, and that's the goal, right? The goal is for all these Farmers to be wildly successful and lock in those sales and then decide how big they do or don't want their farm to be. In many capacities that gives Farmers the opportunity to grow bigger.
Rory Loughran: So being able to lock somebody in for the entire year and like you said, in perpetuity. Being able to know that those sales are coming with Ongoing Subscriptions is really exciting.
So Allison, I'm curious from like the software development side of things, what are some of the challenges? Obviously you said you've been working on this for a really long time.
What are some of the challenges you faced when developing Ongoing Subscriptions?
Allison Merth: Yeah, there were definitely plenty of engineering and technical challenges. It's probably the most technically challenging thing I've ever worked on [00:09:00] actually, which is surprising to some people. But when you think about it, there's just, there's so many different schedules that you have to support. We have a lot of flexibility in the platform where Farmers could do, twice a week or they could do every third Monday of the month of fulfillments, so there's some challenges there just with timing and how do we design a system that won't accidentally skip fulfillments or anything.
And then also just, from a data side, when you think about what an Ongoing Subscription really means, it means there's data that could go on potentially forever. And you can't just store all that data till the end of time, as the buyer hits purchase. So we had to think about a way that's really scalable for people to buy their subscriptions and the data is not necessarily actually saved to the database at that point, but keeps getting generated dynamically every fulfillment.
So we, tried out like a new database system for storing some of that and just had to think through a lot of different scenarios and edge cases. It took a lot of planning to do this, for [00:10:00] sure.
Rory Loughran: Wow. Yeah, definitely complicated. Janelle, I'm curious, what are some of the top things that come to mind with people that are like Ongoing Subscriptions is like perfect for? I know you mentioned eggs already but what are some of those other ones?
Janelle Maiocco: Eggs is awesome. Yeah, dairy is great. Like people certainly want their milk and butter and cheese. I'm a huge fan of proteins. Knowing if I'm getting a mixed bundle from a Farmer once a month, whether it's grass fed beef or pork or lamb or a combination or poultry, like I know that we go through, you know, a couple of birds a month.
Great. I think those are all great opportunities. We've also seen micro greens, vegetables, are a really big deal and can extend the season. We've seen people do berry subscriptions. I subscribed to a five week berry subscription this summer. And it was mixed berries.
So it literally was started with strawberries and now I'm in a mixed version, mixed blackberries and raspberries and whatnot. So that's really great. So I think there's a lot of opportunities. Some of those might just be a cadence thing. I think our Account Managers would speak to this, but would recommend when they're on the phones with Farmers all day, every day, they would say, "Hey, let's think about what the [00:11:00] products are that you have, and then what's the frequency of your buyers consumption."
And then you need to consider, and I know they say this all day long when they're chatting with Farmers and giving them some great ideas. Think of the one person household, the four person household. So you have to think about the different sizes that you are selling to, and then provide them three different size options and then put a frequency in place, right?
Rory Loughran: Yeah, definitely. It's kind of wild how applicable that is to so many different farm types and so many different farms could utilize this really successfully. I think even like kind of a niche case, but one that comes to mind is we've had freight Farmers on the podcast before who are farming in a climate controlled shipping container and they can grow produce and micro greens all year round. So definitely somebody that could really benefit from an Ongoing Subscription.
Allison I'm curious, like how does this new feature, we're always talking about saving Farmers time, and so how does this feature help streamline those operations for Farmers and make their business easier to run?
Allison Merth: The big thing for Farmers will be: not having to remind their buyers to resubscribe. That should [00:12:00] save a step and not having to remind them means they have a better projection of what is coming.
They can really look at the calendar and see exactly how many people are subscribed and will stay subscribed. Thus just helping them, you know, plan out their work for the next few months or however long.
Rory Loughran: Yeah. That's a huge benefit. I feel like we hear Farmers talk about all the time, the revenue security of subscriptions is great, but being able to apply that and not have it end at the end of the year is gonna be even better. So Allison, I'm curious, can you give us like a little bit of a walkthrough? How would a Farmer go about setting up that offer for Ongoing Subscriptions in their online store?
Allison Merth: Yeah. So the first thing you're gonna need to do is make sure you have fulfillments set up that don't have an end date. So there's a lot of, you know, Farmers that might have schedules set up on the fulfillments page where it only goes to the end of the year or something, but yeah, making sure you have a schedule set up that does not have an end that will support Ongoing Subscriptions.
And then you can go to your manage offer page and there will be a [00:13:00] new option next to Recurring and Upfront Subscriptions. There will be a third option now called Ongoing. So you can set up a subscription that way to not have an end date and select your schedule that doesn't have an end date.
Yeah, and then as soon as you post that, it'll go straight to your web store and buyers will be able to click through and purchase.
Rory Loughran: Wow. That's crazy. After how complicated it sounded for you and your team to build this out, how simple that'll probably be for a lot of people to put in their store. What about for the customer side of things? Is there any kind of changes? What's it like as a customer going into a store and signing up for an Ongoing Subscription?
Allison Merth: For a customer, it'll actually be really similar to purchasing a Recurring Subscription. Recurring meaning: you buy a subscription and, you know, it'll be for 12 weeks, but you're gonna get charged on a weekly basis rather than all up front.
This will look extremely similar. It'll just not have an end date. So they'll see exactly how much they'll be charged every fulfillment. You just go through the checkout and hit purchase and then you. It's all outta your hands. You don't have to worry about it.
Rory Loughran: Wow. And then I know you mentioned too, there[00:14:00] is a way out if somebody decides to end that subscription or if the Farmer decides not to still offer that subscription. What's that process like? Is it pretty easy for a consumer or the farmer to cancel that?
Allison Merth: Yeah, totally. That functionality also existed already for Recurring Subscriptions. Both sellers and buyers being able to skip just an individual one whenever they need to for whatever reason, but also the ability to cancel the entire thing will definitely still be available.
Rory Loughran: Well, this is the Direct Farm Podcast, we always love to bring things back to the four levers of farm success. Janelle, how does Ongoing Subscriptions play into those four levers?
Janelle Maiocco: Honestly, well I mean we can go through each one. So brand, brand is great. Subscriptions are brilliant for branding because the whole notion behind branding is visibility and connection to your brand. So that means that you, Rory, if you're gonna love a Farmer, you wanna see the brand, you wanna see the logo, you want a newsletter, you wanna be consuming their product on a regular enough basis for it to be a recognized and beloved and subscriptions just almost automate [00:15:00] that. So I think the brand engagement almost is built in as an exercise when you're doing subscriptions. So it's really fantastic.
Rory Loughran: Yeah. And then obviously the quality I feel like is just built in. Farmers, provide that and then convenience I think is the really big one.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. I think we're just a click and forget it culture. We just, we're consumers, for better or for worse. But people also care what they're consuming and that's the good part, right? To your point. They're looking for that quality. They really do care, but they also care a lot about convenience and what's easy and what's not worked for them.
And so what that means is if I can just say, "here's my saved credit card on file, charge me every week. I don't even wanna think about it. You know, I just get a notification that my grass fed beef is on my door or my bacon just got deposited in my cooler on my front porch." Like it's just a delightful moment. You're getting your quality. I didn't have to do any work. I'm loving the Farmer. I'm feeling good about the nutrition that's being consumed by myself and my family. So it's just a win-win all around.
Rory Loughran: Definitely. And then that final level of price, subscriptions kind of [00:16:00] uniquely play into that. What are some of the ways that Farmers can still leverage that lever?
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. The fun part is incentivize those buyers to get on board with subscriptions. Give them a promo out of the gate, whether you wanna give them a discount to pay up front, whether it's just a promo to subscribe, like it's worth the nudge to get somebody to subscribe, because then they're subscribing whether it's in perpetuity or whether it's for 10 or 20 weeks, it's worth that little, that coupon hit at the beginning because when you have recurring automated purchasing, that's just the gift that keeps on giving.
Rory Loughran: I guess just as a final question for you, Allison, how are Ongoing Subscriptions gonna be a game changer for Farmers in terms of driving that revenue and we've talked about saving them time?
Allison Merth: Yeah, I think just like I said previously, not having to think about where their next purchase is gonna come in, being able to forecast exactly how much they're going to make and how much product they need to provide. It should just be a huge source of clarity and yeah, revenue driving and convenience and all that good stuff.
Rory Loughran: Awesome. Well, [00:17:00] Janelle and Allison, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.
Janelle Maiocco: Always a pleasure. Love being here and working on how we can make Farmers have the recurring sales and really delight their buyers and then just have their businesses just be wildly successful.
Rory Loughran: I want to extend my thanks to both Janelle and Allison for joining us on this week's podcast episode. Here at Barn2Door, we're humbled to support thousands of Farms across the country who implements sustainable agricultural practices and support their local communities.
To learn more about Ongoing Subscriptions and how it can benefit your Farm, go to barn2door.com/updated-subscriptions. 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. We'll see you next week.
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