Farm Storefront Best Practices
In this week's episode, James speaks with Kevin about best practices for a Farm's online store. From an easy-to-shop inventory and convenient fulfillment schedules. Learn how software built for Farmers can make your store streamlined and profitable.
For more Farm resources, visit: https://www.barn2door.com/resources
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[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast, the go to podcast for do it yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers. This podcast is hosted by Barn2Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand and sell online and in person.
Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
James Maiocco: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm James, the Chief Operating Officer of Barn2Door and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners are aware, Barn2Door helps independent farmers promote their own brand, manage sales online and in person, and streamline their business to [00:01:00] save time. In today's conversation, I'm going to be talking with Kevin, who leads our success team, and he has worked with us for several years now, and he helps ensure that his team sets independent farmers up for success, with best practices when setting up their farm stores to grow a profitable business.
Today, I'm happy to welcome Kevin back, and we're going to dig further into all these steps and how they measure success. Welcome back, Kevin. Great to see you.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, James, thanks for having me again. It's been a while, so I'm excited to be here.
James Maiocco: Well, you've done a fantastic job building our success team at Barn2Door.
And, for our listeners who may not be familiar with your role and what you do here from day to day, why don't you give folks just a little bit of overview on your background and then secondly, kind of what your remit is day to day.
Kevin Soncrant: Sure. Quick background, for me then, yeah, I started as a teacher.
I was an educator for a few years, middle school, math and social studies. After that, transitioned, helping a lot of small business owners across a wide range of industries, so a lot of blue collar, general contractors, [00:02:00] painters, movers, landscapers, mostly just helping them get websites, get on search engines, and expand their business.
And then, also spent several years as a full desk recruiter for a healthcare IT consulting firm. Managed the entire manage services desk there, and then ultimately found Barn2Door, which was a great, blessing for me. It's been an amazing blend of all my background and experiences, something I'm really passionate about and really enjoy doing.
I love to educate farmers, help them bring more of their products to their local communities. So yeah, I started here. As an account manager and excelled in that role. And, eventually went on to lead that team now oversee both the onboarding and account management teams, all at the same time, also still onboarding farms and working with farms in the account management phase as well.
So, get to work with a lot of farmers from all across the country and help them set up their stores, market their business and set them up for success.
James Maiocco: Well, I have to say it's been a real pleasure to watch your career just progress here at Barn2Door. You've really done a fantastic job, not just as an individual contributor, but even more so as a leader in the business.
And we're really lucky to have you. Thank you so [00:03:00] much for your hard work and dedication to our farmers. And I'm really excited for our listeners today because Kevin has just gotten a lot of experience. He's talked to literally hundreds, if not probably over a thousand plus farms at this point of just helping them, again set themselves up for success.
And so we're gonna dive into some of his learnings. He has outlined kind of five best practices that he now coaches the onboarding team on in terms of setting farmers up for success. So we're gonna dig into each of those best practices and learn from Kevin, how your farm can be more successful.
Alright, Kevin, let's start with the first one. What's the first ingredient for success when farmers are thinking about building a direct to market business?
Kevin Soncrant: First and foremost, just need to have an online store to reach customers. And so, for a lot of our farms, actually looking at what that customer facing store looks like is really crucial to look at it from the lens of a prospective customer or one of their buyers. Going in there and actually just looking at what it looks like to order from their farm.
What type of [00:04:00] items are there? There's some really key general best practices that our most successful farms apply for how that store looks, that really make a big difference. The first one, and may or may not be obvious to people, is just what are the first 2, 3, 5, 10 items that people see?
Making sure those first few items are high value items, top sellers, seasonally relevant ones, maybe even new items or things that are on sale. Using the backend, a pin an item as a high priority item to market and bring it towards the top makes a huge difference. People will naturally pick one of the first things that they see in a store.
The less work they have to do for scrolling, the quicker they find your best products, the more likely they are to purchase them.
James Maiocco: So people are lazy. It's what you're telling me, right? Like realistically, people, when they search something, they go to the farmer's store. If the farmer tells me, Hey, here are the three to five things to pay attention to at the top of the store.
I think I've seen some data on this. What is it like 60, 70 percent of all purchases come off just those top pinned items for most of the farms that we work with. Is that something like that?
Kevin Soncrant: Correct. [00:05:00] Yeah. I wasn't calling everybody lazy, but certainly online shoppers can be lazy. And so, yeah, the easier you make it for them, the more likely they are to purchase.
In that same vein too, James. Having less items can be really effective. When we say less items, like ideally less than a hundred items, same concept, online shoppers are lazy. If they have to scroll through multiple pages of items to find what they're looking for, you could lose potential customers.
And so, really just making sure we're focusing on what drives the most revenue really hitting on those key products, the things that are going to drive 80 percent of the revenue for the farm business and have those be the ones that are shown up online, consolidate other products in the bundles, or just focus on selling any additional add ons in person.
James Maiocco: Yeah, that's a great bit of feedback. At the end of the day, it reminds me a little bit of a Cheesecake Factory menu, right? You go to Cheesecake Factory and it's a menu that's like pages long. Like, no one wants to look through that menu. But when you go to a good proper locally owned restaurant, usually the menu is pretty short.
Usually it might be 12 to 15 items that, those entrees, that's the specialties of that [00:06:00] restaurant. They're all going to be good, right? It doesn't take 20, 30 minutes to make a decision. You can just show up and trust that those products are going to be good, that I'm going to purchase locally.
I'd imagine this kind of the same thing. You're going to increase conversion with fewer items in your store, is that correct?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm a huge fan of local restaurants that have small menus. When I see a small menu, I know I'm getting better products and it's similar for the online store.
Exactly.
James Maiocco: Let's talk a little bit more about the store experience itself. What about the look, the feel... you know, I imagine pictures say a thousand words?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, absolutely. So it's probably not something that we always think about as farmers is like, what are the pictures of our food look like, but certainly crucial for prospective buyers, especially if they're brand new to your farm, they may want to see what it looks like.
So, something as simple as just taking your own picture, even if it's with your own phone, like an iPhone, an Android device, take extremely high quality pictures right now. They don't need to be done by a professional. Obviously, having a professional do it can make it much better, but [00:07:00] it's not a necessity.
What is important is having pictures of your own products, because people many times want to see what they're buying before they ever buy it. But, at the very worst, if they don't have their own photos, we do have a giant stock library of photos that they can utilize. So, at the least they can be using those photos for their store to provide appealing pictures for their customers. Then a couple other factors that may not be considered are simple ones, but can be really powerful is to have a banner in the store, which shows up at the top of the store for people to see.
You can draw attention to a sale that's going on or having a promo code in the store and having that live. You can draw attention to what that promo is or what's seasonally available. Those banner messaging capabilities are really great. We can put up a message that's timed for a specific amount of time.
Change the content for that, have that change, and have that message end whenever the promo ends or whenever it's no longer relevant. But it just provides additional first thing for the customers to see that can draw their attention to whatever you want to draw their attention to.
Like many online [00:08:00] shoppers, I'm a sucker for promo code many people are like you give people a little bit of a discount incentive to shop. They're more likely to buy what's on sale and what you have available within your store.
James Maiocco: Yeah, I love the idea of creating FOMO, you know, the fear of missing out, with a time based promo or the first 10 purchases of a given product, right?
And to your point, with a banner, you can just put it right at the top of your store. Don't make people hunt for it. You can tell them about it perhaps on social media, but you certainly want to have a ticker, right? There's only 10 of these products or it's only available until the end of the month.
And then the promo goes away, right? Create urgency. So first and foremost, Have a great customer facing store, a good buyer experience. What's next? Assume I got my store set up, what else do I need to do as a farmer?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, another really important factor is the fulfillment, what those schedules look like.
Having convenient pickup and or delivery options for both you as the farmer, as well as the customer. And so, depending on where your farm is located, having the only [00:09:00] option as pickup, at a local farm or a local processor, if it's taking people 10, 20, 30 minutes to drive there, like beyond 10 miles, the amount of people that are willing to make a drive to go get products, even if they are great, high quality local products, the number just drops.
Every five miles, you're going to see less and less people willing to drive at that point. If it's inside of 10 miles, most people are fairly willing, but, the easier you can make it on people, the better. And so, one of the easiest ways to make it more convenient for people is to consider who your ideal customer is, and what their local loop is, like where are they going on a day to day, a week to week basis. Most people that are working a standard nine to five are generally making the same travel most weeks, right? Maybe, to and from work, maybe dropping kids off at school, might be a local church in there, a bar, a brewery, a gym, but meeting them where they already are is a very powerful tactic. So, easiest example I can give there would be a local church.
You meet people on a Sunday after mass, you're in the parking lot for 15 minutes, they got out of mass, they're able to get their products from [00:10:00] you. You got a branded vehicle. It's essentially free advertising, at that point, you got a lot of people waiting for products, gives you opportunity to expand the customer base even further.
Great thing about using like local businesses or churches or schools for pickup options as well, is many of them want to partner with other local businesses and help them be successful. So, it's just a great opportunity to not only make it more convenient for your customers, but also market the business and grow the customer base.
James Maiocco: I know I purchased from at least five farms I have subscriptions from, that I can think of. And I know I get delivery from several of them directly to my door. But, I know two of them, in particular, we do pickups where we do pickup even at a farmer's market where they attend, right? So I know that's another avenue, because if a farmer's already at a market, they could even use that market as a pickup, right?
For effectively like a pre order for a standing subscription where I just pick it up at the market, which is what I do monthly. What about delivery? I know delivery is something several of our top performing farms have done. I know it can be a little intimidating for some farmers. What are your suggestions [00:11:00] on delivery?
Like, when should a farm think about delivery and what are some of the things you should consider?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, I mean, certainly delivery is the ultimate convenience for people, and so what's great about delivery is people are willing to pay for it. There's so many apps out there right now that people can download to get food delivered straight to their door.
They're paying a delivery fee, so for a farmer that's looking to get into it, it's a really powerful medium to grow the business, and drive more sales and also a way to make sure you're paying yourself for your time, by charging a delivery fee. So, if you've never done delivery before, thinking about starting small is the best thing you can do rather than trying to target a 20 mile radius around a large metropolis, focusing on one to maybe five zip codes of a nearby town or city that is more densely populated with your ideal customer profile is easily the most effective thing you can do, because then you can target more marketing towards those smaller groups. Maybe you focus on marketing towards, a specific suburb or an apartment complex or an HOA. The more customers that you [00:12:00] can get in smaller groups, the more streamlined your delivery day can be.
And that allows you to not only grow that business, but scale appropriately.
James Maiocco: That's great feedback. I know for myself, delivery is the ultimate convenience, like you said, Kevin, and I'm willing to pay for it. When it comes to my pasture proteins, which is a larger order value, I get that once a month. It's more than $150. I actually pay, I think, $12 to $15 per delivery, right? But that's great. I just leave a Yeti cooler out on the front porch and they drop it off and it's fantastic. I've got my beef or my pork or my poultry for the month.
I know my produce on the other hand, my produce I actually have as a pickup, right? I actually do that pickup at a market, right? So, there's no fee for that. And that's expected. If I'm going to go to a pickup, I'm not going to pay a fee. But for delivery, like you said, people pay for delivery for everything these days, and you know, I don't think farmers should be shy about charging a fee, five, ten, fifteen dollars, depending on what their average order value is, right?
Kevin Soncrant: The other nice aspect of delivery too, especially within Barn2Door, is you can set a free delivery threshold, as well. So, I'm a [00:13:00] sucker for a deal, many people are. I also order from one of our farms for meat delivery, James do the same thing, leave a cooler out. It's the most convenient thing for me. Like I'm working Monday to Friday.
I'm not meeting anybody anywhere on the weekday to pick up, even if it is like great products that I want. Like if you deliver it to me, I'm all in. I'm going to do it every time. But, being able to set a free delivery threshold can help drive your average order value. So, a farmer I work with, used to be 150 bucks.
Every time I ordered, it was over 150 bucks. Their delivery threshold is now 200 bucks, you know, over 200 bucks, and it's free delivery. Every order now is over $200. So, it's a great way to encourage people to not only order more, but also make sure they're, again, paying themselves for their time by driving a higher average order value for their deliveries.
James Maiocco: Well, let's go into that use case that you just mentioned, right? So, if you're going to order $150 or $200 a product, I know for myself, I'm not assembling a bunch of little individual products, right? So, what are your suggestions around inventory? Because I think that's the third item in terms of setting a farm up for success.
We've talked about having a [00:14:00] store, setting up convenient fulfillments. Talk to me about inventory. What does a good inventory look like for a farmer to drive their sales?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, really great question. Really important point here, James, because ultimately this is another way to add convenience to people.
It's going to be a theme that we'll continue to have. The more convenient it is for people, the more likely they are to purchase. Offering a bundle of farm products, that are already pre packaged for the customer that they can make one click and add it to their cart is hands down one of the most effective things our local farms can do to, again, drive average order value, but also make it easy for people to get a sampling of their products.
So, having different size options for those bundles is crucial. Something like a small, medium, and large thinking about different household sizes, especially for proteins, but produce dairy, it's pretty even split across the country. A third of people live alone, a third live in a household of two and a third, live in a household of three or more.
So, thinking about having bundle sizes that align with those different household sizes can [00:15:00] help drive conversions. And then, with that, really thinking about those bundles as subscriptions as well, if it makes sense for the business. If we have consistent product, the most convenient thing that you can do for your customers is allow them to sign up for a subscription. You mentioned it earlier, James, you have several subscriptions that you sign up for. The average American has nine paid subscriptions. So not just food, right? Like electricity is a subscription, music, gym memberships. People love this aspect of just being able to put a card on file and it's going to charge in the background.
Don't have to think about it, especially for something that they need every single day, and every single week and every single month, food. So, putting those bundles as subscriptions is one surefire way to make sure you know how you can manage and scale your business, bring consistent revenue in, and know what products going out the door every single month, guaranteed.
The other thing our farms will do outside of just having bundles of subscriptions is some staple products as subscriptions. Milk, eggs, ground beef. Things that people are already buying regularly every single week make great stand alone [00:16:00] subscription items as well that can drive that consistent revenue.
James Maiocco: Yeah, I know I'm one of those lazy buyers where I just want it to show up. I don't want to think about it. I know for a fact that I'm going to have tacos every week. Who doesn't like tacos, right? Taco Tuesday. So, I know I've got beef and you know, whether it's ground beef or skirt steak or what have you, I've got, I think 15 or 20 pounds of beef that show up on my doorstep every single month, right?
And I just live with two people, right? So, that's plenty for us in addition to poultry, in addition to pork, right? But, I'm going to eat that product no matter what. So, if it just saves me an errand and I'm going to get it from a trusted source, a local farmer that I know I could even see from my office.
They're not even 30 minutes away from my office in downtown Nashville. It's pretty cool to know that I'm supporting a local farmer and that, again, the dollars are staying local as well, which is super important. And then, the other avenue of this, Kevin, just to mention for our farmers who are listening here, I know this is a common use case for all of our seven figure farmers.
So, all of our farmers that make more than a [00:17:00] million dollars a year, all of them, they're top selling products are bundles and subscriptions, right? So, just building consistency because there's no reason to have to keep asking people to go in and make a purchase. Once you trust that farmer, why wouldn't I sign up for a subscription to just make it easy?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah. And then the thing we didn't hit on here, as well, in terms of making it easy for the farmer and the customer as well, James, is how our farmers build those subscriptions. So, when we're talking those bundles that do drive the most revenue for them, those 10, 20 pound bundles, different size options. They're doing a farmer's choice style where they're choosing what goes into that bundle.
They will list off potential options for customers. So, a produce farm might just say, you know, seven to ten pieces of seasonal produce. A protein farmer might give him an idea of some of the specific cuts or even just something as simple as, it's going to include five pounds of ground, two steaks, and one roast.
And then, allow that farmer the ability to package based on what's available. Or what's seasonally relevant, [00:18:00] and help them manage their inventory more effectively, while also moving products, like ground, that's always on hand.
James Maiocco: Yep, that's exactly the bundle I get, Kevin. I know I always get a couple steaks, and I always get, I think, anywhere from 5 to 10 pounds of ground beef every single time, and some other roaster steaks that I'm learning how to cook or use for the first time.
It's great and it's a great way to have diversity and like you said, stay out of the freezer business for our farmers, right? So, well, so those are three really good pieces of advice. A great store, convenient fulfillment, and the right inventory. What are the next two items? Let's start with the fourth one.
What does a farmer need to do in order to have success in terms of growing their sales base now that they've got all the right things and all the ingredients set up?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, I mean, ultimately, we need customers to sell to, and so utilizing the Customer Management Center within Barn2Door is crucial.
It's easy to add emails from there. We provide a number of tactics as well, outside of Barn2Door, through our integration with MailChimp with [00:19:00] QR codes and the MailChimp app to grow that customer base organically as well, through signup forms or when meeting people at markets and then we'll hit on for our fifth one as well.
Our point of sale also allows them to capture emails. But emails are a powerful tool to direct way to communicate with customers. The one thing about emails, everybody's got it on their phone and everybody's got their phone in their pocket at all times, right? So, it's a guaranteed way to make sure you're getting in front of people.
It's just about getting them to open that. So, where it's really important to understand is like an email is not just an email, it's a potential customer that we can market to and sell our products to. And so, the more of those that we have, the more effective that will be, but what's really powerful within Barn2Door's Customer Management Center is the ability to group those emails and put people into segmented groups that have similar characteristics.
So, you can name a group anything that you want. Maybe friend and family, maybe a zip code of where they're at, a delivery zone, maybe if they buy bulk beef or bulk pork, you can name them a specific product. Ultimately, those groups allow you to set up targeted [00:20:00] emails that can go out on a consistent basis to remind them to order.
And so, this is where it's really powerful for our farmers to utilize the order reminders that are within this customer center because, they can set up an automatic email that goes out consistently reminding their customers to go and place an order. We mentioned earlier, people are busy working 9 to 5, they got families.
Your farm's not always top of mind for them, as it is for you. And so, to stay top of mind, getting in their inbox and getting in front of them is one surefire way to do that. Having a consistent reminder that goes out to people every single week, reminding them of when they can order, how they can order, is a powerful tactic to drive consistent revenue.
You mentioned it earlier too, James, FOMO, the fear of missing out. So, a simple way to do that through email order reminders is just remind people of when their order cutoff is, right? If you want to get delivery for this week, you have to order by Wednesday at five, send out the email a day or two before that order cutoff, reminding them of when that is, set it up in the background, set it and forget it.
Know that it's always going out to your customers. Extremely powerful way to [00:21:00] essentially work smarter, right?
James Maiocco: Oh, it's huge. The automation can save the farm so much time. And I love this suggestion to groups. I know several of our very savvy farmers, I would say, have used groups very effectively.
I know one of our farmers has like a CrossFit group or something like that, where they've got like a group of buyers that they now are super health conscious and they actually send out emails to that CrossFit group with really specific language for them, even highlighting like a carnivore mix and all kinds of different types of products that they know super health conscious people care about, right, or people are trying to bulk up, which might be very different than a mom's group who's just trying to get healthy, nutritious food into their kids weekly, right?
So, those groups can really allow you to tailor your messages. I'm sure you've seen all kinds of examples like that.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, absolutely. And that's what's great about the groups, too, is you literally can name it whatever you want. Nobody's gonna see it but you. It's not like people know what group they're in.
And yeah, it's up to you and your creativity of how you want to segment your customer base based on how you want to communicate with them.
James Maiocco: Well, what's the last [00:22:00] and probably one of the more important aspects here of being successful? You mentioned it earlier.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, yeah, it's the point of sale.
So, it allows our farmers to capture payments in person, whether it be card, cash, check payments, Google, Apple Pay. It's a powerful tool that'll sync with the online store within Barn2Door. And it's a huge time saver, but also, again, a huge factor for convenience for shoppers.
Cause, you know, if you're out of market or even, doing deliveries or even on farm pickup, and the only way you can accept payment is cash check, you're going to lose people. Many people don't carry around cash check anymore, they have their phone on them. They have Google and Apple pay synced to their phone.
They have cards with them. So having a device that syncs with your online store with Barn2Door's point of sale and allows you to take those payments is crucial to be successful in the long run. Beyond that, the device, I kind of teased earlier, so I'll talk a little bit more about it. It allows you to collect emails, as well.
So, when processing any transaction at the very end, it gives you the option to email them a receipt. Whether or not you email them a receipt, you'll [00:23:00] still get the option and prompt to add them to your email list. And so, it'll automatically add that customer email to your Barn2Door customer list where you can have an order reminder that goes out them, reminding them to order.
You can sync with your MailChimp contacts as well for any emails that you're sending through there. And beyond that, the device itself, the point of sale device that is, syncs directly with the online store, so any products that are live in there can be sold. It automatically draws down the inventory, so a huge time saver for farmers to not have to go and manually calculate inventory after doing in person sales. It allows for the same payment capabilities in terms of selling things by a set price or by a variable weight. And then, even has a promo functionality as well, when checking out can apply a discount to an order, maybe a friend and family discount or a veteran discount.
Apply a cart wide discount at a percentage or dollar amount level. So, the farms that are really looking to take their business to the next level, really need this device to make sure that they are able to take payments anywhere and everywhere. And the best part is it's just a free app on a mobile device.
So, [00:24:00] they download the Barn2Door point of sale app on a cell phone or an iPad or an Android device, iPhone, whatever it may be, it's free to download. You could literally go and download it right now and test out a cash transaction that syncs with any products that are live in your store.
James Maiocco: That's amazing. I absolutely love the Barn2Door point of sale because it was actually built for farmers, right?
It's got all these unique capabilities. Of course, real time inventory sync, but ability to sell by weight or fixed price, multiple price lists. There's just so many cool features here that none of our other competitors have built, right? These are all things that are nuanced, that are specific to farm food, right?
And I know it's just the feedback that comes from our farmers has just been instrumental in helping to drive this type innovation. So, if you haven't used it before, like Kevin said you can go download it for free off of any of the app stores and check it out. It's very slick. Well, hey Kevin, I really appreciate your time.
I know you're busy. You've got a big team and a lot of meetings every single day. But thank you for taking some time out of your busy [00:25:00] schedule to share these five steps to success in getting farm stores set up. Making convenient fulfillments, offering the right inventory, engaging your customers, and capturing all those sales you can, not just online, but also in person with a point of sale device.
Really instrumental feedback to help your Farm be successful. Thank you so much. Kevin, any last bits of advice or feedback before we drop off?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah. Ultimately, go out and market your business. Get out there and just build your brand. Like the more that you sell yourself as a farmer, the more that you put your brand in front of people, the more successful you're going to be, because that's why people want to support local farms, not only to get local products, but because they love the name and face behind those products and they want to support that local business owner and the more they associate your brand with your products, the more they're going to want to continue to come back and purchase regularly from you.
James Maiocco: Great wisdom. Thank you so much, Kevin. I want to extend my thanks to you for joining us on this week's [00:26:00] podcast episode. And here at Barn2Door, we are humbled to serve thousands of independent farmers across the country in all 50 states. If you're an independent farmer who's just getting started, or you've transitioned to selling direct, or if you've been at it a while and just simply want to streamline your business management, please visit us at Barn2Door.com/Learn-More.
There, you'll find all kinds of resources to dig in, to learn how you can make your business more successful. Thank you for tuning in today and we look forward to joining you next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn2Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country.
For free [00:27:00] farm resources, or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barn2door.com/resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.