The Power of Farmer’s Choice CSA
As an Independent Farmer, you are looking to move your best-sellers, new products, and overstocked items year-round. As you grow your customer base, you’ll quickly find that a Buyer ‘a la carte’ model becomes time-consuming, cost-prohibitive, and error-prone. By offering a Farmer’s Choice CSA (or Farmer-recommended), you can move your products based on the harvest and available inventory while building recurring revenue for your Farm.
Why Farmer’s Choice?
While some Farms think every Buyer prefers to choose their own products for their subscription boxes, that simply isn't true. In fact, 90%+ of existing Buyers are likely to opt in to purchase your Farm-Recommended bundle boxes. A Buyer’s Choice CSA quickly becomes unmanageable with 100+ custom orders, hours of custom assembly, and slower fulfillment times, which impacts your profit margins.
A Farmer’s Choice CSA eliminates the guesswork, reduces labor, and eliminates the cost of customizing individual boxes. Farmers get to choose “what’s included” to keep inventory moving off the shelf and streamline their order packing and logistics. This will help improve recurring cash flow for your Farm, so you can worry less about customizing every box and more about scaling your base of Buyers.
Read: What’s The Verdict: Farmer’s Choice CSA or Buyer’s Choice CSA?
How to Package Your Farmer’s Choice For Maximum Margins
The key to selling out your Farmer’s Choice CSAs is to create an attractive bundle of complementary products, increase your average order value, and encourage Buyers to skip the “big brand” grocery store. However, you do not need to dilute your Farmer’s Choice Box with add-on items, as 3 out of 4 local food Buyers are interested in a delivery subscription for staple products. The most successful Farms will offer 3-5 core boxes with their essential, recommended items to lock in weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly Buyer commitments.
Box Sizing Matters: If your boxes are too big or small, Buyers may avoid ordering from your Farm altogether. Consider your ideal customer and the most common household sizes in your local community. While suburban areas with large households often feature 2-person or 4-person bundle boxes, be sure to accommodate the one-third of Americans who live alone.
The Power of Unlocking Add-ons: Using the Barn2Door platform, Farms can offer “limited access” to specific, highly desirable items that can be unlocked with a subscription, bundle box, or pre-order — enticing Buyers to commit to your store to receive access to “add-on” items (e.g., bacon, berries, jams, or skincare). About60% of subscribers will add onto their regular boxes, thereby increasing average subscription order sizes.
Read: How to Scale Your CSA: 8 Proven Steps to Maximize Margins
Dairy Farmer’s Choice Box
To prevent Buyers from ‘cherry-picking’ your high-demand items - leaving you with low margins and unbalanced inventory - group your dairy products together into a standardized base box. Dairy is considered a ‘necessity’ for the average local food Buyer, so it is key to offer a CSA full of staples that Buyers can naturally consume week over week.
Drive high-margin sales by grouping these items:
2 Gallons of milk, 1 pint of half-n-half, 1-2 dozen eggs, and 4 sticks of butter
2 Gallons of milk, 32 oz yogurt, and 1-2 dozen eggs
2 Gallons of milk, 4 sticks of butter, and 2-3 packages of 8 oz of cheese
Protein Farmer’s Choice Box
In a staple protein box, introducing a variety of cuts will increase the box's perceived value, earning you more revenue while moving products out of the depths of your freezer. Each box should include standard sizes for average household needs: small (10 lbs), medium (20 lbs), and large (35-50 lbs). Using a variety of standard meat offerings will help move more product per subscription while minimizing freezer storage requirements.
Group primary and secondary proteins to give Buyers variety:
Mixed Meats: Ground beef, bratwursts, spatchcock chickens, and pork chops
Beef Box: Ground beef, secondary steak cuts, short ribs, and carnivore blend (beef & liver)
Griller Package: Ground beef patties, bacon, chicken breasts, and primary steak cuts
Produce Farmer’s Choice Box
Certain produce items are popular year-round because they can be used in a variety of dishes, so evaluate your inventory for fresh items that customers will use for weekly meals. Attract new and recurring CSA members by offering weekly salad subscription boxes, bi-weekly fruit & vegetable boxes, or a mixed product and veggie bundle.
Pair popular items with lesser-known items to set your subscription apart:
Salad Mix: Romaine, apples, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber, radishes, and peppers
Mise-n-Place: Carrots, celery, onions, lemon, garlic, and leeks
Seasonal Mix: Potatoes, asparagus, mushrooms, figs, green beans, and corn
Conclusion
To maximize recurring revenue, prioritize creating Farmer-recommended CSAs full of essential products that Buyers can subscribe to on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. No matter your Farm type, leveraging a Farmer’s Choice model will help your Farm scale strategically, save time on fulfillments, and increase your profit margins.
Barn2Door provides Independent Farmers with the software to make more money, ditch the office work, and look like a pro. Curious to learn more? Watch this 5-min Demo.