Capture Every Sale: POS Built for Farmers
Barn2Door CEO Janelle Maiocco and Success Team Lead Kevin Soncrant discuss the Point of Sale (POS) system built for Farmers to bridge the gap between in-person and online sales. Learn how real-time inventory tracking and integrated email capture empowers Farmers to streamline their operations, secure year-round sales and attract loyal Buyers.
For more Farm resources, visit: 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.
Janelle Maiocco: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Janelle, the CEO of Barn2Door, and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners are aware, Barn2Door builds software for Independent Farmers all across the country. By getting a system in place to sell direct market to local buyers and manage orders, Farmers can skip the middleman [00:01:00] and build a strong business with recurring sales.
Barn2Doors is built for Farmers, which means we built what Farmers need to easily sell online and in person to wholesale and retail customers. Including tracking real-time inventory, and we just debuted helping Farmers with local delivery. In today's conversation, we plan to dig into POS Built for Farmers.
One of our favorite topics. I'm happy to welcome Kevin, he's in charge of our success department. Cannot wait to dig in with you today.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, I'm really excited. Janelle, thanks for having me back.
Janelle Maiocco: It's sort of like where to begin, right? We've had POS in the water for a couple years now, and we just have the engineering team continue to work on it and Farmers tell us what more they need and we just keep going in that direction.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, it's great to see how it's expanded and we've listened to Farmer feedback to continue to make improvements based on what they're looking for and really just helping them meet all their selling needs with one device. It's pretty awesome.
Janelle Maiocco: You know, in another month from now, you and I'd probably be doing this as a YouTube.
Can you believe that? That we're kicking off our YouTube channel here soon? Holy smokes. This is the [00:02:00] first time we get to keep hiding behind cameras with no cameras, which is kind of fun.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah. Very excited for the YouTube channel though.
Janelle Maiocco: It'll be good. Okay. A little bit about your role. Just give people some context, a little introduction to you, how long you've been at Barn2Door, what your responsibilities are, including the success team, right, that you're in charge of.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah. So I've been with Barn2Door for over three and a half years now. Started as an account manager, working closely with Farmers, across the country. Literally hundreds of them, after they graduated onboarding, and once they were working on implementation of Barn2Door as a software. So what that meant was really meeting with Farmers every day, you know, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 plus meetings a day, sometimes, and really just helping them reach their business goals, utilize the Barn2Door software, to improve the way in which they conduct business. Help them ditch the office work, help them make more money and I loved it. It was such a great role.
I still will do that, to this day and still meet with Farmers regularly. But I went on to then lead that team and now I oversee both the onboarding and account [00:03:00] management team as well. So I'm also, onboarding Farms on a daily basis. So working with them right after they sign up with our team, helping them get everything set up and in place, and then having them work with an account manager after they graduate onboarding.
Janelle Maiocco: It's funny because I don't think every company has a quote unquote success team, and it literally is. Farmer success that you think about all day, every day.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's really unprecedented, especially in terms of what we provide for our Farmers and the access to our team to be able to get support.
Besides like us scheduling regular meetings with Farmers, we do daily live office hour sessions. So we have two, 45 minute sessions every weekday on Zoom that are free for any Farmer to join for free live support. So a member of our team is waiting there to answer any questions. So we're just constantly looking for ways to make it easier for Farmers to use the software and understand how to get their questions answered with a real person.
Janelle Maiocco: Real humans in an AI world. I mean really like actual, real humans every day showing up for Farmers, [00:04:00] visually live in office hours and on one-to-one calls all day, back to back. And kudos to Kevin I tell you what, he's one of the earliest folks to get into the office every single day. Which is amazing. And it always makes me think of Farmers because while my grandfather was a dairy Farmer and they're always up before the rest of the world. To milk cows and so we're like, when we're serving Farmers, it's, you know, early is early, but they already are all up.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, absolutely. I get up as early as many of our Farmers probably, I'm usually up at about 4:00 AM every day. So I'll usually be getting online after working out and then in the office by at least seven.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. See, all the Farmers are in good company with you helping out with literally their success every single day, and all your team, which is just incredible.
Okay. So, besides helping Farmers get set up as they are moving into a new system to run their business, which is what Barn2Door Platform helps with, and then of course as they progress, they're gonna start to get to the point where they get their oars in the water, they figure it out. They now know how to use this new system to run their business, sell to [00:05:00] those local customers easily and readily.
And then there's a whole opportunity for account managers to talk about strategy and different things like that, which is so neat. I've been reading over testimonials all morning and the amount of kudos we get from Farmers who are like Barn2Door's, success teams, support teams real time help, office hours, connect program with the Farmers even, it's a rich resource and good it should be. That's why we're here, but one of the things you do on the success team is you work with the product team. Explain what that means.
Kevin Soncrant: Sure, yeah, I'll talk about it from a team standpoint and then an individual standpoint as well. So from a team standpoint, it's extremely simple for us to work with our product team.
We have a feature request form that's an internal form that we fill out. It's three fields. It's an email address, and it's context for what Farmers are looking for, for improvements to the software. So anytime we have Farmers that are requesting the software, do something that it may not currently do.
We'll pull up that Farm. We fill it out in live time or right after we meet with them and all of that goes directly to our product team. Literally every [00:06:00] single feature request is manually reviewed and read. And then ultimately the more Farmers that are requesting, a particular feature, the more that it'll impact are two of the bigger factors when it comes to our team potentially implementing that in the future.
Needless to say POS is on that list in a lot of different capacities. We can't work on everything, every Farmer requests, but the more Farmers that request, it does move the needle and it's great that our team has access to do that at any time.
So that's the first and easiest way we interact with our product team. And then I work very closely with our product lead as well. We have a weekly sync where we review. Updates or requests or feedback or anything that's top of mind. So we'll do a 30 minute meeting once a week and then once a month, we'll meet as well as a part of a larger sync with, Janelle, our CEO as well.
Kind of the same thing. Really just give more feedback that's maybe not coming through as frequently on those feature request forms. That is still very important for our product team to be aware of when it comes to what we can do to continue to improve the software and make it easier for Farmers to be successful.
Janelle Maiocco: I love talking [00:07:00] about what Farmers want, but we also just love to build what Farmers want, but you're right. Kevin's team who literally talks to Farmers all day, every single day, captures feedback, and attaches it even to each Farmer. And so we can pull that data together to look at the dashboards and look what people are asking for.
So POS for example, when we can look at that and be like, oh, here's the top three things that Farmers are asking for, et cetera. But we also, to Kevin's point, we'll sit down and say, okay, but it's the beginning of the Farmer market season. That also weighs in, like what do they need immediately out of the gate or what can we build as the season is occurring, right?
If it's the middle of the summer, we're gonna keep improving POS and adding on complexities and features and in so many words, empowering the Farmers even more so, every day with everything that we build, to make it easier for the Farmers to sell and the buyers to buy.So it's a lot of fun.
So we put the POS in the water. I think we're into our fourth year now, and it sometimes is a blur, folks, it's been a lot of years of building software for Farmers in a great way, [00:08:00] and we love it. But the POS was so exciting. Having been working at this company for about a dozen years now, at this point, every time we put bigger things in the water, in addition to all the little things, it's just next level in terms of dreams come true.
So before POS, we made it so Farmers could have an online store, of course, manage inventory orders, finances, deliveries, everything. But when POS came on the scene, the beauty of that was now we could help Farmers truly have. Their entire business, all in one system, all under one roof, because they could finally sell, not just online, but in person.
And so the promise of Farmers being able to easily sell anywhere, anytime to any customer, in person, online, wholesale, retail, you name it. Hopefully customers are in their pajamas with slippers at midnight, ordering from them. One of my favorite visuals. Now it's true, we can help that be a seamless experience for Farmers across orders and inventory customers.
So POS certainly one of our favorite things that we put in the water and it's just been great 'cause we [00:09:00] have team members working on the POS kind of around the clock in terms of what more we can bring. In fact, Kevin, we have a POS feature coming out today.
I can't believe we're doing well. We're recording the podcast. So when this comes out, which I think is pretty quickly it will already be true that we have store credits on POS. Just for fun, let's just run through the, like there's Farmers saying, I want this. There you are, and you're capturing that and you're sending it over to the product team, and then they send it to the engineering team to build, and then they build it and it comes out.
What does that feel like for you in success?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, I mean it's very exciting for us. We all work with Farmers. When we have a new feature coming out, we'll have generally a couple Farms that come top of mind and go, I can't wait to tell this Farmer about this new update. And so this one in particular, for customers to be able to buy.
Digital currency online store credits in a Farmer store, and then able to use them in person. Certainly something we've had many Farmers request. So really excited to bring that to fruition for them. It's really a big deal. There's not a lot of software out there that allows for this [00:10:00] capability.
So, Farmers will have the ability when they're at a market or they're in person or they, maybe they have a Farm store or they're doing deliveries to pull open their point of sale app. And have access to all of the customer profiles that have store credits on them. So if anybody's coming in person, they don't need to actually have any payment methods.
Now they've already purchased store credits. They can just walk up and use their digital currency with that Farm and buy anything that, that Farmer's selling there. So it's a huge shift, for just availability for customers and a huge shift for our Farms too, in terms of some of the capabilities they'll be able to offer to their customers.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, we often have customers wanna give Farmers a couple hundred dollars early in the season. Right. So it's like you can contribute a couple hundred dollars early in the season and then just spend it whenever. Online or in person, but at that point it's just store credits, right?
The Farmer already has the money. You know what else is kind of interesting? I noticed a lot of people from out of town buying that as gifts for other people, right? So if your mom or dad are like, what do I get you? It'd be like, well store credits with Farm because I love their dairy or protein or produce.
So [00:11:00] just gimme store credits from them for my birthday and then they can spend it any time. So put that on your birthday list if you're a buyer from your favorite Farm, which is really neat.
Kevin Soncrant: It's a great present, Janelle. I bought my dad Farm food last year for his birthday. And it's an online gift card, so yeah, that's exactly what the store credits can be used for. In addition to buying them for yourself, you know, give it as a gift to anyone that you, you want, whether it's for the holidays or, a birthday or a special event, or just because you wanna say, I love you and here's some access to some great Farm food for their store.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. There's no better way to say I love you than a beautiful file mignon from a grass fed beef Farmer that's local. I'm just saying. Anyway, let's talk a little bit about POS.
This is funny, we have to add this humor because when we first dropped POS, and I love Farmers because I think it's hilarious, but POS is not necessarily a super common word. Like why would you run across POS? And so we had to actually start writing point of sale because, you're smiling, Kevin. We all know that you just might mean peace [00:12:00] of, and it's not poop, but that is so funny. The first time that that happened, I was rolling on the ground. It was just awesome. Okay, just for the delighting all of us, Kevin, tell us what a POS is when it happens to deal with software powering Farmer's business.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah stands for point of sale, so it'd be a point of sale device. So what Barn2Door provides is a card reader that pairs with a mobile app. The card reader, can fit in the palm of your hand, and that's what Farmers will use to take credit or debit payments there in person, as well as mobile wallets like Google and Apple Pay.
Then it syncs seamlessly with a mobile app that's free to download on any Android device, iPhone, iPad, you could go right now and download it. It's called Barn2Door point of sale. You of course need to have a Barn2Door storefront to actually use it. But it'll sync with live inventory for Farmers and allow them to take in-person payments.
What's great about it too is not just for digital payments, although that is gonna be the primary method in which customers will want to pay. Farmers can also use it to take cash and check payments [00:13:00] and still seamlessly manage all their inventory and take sales in person. So it's really just the best avenue to allow Farms to sell their products anywhere at any time.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay. You have to say something more about that because first of all, Farmers, absolutely. This is perfect. If they're at a Farmer's market, right, like all day, every day. We have some Farms that are at 20, 30, 40 Farmer's markets and they use the Barn2Door POS, which is just so fun to watch and them have so much success.
Where else might they use them?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, great question Janelle. One of the most common use cases would be an on-Farm store. This is a no-brainer to make sure they're using our point of sale as well. It's gonna allow you to sell all your products there in person. Whether it's you have consistent hours or just a once a day or once a week optionality for an on-Farm store it's gonna allow for easy, seamless checkout for customers. Probably another, really common one would be pickups and deliveries. So meeting customers at a local pickup. Maybe you're meeting them in a church parking lot or a coffee shop or some other local business. Bring some extra product with you as the [00:14:00] Farmer in case people want, maybe a couple extra packs of ground beef, for example, or a couple other dozen eggs.
As long as you have your card reader, and your mobile device, which, who's going anywhere without that, nowadays, you can ring up more products there and same with delivery. We have Farms that will bring it with them on their delivery routes. The exact same use case, just to have some extra product in the vehicle, to. Do any additional add-on sales for products that people are constantly adding on to their orders. We have other Farms put the point of sale reader in their purse, literally everywhere they go. You know, doing a pickup for their kids at a school, can easily sell products right then and there.
And then another great one would be local pop-ups, right? So if you have like a pop-up event or some kind of community event, wherever you're at, whether it's you're selling from a tent or you just have a little booth that's gonna allow Farmers to manage these in-person events and complete all their sales.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, so helpful. The point is, helping Farms be able to sell product literally anytime. So to have a mobile app, to Gary with them, if you will, and sell anywhere, anytime. I've worked a lot of years in the restaurant industry and it is very common for chefs to be like, [00:15:00] oh, I forgot to order.
Like, do you have a couple boxes of tomatoes? And a lot of Farms that I know intentionally are always carrying some extra produce or even to showcase something, that just came out of the ground or they had a bumper crop of right. If they're trying to move some extra products. So great to just be able to take that payment and then appropriately track that inventory, and catch all of the above. So pretty exciting. Okay. Very fun. Because the heart of Barn2Door is we're not building, you know, e-commerce or business software or POS just for anyone. We think about Farmers all day every day.
And what do they need to make more money to make it easier for themselves, to make it easier for the buyers we always say ditch the office work. How can we carve off more hours of their time in the back office and get 'em back out on the Farm or in front of people. And then of course, looking like a pro.
But when it comes to POS specifically, there are a number of things that this POS does because it is built for Farmers that it's not typical of just a generic, POS device, which makes us proud. This is why we're [00:16:00] here, this is why we exist. You mentioned seamless real time inventory. I think you and I have mentioned this multiple times because it is such a big deal.
If you're selling a whole chicken online and a whole chicken at the market, you can literally sell two chickens online and then two at the market five minutes later and it'll say minus four chickens. But the beauty of it is, is you might have sold the ones online for $25 each, a flat price and the ones in person might have been 3.4 pounds and 4.2 pounds, because you weighed the chicken. And it's still accurate inventory.
So that's a big deal, in terms of a seamless inventory, I could get into the weeds on this, but if you're selling a dozen eggs versus a case of eggs wholesale and a couple of dozen in person to consumers. It doesn't matter what unit size, or price, it's still gonna accurately, subtract from your inventory.
That was a big build by Barn2Door to make sure that Farmers, it was just easy that it just literally created zero work for them. And inventory would be completely seamless and accurate across wholesale, retail, different units. Even set weight versus, pay by weight, [00:17:00] et cetera.
So that's one of my favorites. Pick one of your favorites, Kevin, 'cause you talk to Farms every day, like what gets you excited about, can you believe it does this for Farmers? Because of course it does, 'cause that's why we're building it.
Kevin Soncrant: Well, I think a new favorite of mine's gonna be store credits for sure. But to add on to the real time inventory sink, just one other point that's really important for Farms to know is they can oversell with the inventory as well and the point of sale in person, which is a great feature if a Farmer happens to forget to update their inventory.
If something's still listed as sold out we trust the Farmer knows that they're holding two pounds of ground beef. They're cooler right behind them and if they have it right there, and even if it's sold out online, they can still sell it in person with the point of sale.
And then yeah, I mean the sell by weight or flat price functionality that you mentioned there, bears repeating because it is not common. There is not really any point of sale out there that allows Farmers to flip back and forth between flat pricing or selling by weight. You mentioned the chicken, right? If they have a price per pound set in the store, it'll automatically multiply the wait times, the price per pound one, the Farmer enters it in.
My favorite one, I would probably have to [00:18:00] give the edge to capture emails directly at time of purchase. We all know the customer list is so crucial to a Farm. Success and owning their own customers is even more important.
And unfortunately, a lot of point of sale devices out there, kind of have this gated off where Farms can't collect emails or if they can, they don't have access to them unless they pay for them or they use whatever email service that particular point of sale requires them to use. We've had Farms go and try and download their customer list and literally, physically can't. Get the emails unless they pay for them.
So Barn2Door allows for a seamless collection of that. As soon as that transaction's complete, there's a screen that'll pop up prompting the customer to enter their email address to be added to the email list. So really great feature.
And then, that will sync over as well, provided they have the MailChimp account and have that integrated and Barn2Door or they'll automatically sync over to their email list so when they go to send their next newsletter, those people will be on their customer list.
Janelle Maiocco: So to be clear, you're saying if it's a generic POS they don't have access to those customer emails. But with Barn2Door, they do.
Which is neat. If you [00:19:00] have ever listened to even a few of our podcasts or blogs or eBooks or, if you're a Farmer using Barn Door and you've gone to one of the connect sessions, which is hosted by other Farmers, you will hear, a lot of chest beating over email collection, because it is gold.
A podcast we recorded recently had a Farmer say, if my whole Farm was burning down, I would just grab my email list, I'd be fine. I'd rebuild my Farm. And it was just a drop the mic moment because it's like, yeah, if you have your customer list, you can rebuild, you can sell, you can build recurring revenue.
So that email list really is gold because it's those regular order reminders. And emailing people and that drives recurring sales. And we've seen it time and again, we have so many Farmers who purport to, every time they send out an email, it's like going to the ATM.
It's how you ensure sales. So really exciting. In particular the POS, I think we added that like a year plus ago or something like that. But just the fact that it captures emails right there when your customers paying and automatically then adds them to your [00:20:00] Barn2Door list.
And then of course, if you do have the integration with MailChimp, like Kevin was saying, it'll add it there as well.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah. Not, not to get too dark here, Janelle, but I do want to just add some context for Farmers to think about, like, especially for Farmers that rely on all their sales coming from Farmer's markets, if there's a, bad weather day in the market has to shut down, or God forbid it shuts down altogether and they haven't been. Growing their customer list, they're really outta luck. They're starting from scratch at that point.
Whereas if Farms are taking that seriously and diligently and every time they get the opportunity to, add to their customer list with every transaction, if that Farmer's market doesn't happen because of weather for a given week, they can send an email to all their customers and do like a one day delivery day or one day meetup to go and still accumulate sales. So they're not completely reliant on third parties that they have no control over.
Janelle Maiocco: I appreciate that, that wasn't too dark. Although I will say I know during onboarding on your team when Farmers first are getting set up, we see every size email list. We see no emails 'cause the Farmers just getting started. We [00:21:00] see Farms with thousands of emails, and everything in between.
When a Farmer is at a Farmer's market currently selling and not collecting emails, it literally like tears into the heart of the onboarding manager. Every time you know, the emoji with the screaming face. They're just mortified on behalf of the Farmer. They're like, oh my gosh, this is such a huge opportunity.
Collect emails at the Farmer market. It's like double duty at the market sell, but at the same time you're moving product. Capture emails and you're growing your customer list, so make it twice as worth your time to be at the market.
We have so many Farms that have used that exercise of collecting emails at a Farmer market to enter a new geography and be like, okay, here's my presence. Now I'm collecting these emails. Now I am emailing these people on non-Farm market days. I might add extra pickup or delivery. And now they're building into that community because they started at the Farmer market. And we're collecting emails. And that's just how you get your tendrils into the [00:22:00] entire community. Right. And just start to expand.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, particularly important for Farmers that want to get out of Farmer's markets as well. They want to get their Saturdays and Sundays back, you know, if they're able to do that effectively, they can do a once a week or once every couple week delivery instead. As long as they have a viable customer list that they can reach out to.
Janelle Maiocco: We have Farmers that love Farmer's markets and will be there forever and ever, and we have other Farmers that. Have done that as a marketing exercise, especially collecting emails and then building up their brand loyalty and then exiting sometimes those Farmer's markets, right?
Because they have the sales, replacing those days. So it gives Farmers optionality. I think that's what's miraculous and something that I think about often, and I know everybody else here does, which is how do we just keep giving Farmers power to make decisions for their business?
Do you wanna sell to all retail or wholesale? Do you wanna be at Farmer's markets or not? Do you wanna be\ in certain cities or not? Like where is it that you want to target? Do you wanna consolidate? We have Farmers that have consolidated Farmer's markets or consolidated [00:23:00] delivery days.
So it is just the power of being able to make those decisions for your business, and change up. Even what you're selling or how you're selling it. So there's a lot of good in that, that's for sure. POS gives you all the options. In terms of when and where you're selling, right.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, absolutely. Since we were talking about checkout options. Right. So one of the great options as well, when going to checkout is being able to have customers provide a tip.
It's something that some Farmers have trouble asking for. So if it's right there on a screen, it's really simple for them, right? They're able to go ahead and, just prompt people to leave a tip. People want to provide additional support for the Farms they're buying from for local businesses in general, and so giving them that optionality is really important.
There's. Three different preset amounts, which can be modified, and then a custom amount as well that anybody can enter in. We have custom tipping language as well that allows Farmers to choose between a variety of different options there but it really just gives them an opportunity to pay themselves a little bit more for all their hard work. So I can't understate this one enough.
Janelle Maiocco: People love to tip their Farmer and I [00:24:00] think that's great. But you know some Farmers are a little uncomfortable with that, because Farmers are like, look, I love that my buyers want to give me money but I don't like calling it a tip.
It just makes me uncomfortable. To Kevin's point, Farmers using POS and honestly the online store too, can alter the language, and even put in custom language for tip and I think, what are some of the things they can call it Donation, help cover fees.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, donation tip, help cover fees, and then gifts are the four preset options that they can choose from.
Janelle Maiocco: But it's just neat, right? Because you can customize that in a way that makes you as a Farmer that you're more comfortable. Still giving those buyers an opportunity to contribute. Awesome. Any other callouts?
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, a couple other custom options that we have are the ability to make custom items. So right there on the spot, if a Farmer doesn't happen to have an inventory item in their online store, before they add items to their cart, they're able to just click a button to add a custom item, which they can bring up any product that they want, right there in person. So if they have some unique product that they're selling is just a one-time thing, they can go ahead and create that.
I know I had a Farmer just [00:25:00] attend to an event and they were selling like. Custom artwork that they weren't gonna have in their storefront, and it was just a one-off sale, but they wanted to be able to sell it at that event. So they were able to just make a custom item for that.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that my brain was going through all the different ideas for custom items.
Kevin Soncrant: Yeah, it'd be great to see the most unique custom item that's been run through the point of sale. I couldn't even venture a guess.
But in addition to custom items, Farmers can also offer custom discounts so they can do cart level discounts when they're in the cart, they're provided with an option to add on a percentage or a dollar amount off the entire transaction. So if they want to give a discount for friends and family, maybe they want to do a military vet or a teacher discount. Maybe they have a loyal customer that they just wanna say an extra thanks to. They can give 'em a couple bucks off or a couple percentage points off their entire cart. It's just a seamless couple taps with their thumb to be able to initiate that and apply that part level discount.
Janelle Maiocco: Good. Love it. I really appreciate it. Certainly a lot to be thinking about and we're not done. We're gonna continue to build and I know actually that we're working on things [00:26:00] right now, so definitely keep an eye out for that. For the Farmers that are already using POS, and if you're a Farmer considering POS, well dig in right into the details on what it is that you need to be successful.
We love being helpful. Kevin, at the beginning, like if I'm a Farmer, curious about. Using the POS and I just signed up for Barn2Door and I run into you on one of my first calls. You're gonna explain to me how it works to get started, what does that look like?
Kevin Soncrant: Sure. Yeah. So that's actually very simple when it comes to getting started.
For our Farms, they just enter in a couple basic pieces of information in their online store, and then they're able to order that point of sale card reader, it's shipped directly to their door. They will be able to get that in usually like three to five business days after ordering it. So pretty quickly.
The device itself is only 59 bucks plus shipping. If they do standard shipping, it's only, an extra like 10 or 12 bucks. We're running a discount for every Farm right now, where within six months of purchasing that first reader, they actually get the 59 refunded back to their card as long as they do just a thousand [00:27:00] dollars in sales within first six months, of purchasing that device.
But once they purchased it, or even before, we'll give them a run through of how the point of sale actually works. So we'll have them download the free app on their phone and just walk them through doing a sample transaction, doing like a cash check, order, through the app.
Or if they don't have it or they can't download it or for whatever reason, they want us to show them, we can also just join from. A Google meeting from our devices as well, so I can connect my phone screen to that. I have the app on my phone as well. I'm able to go into my fake store and show them the ins and outs, cover some of these details and the features that are provided and show them exactly how this will work.
One thing we didn't get to as well is just in addition to how easy it is to use, the Farmers do also have a variety of pricing sheets available, which is really crucial because they might be selling. You know, we'll take ground beef for an example at eight, nine, $10 a pound at the Farmer's market.
But they might also, sell that to a wholesale customer and they might have placed a huge wholesale order doing delivery to them, and they needed an extra five pounds. With the different pricing sheets that we have, they're able to. [00:28:00] Have a wholesale price that is different than that retail price.
And they could even do a whole separate price for private pricing if they have, maybe local people get an even extra big discount. So all that's right there, it's very seamless. They click on the item, it'll have the different pricing sheet prices that are able to be added to the cart seamlessly.
Janelle Maiocco: All the fun. That is neat. I know. I was thinking if you're selling it to your sister, you better give her a discount. Right.
Kevin Soncrant: I would hope so.
Janelle Maiocco: But some Farms also have like clubs. They have beef clubs or a CSA club or membership or something like that. And so oftentimes those loyal customers have kind of a forever discount or slightly different pricing, that they get access to and so the Farmers can keep that entire price list per product, and quickly flip back and forth.
Same thing with wholesale. I actually love that you mentioned delivery because if a Farmer has their POS device and app with them when they're dropping off at a chef and then next, they're going to a consumer, just to retail homes or whatnot, it is easy for them to flip back and forth.
Between the pricing sheets, for all the same products and just choose, Hey, is [00:29:00] this a wholesale customer? Is it a retail customer or is it one of my member customers? It's literally so easy to just. Click the correct type of customer to get all the right pricing and units. 'Cause when I worked in the restaurant industry, chefs, they might actually scoot over to the Farmer market, but they're gonna be there at the crack of dawn when the trucks are getting unloaded.
Right. I worked for this awesome restaurant for a while and they just had the best creative menus and it changed frequently, like almost every day. So they would go to the Farmer market as the trucks were being unloaded. So that's pretty common too but nice to be able to have it all set up easy and take no time at checkout right, with the various customers and just have the flexibility for those Farmers to. Service and transact with any customer, regardless of whether they're wholesale, retail, or members, et cetera. So all the fun. We could talk about this forever.
Kevin Soncrant: We definitely could, and we will be able to, I'm sure we'll have some new features that'll come out soon and we'll probably do another podcast in about a year.
Janelle Maiocco: Well Kevin, thank you for joining us today. I really appreciate that. Any last words of wisdom or advice for any [00:30:00] of our Farms before we sign off?
Kevin Soncrant: Look for opportunities to do in-person sales. One thing that we didn't mention earlier, I'm glad you asked for last thing, is on Farm events, that's another great use case for the point of sale, but a great way for Farms to bring in some extra revenue, particularly in the off season. So like we have a Farmer that they do Farm to table.
Dinners and so they charge people to come eat the food that they grow on their Farm, cooked by a professional chef, right? Other Farms that'll do come pet the cows days Farm tours, like all of those are opportunities to get interest, get people to your Farm, and then once they're there, sell them more products that you have there in person with the point of sale.
So those are really just limited to your creativity and your desire to actually have people out to the property. But I promise you people want to come see your Farm and do events that are unique 'cause they're not things that they normally get to do. And so it's just a great opportunity to expand your offerings and make more money.
Janelle Maiocco: And I love the plug for the off season. We work with Farms to push for year round sales. Right. And there's a variety of ways to do that. POS events is a great example. And of [00:31:00] course they're naturally collecting all those emails every single time somebody's signing up for the dinner or buying something, at their on-Farm store or what may be so, juicy ideas.
See, this is what happens when you talk to members of the success team as you literally walk away with a million great ideas, for your Farm to be successful. And hopefully. deeper and deeper knowledge of a software that was built specifically for you to be successful. So that's sort of why we exist, to be honest, is to do whatever we can to help Farmers crush it, Farmers all across the country.
So thank you Kevin, for joining us on this week's podcast episode, at Barn2Door. As you may or may not know, we're humbled to support thousands of Independent Farmers across the country. We're delighted to offer services and tools to help Farmers make more money, ditch the office work and look like a pro.
We literally talk every day, especially Kevin to Farmers and Farmers. Working with Barn2Door can also go to office hours. Don't forget, Kevin mentioned that twice a day. Live human people waiting to help, or schedule one-on-one meetings with different team members on the success team.
If you're an independent Farmer just getting started, awesome or interested in [00:32:00] selling direct, great. Or if you have a really substantial business and you wanna simplify and get some time back, and build up that local customer base, please visit Barn2Door.com/learn-more. We'd love to talk to you. Thank you for tuning in today, 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 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 [00:33:00] time.