00:00:00
00:00:01
Farm Storefront Best Practices
200 Plays1 day ago
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
Transcript
00:00:10
Speaker
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 Barn to Door, 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.
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome to the Independent Farmer podcast. I'm James, the Chief Operating Officer of Barnadore, and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners are aware, Barnadore helps independent farmers promote their own brand, manage sales online and in-person, and streamline their business to save time.
00:01:01
Speaker
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 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.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yeah, James, thanks for having me again. It's been a while, so I'm excited to be here. Well, you've done a fantastic job building our success team at Barnador. And for our listeners, you may not be familiar with your role and what you do here from day to day. I want to give folks just a little bit of overview on your background and then secondly, kind of what your remit is day to day.
00:01:47
Speaker
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 industry. So a lot of blue collar, general contractors, painters, movers, landscapers, those 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.
00:02:10
Speaker
Managed the entire managed services desk there and then ultimately found Barnador, which was a great blessing for me. It's been an ah 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. See, 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, while at the same time also still onboarding farms and working with farms in the account management phase as well. So you have 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. Well, I have to say it's been a real pleasure to watch your career just progress here at Barnadora. 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 much for your hard work and dedication to our farmers.
00:03:02
Speaker
And I'm really excited for our listeners today because Kevin has just gotten a lot of experiences, 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 going to 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 going to dig into each of those best practices.
00:03:27
Speaker
and learn from Kevin how your farm can be more successful. All right, Kevin, let's start with the first one. ah What's the first ingredient for success when farmers are thinking about building a direct market business? First and foremost, just need to have an online store to reach customers. And so for a lot of our farms,
00:03:46
Speaker
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 like looking at what it looks like to order from their farm, what type of 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 two, three, five, 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 to pin an item as a high priority item to market and bring it towards the top.
00:04:29
Speaker
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. So people are lazy is what you're telling me, right? Like realistically, people when they search something, they go to the farmer 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% of all purchases come off just those top pinned items for most of the farms we work with. Is that something like that?
00:04:59
Speaker
Correct. 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 100 items, same concept. Online shoppers are lazy. If they have to scroll through multiple pages of items to find what they're looking for, ah 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% of the revenue for the farm business and have those be the ones that are showing up online. Consolidate other products in the bundles or just focus on selling them any additional add-ons in person.
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great bit of feedback. At the end of the day, it reminds me a little like 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. Those entrees, that's the specialties of that 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.
00:06:08
Speaker
I'd imagine this kind of the same thing. You're going to increase conversion with fewer items in your store. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. Now 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. Let's talk a little bit more about the the store experience itself. What about the look, the feel, you know, imagine pictures, say a thousand words.
00:06:34
Speaker
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 and Android device.
00:06:52
Speaker
Take extremely high quality pictures right now. They don't need to be done by professional. Obviously having a professional do it do it can make it much better, but it's not a necessity. What is important is having pictures of your own products because people and 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 that they can be using those photos for their store to provide appealing pictures for their customers.
00:07:18
Speaker
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 for people to see and draw attention to a sale that's going on or having a promo code in the store and having that live can draw attention.
00:07:35
Speaker
promo is or what's seasonally available. Those banner messaging capabilities have 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.
00:07:58
Speaker
like many online shoppers. and I'm a a sucker for Promote Code, many people are. You give people a little bit of a discount and send them to shop, they're more likely to to to buy what's you what's on sale and and what you have available within your store.
00:08:10
Speaker
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 all available until the end of the month.
00:08:31
Speaker
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? Yeah, another really important factor is the the fulfillments, 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 option as pickup at a local farm or a local processor, if it's taken people 10, 20, 30 minutes to drive there, like beyond 10 miles, the 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.
00:09:19
Speaker
If it's inside of 10 miles, most people are 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.
00:09:44
Speaker
like 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 you.
00:10:00
Speaker
You've got a branded vehicle. It's essentially free advertising. At that point, you've got a lot of people waiting for products. It gives you opportunity to expand the customer base even further. The great thing about using like local businesses or churches or schools for pickup options, as well as 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.
00:10:24
Speaker
I know I purchase from at least five farms I have subscriptions from that I can think of. I know I can 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. I know that's another avenue because if a farmer is already at a market, they could even use that market as a pickup for a pre-order or for a standing subscription where I just pick it up at the market, which is what I do monthly.
00:10:51
Speaker
What about delivery? I know delivery is something ah several of our top performing farms have done. I know it can be a little intimidating for some farmers. What are your suggestions on delivery? Like when should a farm think about delivery and what are some of the things you should consider? 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.
00:11:27
Speaker
by charging a a delivery fee. So if you've never done delivery before, thinking about starting smalls, the 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 the 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 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. 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 passion proteins, which is a larger you know order value, I get that once a month. It's more than $150.
00:12:20
Speaker
I actually pay, I think, $12 to $15 per delivery. 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.
00:12:41
Speaker
But for delivery, like you said, people pay for delivery for everything these days. And I think farmers should be shy about charging a P5, 10, $15, depending on what their average order of value is. The other nice aspect of delivery too, especially within Barnador, is you can set a free delivery threshold as well. So I'm a 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.
00:13:08
Speaker
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 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 average order value. So a farmer I worked 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.
00:13:41
Speaker
Well, ah 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 her 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 talked about having a store, setting up convenient fulfillments. Talk to me about inventory. What does a good inventory look like for a farmer to drive their sales? Yeah.
00:14:10
Speaker
Really great question and really important point here, James, because ultimately this is another way to add convenience to people. It's going to be a theme that will continue down as 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.
00:14:38
Speaker
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 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 earlier, there James, yeah.
00:15:14
Speaker
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.
00:15:42
Speaker
and know what products going out the door every single month, guaranteed. The other thing our firms will do outside of just having bundles of subscriptions is some staple products of subscriptions, milk, eggs, ground beef, things that people are already buying regularly every single week, make great standalone subscription items as well that can drive that consistent revenue.
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah, I know I'm one of those lazy buyers where I just wanted 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 because it doesn't like tacos, right? Taco juice. 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?
00:16:29
Speaker
But I'm going to eat that product no matter what. So if it just saves me and Aaron 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 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. Just super important.
00:16:48
Speaker
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 million dollars a year, all of them, their 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've trust that farmer, why wouldn't I sign up for a subscription to just make it easy?
00:17:18
Speaker
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.
00:17:38
Speaker
they will list off potential options for customers. So a produce farm might just say, you know, seven to 10 pieces of seasonal produce. A protein farmer might give 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 and help them manage their inventory more effectively while it's also moving products like ground that's always on hand.
00:18:07
Speaker
Yep. That's exactly the bundle I get, Kevin. I know I always get a couple of steaks and I always get, I think anywhere from five to 10 pounds of crap 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 a diversity. And like you said, stay out of the freezer business forever. So, well, so those are three really good pieces of advice. A great store, convenient fulfillments, and the right inventory. What are the next two items? So let's let's start with the fourth one.
00:18:36
Speaker
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? Yeah, I mean, ultimately we need customers to sell to. And so utilizing the the customer management center within Barnador is crucial. It's easy to add emails from there. We provide a number of tactics as well outside of Barnador through our integration with Mailchimp with 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 head on for our fifth one as well. Our point of sale also allows them to capture emails. so
00:19:12
Speaker
But emails are a powerful tool. It's a 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 get 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 Barnard doors, a 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.
00:19:46
Speaker
maybe a friend and family, maybe a zip code of where they're at, a delivery zone, maybe like they buy bulk beef or bulk pork. They can name them a specific product. Ultimately, those groups allow you to set up targeted 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 the order reminders that are within this ah customer center because They can set up an automatic email that goes out consistently reminding their customers to go in place and order. We mentioned earlier, people are busy working nine to five. They got families. Your farm's are not always top of mind for them as it is for you. And so if a stay top of mind, getting in their inbox and getting in 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.
00:20:35
Speaker
It's a powerful tactic to drive consistent revenue. You mentioned it earlier too, James Falmo, 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.
00:20:54
Speaker
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 essentially work smarter, right? That's huge. The automation can save to 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 sells like gay.
00:21:15
Speaker
CrossFit group or something like that, where they've got like a group of buyers that they know 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.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And that's what's great about the groups too, is you literally can name it whatever you want. Nobody's going to 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. Super. Well, what's the last and probably one of the more important aspects here of being successful? You mentioned it earlier. Yeah, yeah it's the point of sale. So it allows our farmers to to capture payments in person, whether it be card, cash, check payments, Google, Apple Pay.
00:22:14
Speaker
It's ah a powerful tool that'll sync with the online store within Barnador and it's a huge time saver, but also again, a huge factor for convenience for shoppers. Because 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 sync to their phone. They have cards with them. So having a device that syncs with your your online store with Barnadores Point of Sale and allows you to take those payments is crucial to be ah successful in the long run. Beyond that, the device I kind of teased earlier, so I'll talk a bit more about it. It allows you to to collect emails as well. So when processing any transaction at the very end,
00:22:56
Speaker
It gives you the option to email them or see whether or not you email them a receipt, you'll still get the option and prompt to add them to your email list. And so it'll automatically add that customer email to your Barnador customer list where you can have an order reminder that goes out them, reminding them to order. You can sync with your mail chip contacts as well for any emails that you're sending through there. And beyond that, the point of sale device that is syncs directly with the online store. So any products that are alive in there can be sold.
00:23:22
Speaker
It automatically draws down the inventory, so a huge time saver for farmers to not have to go in manually, calculate inventory after doing in-person sales. It allows for the same payment capabilities in terms of selling things by set price or by ah variable weight, and then even has ah a promo functionality as well when checking out, can apply a discount to an order.
00:23:42
Speaker
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 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 They download the Barnador point of sale app on a a cell phone or ah an iPad or an Android device, iPhone, whatever it may be. It's free to download. You could literally go and download right now and test out a cash transaction that syncs with any products that are live in your store. That's amazing. I absolutely love the Barnador point of sale because it was actually built for farmers. right It's got all these unique capabilities. Of course, real-time inventory is synced, but the ability to sell by weight or fixed price, multiple price lists. There's just so many cool features here that
00:24:29
Speaker
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 of innovation. So if you haven't used it before, like Kevin said, you can go download it for free off of any of the op stores and check it out. Very slick.
00:24:49
Speaker
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 schedule to share these five steps to success and getting farm stores set up.
00:25:05
Speaker
ah 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 firm be successful. Thank you so much. Kevin, any last bits of advice or feedback before we drop off?
00:25:26
Speaker
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 and purchase regularly from you.
00:25:54
Speaker
Great wisdom. Thank you so much, Kevin. I want to extend my thanks to you for joining us on this week's podcast episode. And here at Barnadore, 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 SoundDirect, or if you've been at it a while and just simply want to streamline your business management, please visit us at Barnadore.com backslash Learn More.
00:26:20
Speaker
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 you joining you next time on the Independent Farmer podcast.
00:26:42
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn to Door, 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 barntodoor dot.com backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.