Customizable Farm Shares: 4 Models for Local Food Businesses

Are you selling farm shares?

Subscribing to a farm share—otherwise known as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)—can be a great way for local-food lovers to support your business.

The classic CSA model is a “farmers choice,” where consumers embrace the element of surprise, not knowing what they’ll receive in each farm share. This model evolved over time, with many farmers, food hubs, and markets offering more-unique share styles.

When done right, offering transparency and flexibility to your farm share can keep your customers coming back—increasing retention rates and growing your sales.

Local Food Marketplace has long-supported sales of traditional farm shares and subscriptions (alongside other sales channels). Through our more recent “Subscription Builder” software—LFM enables farmers and food hubs to sell different types of customizable farm shares!

 Check out this video to watch LFM’s customizable subscription software in action!

Considering Customizable Options for Your Farm Share?

Keep reading to discover the top four ways that food businesses are adding flexibility to their farm shares! We’ve included some success stories of how real-life farmers and food hubs are leveraging LFM to sell their local produce.

What are the different types of customizable Farm Share CSAs?

Here are just some of the ways that single- and multi-producer organizations can offer flexible CSA-style farm shares:

• Buy-Down Model
• Farmers Choice + Add-on Items
• Flexible Farm Shares
• Fully Customizable Farm Shares

Local Food Marketplace supports all of these varieties of CSA models. Reach out today for a free demo to learn more.

What is a Buy-Down Farm Share?

In a buy-down farm share or buy-down CSA, customers pay a bulk subscription fee to the farmer ahead of the growing season. However, instead of receiving a weekly box, a credit is added to their account to spend as they wish!

This model creates loyalty between you and your customers (with credit to spend, they’ll keep coming back to your online store!). To succeed with this model, a software platform that offers transparency between you & your customer is key.

Buy-Down Model in Action! Stout Oak Farm

• Stout Oak Farm uses LFM’s software to offer a buy-down CSA model. Members purchase credits that they can spend at the Stout Oak farm store on veggies, seedlings, or other local food products. Before LFM, the farm-runners used a pen & paper to keep track of customer credits. That’s a lot of math! Moving to LFM’s platform made keeping track of this share effortless—and kept customers coming back. Read the Story!

“The Farm Store Credit Share our most administratively challenging share, and using LFM has been the best system we’ve had! It’s all online, customers can manage it themselves, and LFM keeps track of everything.” – Kate Donald, Stout Oak Farm

Including Add-Ons with your Farmer’s Choice Share.

Offering a traditional “farmers choice” CSA? Allowing shoppers to include “add-ons” with their weekly box gives shoppers more choice while bringing you more revenue. That extra jar of local jam or bundle of kale tacked on to their shares can add up!

This model is perfect for businesses that love the straightforwardness of a Farmer’s Choice Box, yet are looking for ways to sell more “extras” to shoppers—and increase their average order value. (Hint: we’ve written a whole guide about tips & tricks for growing the value of your online orders. Check it out here!!)

Add-Ons in Action! Blue Sky Organic Farms.

Blue Sky Organic Farms offers the best of their vegetable harvest in one weekly box. Shoppers don’t decide what goes in the box, but they can add extra goodies—like the local value-add goods that Blue Sky sources from local food producers across Arizona. Including add-ons to their box has grown sales opportunities for Blue Sky, plus made for happier customers!

Read Blue Sky’s Success Story Here!

“Blue Sky basically has four different sales channels. We reached out to LFM because we need ONE platform that had a shared availability and distribution solution. We’re selling even more now that we have an online presence for all our sales channels, not just CSA.” -Vicki Silvera, Blue Sky Organic Farms

What is a Flexible Farm Share?

With a flexible farm share, the farmer sets a price for their farm shares, and then includes a list of products available for substitution. The price of the box stays the same even if some items are substituted.

This is a great way for farm shares to accommodate allergies, preferences, and picky customers! If a certain veggie doesn’t work for a shopper, they can trade it for something else.

Many local food businesses offer an in-person “swap box” for folks to trade out vegetables they don’t like. With LFM’s subscription builder features—farmers can create an online swap box! It’s easier than ever to offer flexible farm shares.

Flexible Farm Shares in Action! Rosebird Farms

Rosebird Farms uses LFM to sell farm shares online. Through smart marketing, Andrea McAdow, the owner at Rosebird Farms has taught subscribers to get excited for the weekly email letting them know what to expect in this week’s farm share. From there, customers can login to LFM, review their items, swap products from a set list, and add more a-la-cart items.

Check out this video for a walk through of how Rosebird Farms uses email marketing to sell out her CSA in record time!

What is a Fully Customizable CSA?

With a fully customizable CSA, you put the choice in your shoppers’ hands! You create a base or suggested farm share, but before fulfilling orders, customers have the chance to make any changes they like! They can increase quantities, and remove or add items. Final price is determined by the exact items they have selected.

This option works best for businesses with very engaged customers who enjoy full control of their product selections. It’s a great way to let shoppers vary the amount of produce they buy each week, at a price that reflects the amount they take home.

This is truly a CSA model for the modern age, as full customization isn’t possible without powerful software support.

Fully Customizable Farm Shares in Action! Fiddlehead Farm

Fiddlehead Farm is committed to giving the CSA members the choice of everything they grow.

“LFM’s Subscription Builder allows us to ensure that we are only charging members for the vegetables they’re getting, and not penalizing them for wanting something different or for not wanting as many vegetables this week. We grow food and I want it to be eaten.” -Heather Coffey, Fiddlehead Farm

Read about Heather’s step-by-step process for creating customizable shares on LFM.

What Farm Share Works Best for your Business?

No matter what style of farm share you’re selling (from traditional to fully customizable), you need software that works with the unique needs of your business. LFM is an all-in-one platform that helps you plan, sell, and distribute local food. We support CSA subscriptions, retail sales, wholesale, and more, all from a single platform. Reach out today to learn how LFM can help your business.

Looking for more ways to grow your business and save time? Check out some free resources for farmers and food hubs:

• • • Read about how LFM helps one food hub work with over 50 producers:
      • “What helps is that LFM is organized in a way that as producers, we list inventory ourselves, set prices, and describe our own products. We maintain the transparency of sourcing—you can see where every product comes from and customers value that.” –Kate Donald, Stout Oak Farm
    • Looking to save time? Here’s how to gain 20 hours a week.
    • Check out our free Guide to CSA Retention
    • Want to keep up with all things Local Food Marketplace? Join our email list!