Why should farms start to think about their online and offline sales more cohesively? As online offerings become more prevalent and in-person sales fluctuate with weather, health crises, and competition, being able to integrate online and offline sales is a crucial maneuver for success. Over the last 12 years, we have seen the positive impact multi-channel sales have on farmers, and because of this we have integrated online and in-person sales with the Local Food Marketplace platform! Now we support over 12,000 producers on our platform, and we continue to develop our software to optimize these sales.

So why should farmers bring together their online and offline sales? Here are a few critical reasons:

Better Customer Experience

• • Increased profits
    • By offering different sales channels, you can increase your customer reach. Many customers may prefer ordering online vs at your farmstand, store, or farmers market, and even the other way around.
  • Better customer experience & information
    • An integrated system provides a better customer experience – for example, customers can use account credits while shopping at your farmstand the same way they can use them online.
    • Regardless of where a customer makes their purchase with your farm, with the LFM system you can access complete customer purchasing and transaction history.

Better Data for Business Decisions

• • Up to date inventory – always!
    • Integrating all sales enables farms to have better inventory and information on what products are selling where.  Many farms find it challenging to track their product sales at farmers markets and farmstands and hence don’t have accurate data to make decisions.  Pulling that information into the same system used for online sales provides better information for decision making.
  • Valuable sales information at your fingertips
    • Where do you sell the most? What sells the best and where?
    • Using the LFM platform you can easily and quickly pull the data you need to make better business decisions at no additional cost!

Consolidated Reporting

• • No more tedious spreadsheets!
    • By integrating your online and offline sales with a platform like LFM, you can eliminate costly human errors and time consuming data entry.
  • Your entire farm can work from the same information.
    • From harvest team to pack team to the sales team, LFM utilizes specific users, reports, and features to maximize the information shared with your essential team members.
  • All your revenue in one place.
    • The key to successfully increasing profits is being able to monitor your revenue and margins all in one place. A cohesive revenue report that reflects your omnichannel sales is a direct way to a better business.
    • At LFM we offer robust, comprehensive reporting to all of our customers with no strings attached. We believe your data is yours, and it is essential for increasing your bottom line.

Marketing Integration

• • Use the data to send targeted messages
    • LFM now offers Mailchimp Integration to streamline your marketing! Quickly and easily compose targeted email campaigns to your customers based on data like first and last order dates, subscriptions, and more.
    • Create custom shopping lists and featured product lists that link directly to your storefront to embed directly in your Mailchimp emails.
    • Other popular examples of targeted messaging:
      • Send pre-order reminders to farmers market attendees.
      • Send event invitations and pickup reminders to CSA members
      • Send wholesale availability to restaurants, etc.

What are the real world examples?

• • Market style CSAs and shares. Accessing a customer’s account from the farmers market and adjusting for the items they’ve purchased on the fly allows you to track in detail how the customer has used their market style CSA and ensure accurate account details.
  • Customer pre-orders and pays at pickup.
  • Customer has account credit and wants to use it at the farmstand.
  • Farm wants to analyze top selling products for each farmers market.
  • Farm has limited products available and wants to offer them online and offline, without having to remember to update inventory.
  • Food hub has a store or stand and needs to track consigned inventory in store.

What is needed?

• • An easy-to-use customer interface for ordering online
  • An easy-to-use POS system for updating inventory live from the farmers market
  • A robust inventory management system

LFM offers all of these and more to deliver true omni-channel sales.

• • Customer Types & Price Levels
  • Square POS Integration
  • Mailchimp Integration with custom, embeddable featured products and shopping lists directly linked to the storefront
  • Inventory Management
  • Subscription and Membership features
  • Recurring Orders
  • Multiple ordering periods for custom distribution management and logistics optimization
  • Pick up and Delivery locations to coordinate online sales and in person distribution
  • Easy to use order interface for updating online orders with offline sales
  • Robust product setup to customize how and what you sell
  • …and so much more!