Fifth Crow Farm is a values-based, diversified organic farm in Pescadero, California, grounded in a deep commitment to sustainable land stewardship and community food systems.

For nearly two decades, they have been feeding their community through a mix of CSA, farmers markets, restaurants, and grocery accounts. But for founder Teresa Kurtak, the real turning point came when she decided to stop running wholesale through emails and spreadsheets and bring it fully online with Local Food Marketplace’s wholesale ordering software for farms.

Today, Teresa is one of LFM’s biggest advocates, and for good reason: the shift has transformed how her farm saves time, reduces errors, and serves customers across multiple sales channels.

Automated, Error-Free Ordering

Like many farms, Fifth Crow spent its early years managing wholesale orders manually.

“We farmed for five or six years doing everything by email and spreadsheet,” Teresa recalls. Before switching systems, wholesale orders came in by email and had to be manually transferred into spreadsheets, written out for the team, and then recreated again as invoices. “Every time you touch an order, there’s another chance to make a mistake,” she emphasizes.

Those mistakes can quickly add up — missed items, wrong quantities, unclear confirmations — and the admin work becomes relentless.

“Once you have the customer place the order themselves and the invoice is generated automatically from that same data, the number of errors drops dramatically,” she says. “It’s just tight. Simple. Everything is connected.”

“It totally baffles me how there are still farms doing everything by email or spreadsheet.”

—Teresa Kurtak, Fifth Crow Farm

 

Saving Hours Every Week

Today, Fifth Crow manages wholesale through LFM with far less manual effort.

Instead of recreating weekly product emails, Teresa simply tweaks existing listings:

“You do all this work once to create the product. After that, you just edit the price, update availability, maybe change the photo. I used to spend so much time copying and pasting into new emails every week. Now it’s just a few clicks.”

Between automatic order aggregation, invoicing, labels, and confirmations, the time savings are massive, freeing Teresa to focus on growing food instead of managing paperwork.

“Getting things set up takes time, there’s investment at the beginning. But then the time savings are just so immense.”

—Teresa Kurtak, Fifth Crow Farm

Built for Real Farm Complexity

One of Teresa’s favorite parts of LFM is how it supports multiple customer types with different needs.

For example, she can sell:

• Single bunches of kale to retail customers
• 12-bunch cases to restaurants
• 24-bunch cases to grocery stores

And control exactly who sees what.

“I might have 200 bunches of kale to sell wholesale, but I don’t want wholesalers to buy everything before my CSA members even log in,” she explains. “So I open my CSA ordering window six hours earlier. That way my CSA is taken care of first, and whatever’s left flows to wholesale automatically.”

This layered approach ensures every channel is served without overselling or last-minute scrambling.

 

Professionalizing the Operation

Moving online also forced Teresa to clarify things many farms struggle with — standard pack sizes, case quantities, and how products are grouped.

“When you have to create the product in the system, you have to think: what’s the unit? What’s the case size? What products belong next to each other? That process alone makes you way more efficient.”

Instead of relying on one person’s memory, Fifth Crow now has a clear digital record of every order, every edit, and every change, down to who made it and when.

“If someone is sick or out, nothing gets lost. Anyone on the team can open the order log and see exactly what happened.”

 

Smarter Accounting, Less Duplication

Fifth Crow also simplified its accounting workflow by letting LFM handle order-level detail.

“All our restaurant and CSA invoices live in LFM now,” Teresa says. “We don’t recreate them in QuickBooks anymore. We just deposit wholesale sales as a single bucket. All the detailed data is already in LFM and it’s more accessible than it ever was in QuickBooks.”

The result? Fewer systems, less duplication, and cleaner reporting.

The Bottom Line

After 18 years in business, Teresa is convinced that farms who are still running wholesale through emails and spreadsheets are carrying unnecessary weight.

“There’s an upfront investment to set everything up, yes. But the time savings are enormous. The error reduction is huge. And it forces you to professionalize in a way that just doesn’t happen when everything lives in one person’s inbox.”

For Fifth Crow Farm, bringing wholesale online with Local Food Marketplace wasn’t just a tech upgrade, it was a fundamental shift toward a more resilient, efficient, and scalable farm business.

Are you interested in learning how Local Food Marketplace can help your wholesale operation reduce errors, save time, and increase efficiency? Join our upcoming webinar with Teresa from Fifth Crow Farm!

FAQ: Online Wholesale Ordering for Farms

What is farm wholesale ordering software?
Farm wholesale ordering software lets customers place orders online while automatically generating invoices, order logs, and packing lists in one system.

How does online ordering reduce farm order errors?
When customers enter their own orders, the same data flows directly into invoices and fulfillment tools — eliminating manual re-entry and mistakes.

Can one system manage CSA, retail, and wholesale?
Yes. Platforms like Local Food Marketplace allow farms to set different pricing, pack sizes, and order windows for CSA members, restaurants, and grocery buyers.