Farmers and Ranchers: Here are software resources for taking pre-orders online and either delivering or having your customers pickup at the market or another location. Some of this software is pretty good and some is not great at all. Check reviews and be clear about what your farm business needs. Please add comments below to share information.
WEBINAR: APRIL 24, 2020 E-Commerce During COVID-19: Opportunities for Food Producers to Make Direct Market Sales Online – from the Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association.
Software
Local Food Marketplace – comprehensive including farm management, traceability and sales. Well tested software used by many many farmers.
Vinder – Plenty of potential here for quick low cost startup for farmers. Add your product availability, sell it and distribute it pre-paid at pickup locations of your choice including your farmers market. New and getting better.
SnackShare – Austin Texas only. delivers CSAs for GreenGate Farms and New Leaf Farm (both near Austin). Delivers to selected Austin zip codes only as of March 2020.
Barn2Door.com newish, very well funded; they seem to have done a thorough needs analysis prior to launch. We’ll keep watching and would like to hear your comments below.
Harvie.com from the fabulous Small Farm Central, a leader in CSA management software for over a decade.
Software information in general
From Oregon Tilth webinar March 2020. Online Sales Platforms for Farmers
Direct Sales Platforms for Farmers (PDF) – National Young Farmers Coalition
Selling Real Farm Products in a Virtual Marketplace (2009) – Cornell
Additional Resources (thank you Oregon Tilth for the summary)
- How to Launch and Promote Your Market’s Online Store in Under Three Days
Local Line offers quick tips on using email, social media and word of mouth (see pages 6-11) to promote your online sales channel - GoodEgg Marketing’s Embrace Ecommerce to Survive COVID-19 blog
Covers everything from Instagram to Google Analytics - Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project’s Social Media Guide for Farmers
An overview of ways to use social media to connect with current and would-be customers - Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County’s Webinars
A free series to help you get better at social marketing, select the best e-commerce option for your business and increase the visibility of your website- View recording of Social Marketing for Farms and Food Entrepreneurs
- Register for E-commerce: Selling Online 101 (April 17) and Get Seen Online: Ten Tips For Your Food Business (May 1)
- University of Tennessee’s Online Marketing Webinar Series
The Center for Profitable Agriculture posted archived recordings of the 2018 series on online marketing tips, such as social media strategy, email, and digital marketing
Onchenda Open Global Food Cooperative is a Utah-based Public Benefit Corporation, that promotes regenerative agriculture and features an online farmers’ market currently serving the Wasatch Front. Our marketplace platform can be localized for other regions using the same core e-commerce platform. Local vendors can quickly set up their own online store on our platform. We handle digital marketing & sales, online payment processing, and order pick up, aggregation & delivery. Vendor registration is free, we just take a percentage of each online transaction. If you are interested in making this available in your area, please let me know.
https://Onchenda.com
This from Hohns Acres Farmstead near Austin TX https://www.hohnsacres.com
Hi Susan, We are currently use WordPress for our website with a plugin called WooCommerce for our Farm Store. It’s not the most intuitive system if you haven’t built website before — it’s definitely not a drag and drop type of system. Since I have a little bit of experience with it, we find it easiest to use since we don’t have to pay for it as a separate service. Also since we have meat items that are variable prices due to weight, we don’t use the parts for collecting payment. That’s how it works well as a pre-ordering type system — everything is set as a Cash on Delivery type of payment as people order then once we pull orders we send invoices via Square. Maybe this helps? ?
Amanda