Managing Catch Weight vs. Fixed Weight: 6 Top Tips

What’s the difference between a box of cereal and a T-bone steak?

There are a few obvious answers, but what we’re looking at is how they’re packaged and sold. Unlike many packaged products, meat, produce, and other fresh ingredients are often sold by the pound, and for good reason. Selling a catch weight item at a fixed price can be damaging to your bottom line and the reputation of your brand.

Unfortunately, if you’re not careful, catch weight sales can also make your day-to-day operations more complex, especially if you sell online. 

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at catch weight vs. fixed weight inventory management, including:

• What the two terms mean
• Why adopting catch weight sales is important for farm stores
• Crucial tips for managing catch weight vs. fixed weight sales

Let’s dive in.

Catch Weight vs. Fixed Weight: The Basics

Let’s start by getting on the same page about our two key terms:

• Fixed weight products are packaged in uniform quantities and sold for one consistent price. They’re typically nonperishable items that you’d find on a grocery store shelf, like canned soups, bags of flour, and jarred sauces.
• Catch weight products are items like cuts of meat or produce that are sold by the exact weight. They’re usually sold this way because individual items can vary wildly in size.

Catch weight is typically the go-to approach for farmers and farm stores since it works best for perishable goods with variable yields. It also allows them to get the most value out of their stock since selling meat or produce at a fixed price could lead to undervaluing certain items.

That said, it’s worth noting that not all perishable items are necessarily sold by weight. For example, some products like frozen bagged vegetables or premade beef patties are consistent enough in size and quantity that they can be safely sold by the unit. 

Key Reasons To Adopt Catch-Weight Sales at Your Farm Store

Farmers are incredibly busy people, and the reality is that selling your products at a fixed weight is simply easier than weighing and pricing all your items. While we don’t dispute that, only selling items at a fixed weight has some fairly significant drawbacks.

Here are some important reasons why you should adopt catch weight sales at your farm store.

1. Most Customers Prefer It

When shopping for farm-fresh beef or locally caught seafood, most customers want to order and pay for the exact amount that fits into their budgets and meal plans. If you only offer fixed weight products, you’ll inconvenience shoppers who want to make a larger or smaller purchase. 

If a customer has a large family or a large appetite, they’ll have to visit your farm store more often than they’d like. If they want to try out a smaller portion than you offer, they’ll be frustrated about spending more than they originally planned.  

Even if you sell an item at an extremely fair cost, not having a transparent breakdown of the price per pound can make some customers leery. It will also have them wondering if they’re getting a good deal — after all, if you’re selling all your ribeyes for a fixed price, what if they’re getting a smaller one than another customer for the same price? 

Adopting a catch weight approach makes it easy to meet customers’ needs, build trust, and give them exactly what they want.

2. It Helps Reduce Waste

Another reason to opt for a catch weight management strategy is that it can help reduce waste.

If you sell your farm’s meats or produce in fixed weight quantities, you’ll be encouraged to avoid large variations in size. While large corporate food companies might be able to get their products to be roughly similar in size and shape, many farm-grown products lack that uniformity.

But if you’re tracking inventory as if your items are all the same, you probably don’t have a very accurate picture of what you actually have in storage. This can quickly lead to unexpected stockouts or spoilage when you underestimate your stock. 

A catch weight approach lets you sell your farm’s meats down to the last ounce, eliminating waste and maximizing profits. 

3. It Leads to Fairer Pricing and a Better Bottom Line

Another major difference to keep in mind when comparing a catch weight and fixed weight strategy is how products are priced. 

To price fixed weight products “fairly,” you’ll probably set a median or average price point. This can leave you selling items for far less than what they’re actually worth. Also, as we mentioned, the psychological effect that a fixed price has on customers might have you steadily lowering prices to seem like you’re offering a good deal. 

While selling catch weight items is more complex, it’s also more transparent, helps you better adjust prices to match seasonal changes, and allows you to get the full value of everything you sell. 

Catch Weight vs. Fixed Weight Items: 6 Top Management Tips

Knowing how, when, and why to sell an item by weight vs. a fixed cost is an important decision. More importantly, there are certain tools and systems that you need to ensure the shopping experience is transparent for customers and fulfillment is straightforward for you and your staff.

Here are our six top tips.

1. Use a Specialized Inventory Management System

The first and arguably most important point: If you’re still using spreadsheets and other traditional methods to track inventory, you’re asking for chaotic catch weight and fixed weight sales.

Why? Traditional processes require a lot of manual input for product and price information, necessitate manual lookup for checkout and order fulfillment, and are extremely slow and error-prone as a result. 

Instead, adopt a point of sale (POS) system that supports weight-based inventory management. With the right inventory system, you can add unique products, set whether it’s a fixed or catch weight item, enter an average weight for catch weight items, and set the price by pound.

This allows you to automate any weight-based pricing, simply by scanning an embedded barcode or using an integrated scale to weigh the item (more on both below). 

All of this information, combined with real-time inventory updates every time you make a sale, sets the foundation for a modern shopping experience both in store and online. It serves as a single source of truth for pricing and product information. 

Related Read: What Is the Best Farm Inventory Tool? 4 Things To Look For

2. Decide Which Products To Sell by Weight

Once you have your inventory system in place, it’s time to determine which products make sense to sell by weight and which can be sold by unit.

Despite us talking about catch weight vs. fixed weight, most farm stores shouldn’t take an all-or-nothing approach. Items like burger patties, egg cartons, jars of honey, and other items that can be consistently packaged are easier to sell by the unit. 

In other words, don’t give yourself extra work when you don’t have to. Knowing which products should be fixed weight allows you to reduce the number of steps at checkout and simplify the tracking. 

3. Invest in a Reliable Scale

One of the most important ingredients for catch weight management success is a reliable scale that integrates with your POS system. Use scales that are legal-for-trade to ensure you meet regulatory standards and to get pinpoint accuracy. 

Your scale is responsible for providing spot-on product weights and syncing them with your POS system to ensure accurate inventory counts and pricing. Ideally, you want a set of scales that work in multiple environments (e.g. in store and at a mobile event like a farmers market).

While it might be tempting to get a cheap but functional scale, we recommend investing in scales that can handle both basic and advanced weighing needs. This way, you won’t need to buy new equipment as your business grows.

4. Overcommunicate With Customers

Overcommunicating how you sell and price your items is essential for building trust with your customers. This is especially true if you sell online, since you won’t have a staff member there to jump in and clarify things for a confused customer. 

For in-store sales, make sure to clearly list prices on signage as well as actual weight and price on product labels and receipts. 

If you sell your products online, make sure every product description includes the price per pound and average weight for catch weight items. If you’re using a compatible farm e-commerce solution, this information automatically populates from your inventory management system.

You can also go above and beyond by creating a sign or including some lines on your website that explain your sourcing and weighing processes. This added layer of transparency helps educate and build long-term loyalty with customers. 

5. Use Labels

An integrated scale and label printer is crucial for building customers’ trust, streamlining the checkout process, and providing the freshest products possible. 

At its core, an integrated scale pulls product information from your POS system, allowing you to weigh an item and then instantly print a label with an embedded barcode to be scanned at checkout. These should include the name of the product, its weight, its exact price, and its expiration date. 

These can be used in two ways:

1. To weigh and price catch weight items quickly on request (e.g. at a meat counter)
2. To price prepackaged items that customers can take directly to checkout (e.g. frozen items)

For the latter, using labels also gives you an exact item count for inventory tracking, letting you know when it's time to restock your freezers and shelves.

Labels are also incredibly useful for homemade fixed weight items, as they allow your staff to ring them instantly without doing an item lookup or manually inputting prices.

Last, labels are a great marketing tool. Customize labels to include your farm store logo to help keep your brand top of mind whenever customers grab one of your products from the fridge.

6. Leverage Reports for Better Product Selection and Pricing

With a single system to manage all of your inventory, pricing, and sales, you’ll quickly generate invaluable data that can be used for smarter business decisions.

The reports and analytics tools on your POS or e-commerce system will combine and contextualize your sales, inventory, and customer data to give you visibility into things like:

• Bestselling products
• Profit margins and costs (by product, product category, etc.)
• Repeat customer purchase history
• Bestsellers by location (for online sales and deliveries)
• Compliance and traceability (e.g. batch, lot, or catch weight audit trails) 
• Seasonal trends
• Shrinkage and spoilage sources

These insights give you an unbiased view of store performance, which helps you make confident decisions about product selection and pricing. 

While it can be easy to get lost in the weeds when it comes to reporting, start with basics like seasonal trends and promotion performance. These help you optimize your merchandise planning and see the return on investment of your marketing strategies. 

Tackle Catch Weight and Fixed Weight Inventory With GrazeCart

When it comes to offering a convenient shopping experience at your farm store, having a system that can handle both fixed and catch weight items is essential.

While you might have no problem handling things the old-school way, it’ll quickly come to bite you as your business grows or you try to expand online or into new markets. 

Instead, futureproof your business while reducing admin by switching to GrazeCart. Our solution was built by independent farmers to specifically meet the challenges of selling fresh food. With features like sell-by-weight, subscriptions, and scale integrations, our system gives farm store owners everything they need for selling in store, at the farmers market, or online.

Take GrazeCart for a spin by launching your free, two-week trial today.