Buying from a farm store takes more effort than swinging by the grocery store. Your customers drive a little farther and pay a little more. They’re choosing the harder option by shopping with you — and they’re doing it on purpose.
That effort is a sign of the potential you have to build a strong, lasting connection with these customers. And the best way to build and strengthen that connection is through customer appreciation. When you show your customers genuine gratitude, you build the kind of loyalty that leads to retained customers, word-of-mouth referrals, and so much more.
This post covers 12 actionable customer appreciation ideas specifically designed for farm stores and other farm-to-fork retailers. For each, we’ll discuss what it is, why it works, and how you can use it in your store.
Farm stores like yours don’t compete on price with standard grocery retailers or big-box stores. Your connection with your customer base is your biggest competitive advantage, and strengthening that connection is the best way to grow a stable business.
Your best customers are choosing pasture-raised chicken or locally-grown produce over the mass-produced alternatives because they care about more than just picking up ingredients for dinner. These customers are passionate about supporting local agriculture and operating in a world where they always know exactly where their food comes from.
Related Read: 5 Unsustainable Farming Practices To Avoid
These principled, repeat customers are the foundation of any sustainable farm business. They spend more money over time, refer their friends and neighbors, and serve as genuine advocates for what you’re doing. Every positive interaction you can create with these core customers is critical if you want to deepen your relationship with them and reinforce that critical loyalty.
With this core understanding of the importance of customer appreciation in your industry, let’s explore 12 specific tactics you can use to show your best customers how much you value them.
First impressions matter, especially when you’re trying to win a new loyal customer. A small welcome gift is one way to show your appreciation for your newest customers and give them a reason to remember you.
Your welcome gift doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be something as simple as including a recipe card in every first order with tips for how to cook the ingredients they just bought. You can also include a sample of a prepared product, like jam, or simply present their items in a branded reusable bag they’ll actually use.
The key to a great welcome gift is ensuring that it’s aligned with your farm. Make it useful, make it personal to your farm and what you sell, and make it affordable enough that you can do it consistently.
Related Read: How To Open a Farm Store: 5 Key Steps
A simple “thank you” goes further than you may think. After someone places an order or picks up their weekly subscription, take a moment to acknowledge it. You can thank them with a quick email or SMS message, or slip a note into their delivery box.
You can definitely automate this approach, but we recommend making it personal. Use their name, reference what they bought (if it makes sense), and make sure the tone of the message sounds like your voice and not a robotic automated message. If you do this right, it does wonders for reminding your customers that there’s a real person behind their purchase.
GrazeCart's email marketing tools make it easy to send these messages automatically while still keeping that personal touch.
Most of your customers choose you because they care about where their food comes from. You can strengthen their connection to your business by showing them some of the daily realities of running the farm.
Not sure where to start? Here are a few ideas:
These glimpses behind the curtain reinforce why farm-direct food costs what it does and why it's worth it. The more your customers understand your work, the more invested they are in your farm — and the more loyal they’ll be.
Related Read: 12 Creative Social Media Post Ideas for Your Farm-to-Fork Business
You can also bring your community together with community appreciation events like farm tours, seasonal dinners, or simple “meet the farmer” mornings in your on-farm store. These face-to-face connections are a great way to strengthen relationships both between yourself and your customers and among your customer base.
When your best customers have the chance to meet each other at one of your cooking classes or harvest parties, they’ll associate that sense of community with your brand. Plus, when people share photos and stories from your event, you're reaching potential new customers through authentic word-of-mouth marketing.
Rewarding repeat customers is one of the most tried-and-true ways to show appreciation for your best buyers. When you implement a loyalty program for your business, you give customers a tangible reason to keep choosing you over their other options.
Keep your loyalty program straightforward. A point-based system where customers earn rewards for every dollar spent works well. If you want to add a little more benefit (and complication), you can consider tiered levels that unlock special perks: your top-tier members get early access to limited products like Thanksgiving turkeys or spring lamb.
You can use an advanced point of sale solution like GrazeCart to manage your loyalty program without adding a ton of manual processes and headaches to your life. Our platform tracks customer purchase history and applies rewards automatically, making it easy to launch and maintain your loyalty program.
Everyone likes to feel special. A birthday discount or acknowledgment of how long a customer has supported your farm is an easy way to win extra goodwill with your best customers.
Use your point of sale system to set up automated birthday emails with a special discount code or offer a free add-on during their birthday month. If you don’t have the wiggle room in your margins to offer freebies and discounts for every birthday, still send the message. A simple “happy birthday from all of us at the farm!” can go a long way.
These touchpoints remind customers they're not just account numbers and dollar signs. When people feel seen and valued, they’re more likely to stick around.
Related Read: How To Increase Farm Store Profits: 10 Tips & Tools
Another simple customer appreciation idea involves creating an exclusive email list for your VIP customers. Send these insiders inside scoops, like new product announcements and early access to limited seasonal items. Whatever you decide to send to this list, make one thing clear: this list gets the best items first.
People appreciate feeling like they’re in the know. Giving your best customers early access to your newest and most exclusive products and updates will help them feel more connected to your farm, building more critical loyalty.
Your customers want to get the most out of everything they’re buying from you. If you can help them get more value from your products through educational content, providing that content can be a great way to build loyalty.
Some options for educational content you can provide via email or social media include:
The more confident customers feel about the benefits they’re getting from your products, the more satisfied they’ll be with their purchases, making them more likely to order again. Plus, providing this type of value-first content keeps your farm top of mind between orders.
Next, you can include unexpected extras in your customers’ orders or delivery boxes. These might include a sample of a new product or upgrading someone’s order at no additional cost, just because.
The advantage of surprise add-ons is that you don’t need to budget for them in every order. The surprise of the add-on is part of what makes this idea special. It makes the add-on feel like a genuine gift and gesture of appreciation rather than a coordinated marketing effort.
Done right, these small gestures feel personal and generous. They give customers something to talk about, which often leads to word-of-mouth referrals. And they cost you less than traditional farm advertising while creating far more goodwill.
Your happiest customers are your best marketers. When someone refers a friend or neighbor to your farm, acknowledge it by rewarding both the referrer and the new customer. The easier and more rewarding you make it for customers to refer their friends and family, the better.
Use your point of sale system to set up referral discount codes that benefit both parties. A classic approach is giving the referrer some store credit and providing their friend with a discount on their first order, but you can offer different benefits if it makes sense for your farm.
Appreciation isn’t always about gifts and discounts. Sometimes, the best way to display appreciation is by showing customers you value their time and care about their experience with your farm. You can accomplish this goal by doubling down on offering incredible customer service.
Some simple measures you can enact to improve customer service:
This kind of attentive service shows that you're interested in making sure the customer has a great experience with your farm, not just interested in trying to close a new subscription account.
Last but not least, you can run regular thank you campaigns throughout the year, aligning with the seasons that make sense for your farm.
You might send an end-of-harvest message thanking your customers for supporting a local farm through another growing season. Holiday cards or year-in-review emails are fantastic end-of-year options to help customers feel connected to your farm. If you’re using these year-end approaches, be sure to highlight everything you’ve achieved with your customers’ help this year.
These campaigns reinforce the shared values that initially drew customers to your farm. They remind people that their food choices have a real impact on the land, on animals, and on their local economy.
Related Read: Balancing Seasonal Cash Flow in Your Farm-to-Consumer Business: 4 Tips
These 12 customer appreciation ideas can all help you build relationships and loyalty with your best customers. But don’t worry; you don’t need to implement all 12 at once. Instead, we recommend reviewing the list and starting with two or three ideas that feel most natural to your farm, then expanding or shifting your approach from there.
The key to crushing your customer appreciation efforts, no matter what ideas you choose, is making your efforts systematic. And, if you want to systematize your customer appreciation and loyalty programs, you need the right tools.
The right POS system can help you track customer data, automate reminders, and create simple-to-follow processes your team will actually stick to. GrazeCart offers all the built-in customer loyalty, subscription management, and reporting features you need to help your customer appreciation ideas succeed.
Ready to see how GrazeCart can help you build stronger customer relationships? Explore our pricing options and find the right plan for your farm-to-fork business.