As a farmer, managing your direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales on top of your daily tasks can feel impossible.
Part of this stems from using the wrong tools. When most farmers start selling their products at a farm store or online, they use generic retail point of sale (POS) software. However, it’s not long before those systems start creating headaches.
Using farm POS software makes for easier DTC sales because it’s designed with fresh food sales in mind. In this article, we’ll cover:
Let’s jump in.
Let’s start with the basics. Retailers use POS systems to:
That’s where the similarities end. For many retailers, a basic POS system gets the job done. This isn’t true for many specialty retailers, especially those selling fresh food.
While farms have a competitive advantage against grocery stores and online butchers when it comes to quality, they also have to compete on customer experience. Slow, manual processes eat away at any natural advantages your farm might have.
| ⚠️ A common headache: Weight-based sales |
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Here's an example of how basic POS systems often don't work for farmers. Unless you plan to risk selling your products at a standard price (and probably lose money), you want to sell by weight. |
Farm POS or e-commerce software (depending on whether you’re selling in person or online) includes all the basic features of a POS system, along with industry-specific tools like:
While businesses can modify POS software for fresh food sales, the fixes can make using it more complex. Also, it increases the chances of something breaking.
To simplify your DTC sales, you want a solution that has everything you need straight out of the box.
Long story short: Farm POS software is the key to simplifying your sales processes and creating a modern customer experience.
A farm POS system gathers everything you need for smoother DTC sales in one place — but what does that mean, exactly?
Let’s go into the six specific reasons a farm POS is a must-have for farm stores or farmers selling directly to customers.
Many farmers start off with a few chest freezers, a farm stand, and a spreadsheet to track it all. This might work in the early days, but it’ll crack under pressure as your sales and customer base grow.
Standardizing your inventory is the foundation of successful online or in-person farm sales. It creates the modern shopping experience that customers expect and allows your processes to scale as you grow.
Farm POS software allows you to digitize your inventory (even nonstandard items). Under each entry, you can track information like:
This information gives you a bird’s eye view of your total stock. It’s also essential for any kind of weight-based sale. Weight-based inventory management is relatively rare in standard POS systems, requiring grocery or farm store POS systems.
As you make sales, process meat, or harvest produce, you can easily keep your inventory updated. Accurate prices will ring up automatically. Consolidated inventory also allows you to understand your sales and costs more clearly.
| Pro tip |
Farm POS systems can link base products and custom inventory items for better profit and stock level tracking. For example, say you sell ground beef across five different products:
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Related Read: Farm Store vs. Farmers Market: What's the Better Option?
Payments are the first thing most people think of when you say “point of sale.” But you might be surprised to hear there’s a lot of variation in what types of payments different systems can handle.
At a minimum, your POS system should be able to accept all popular forms of payment — including cash, cards, and contactless payment.
Farm stores have a few additional payment-specific needs to consider:
A specialty POS system significantly streamlines weight-based sales by accurately pricing products every time — no more manually looking up prices every time you ring up a customer. Because the pricing is stored on your inventory system, you can quickly make seasonal pricing changes or monitor your profit margins, too.
If you sell online or handle bulk sales, you also want a system that can handle deposits since the pricing of actuals might differ from an estimate. Collecting customer payment information manually is both time-consuming and risky (e.g., if a disgruntled employee steals credit card info or you’re hacked).
Not all systems handle deposits the same way. Some systems charge customers a flat fee or a percentage of the estimate. Other systems (including GrazeCart) collect customer card information without a charge, then bill the correct amount automatically when your team packs and fulfills the order.
Compared to a retailer selling neatly labeled products, farmers sell mostly seasonal and homemade items, usually by weight, making basic sales and inventory tracking a lot more difficult.
Without an integrated scale and label printer, every time you make a sale, you’d need to:
Farm store POS software speeds up your sales processes significantly. With connected scales and label printers, you can:
Printing custom barcode labels is also helpful for selling homemade or nonstandard items. For both in-store and online sales, a label lets you simply scan an item and add it to an order, drastically speeding up checkout..
Related Read: Managing Catch Weight vs. Fixed Weight: 6 Top Tips
Building loyal customers is essential for any business, but especially for family-owned farm businesses. Farm POS software gives you tools to both track customer purchase history and to market to them more effectively.
Once customers make an account on your website or sign up for your loyalty program, your farm POS software tracks their purchase history. This is helpful in a few ways:
A note on personalized marketing: Don’t waste time on a marketing strategy by looking up each customers’ purchase history and sending out individual emails. Instead, personalize offers by creating customer segments.
| Customer segments: An example |
"Customer segments" is just a fancy way of saying, "separating customers by preference." Once you start tracking customer purchase histories, you can use your POS software to create segments (a.k.a. "customer groups"). For example:
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Customers are much more likely to act on offers that feel relevant to their interests, making segmentation a powerful tool in your toolkit.
Many farms price their products based on competitors and instinct. In our experience, this leads to farmers undervaluing their products and eroding their profits.
Farm POS software lets you track your costs and profit margins, both for individual items and across product categories. If one product category is over- or underperforming, you can take a deep dive to find out why and quickly adjust your prices.
Having everything in a central system also means that pricing changes won’t cause chaos. Update your price in inventory, and the POS applies the correct price for customers automatically.
On a practical note, accurate and consolidated sales and expense information is also helpful when preparing your taxes.
Speaking of sales and profit numbers, farm POS software can help your business grow. The reporting and analytics tools on your POS system contextualize your sales and inventory data to help you:
All of these metrics are key for finding areas for improvement and spotting growth opportunities. Reports won’t replace your gut instinct — but they will support that gut instinct with an honest view of store performance.
Some farmers choose one sales channel (e.g., a physical farm store, an online store) and stick to it. Others start one way, then grow into another.
Having farm POS software that syncs across channels is helpful for physical stores — and it’s an absolute must if you sell in multiple ways.
Put simply, a farm store POS should be able to update your inventory data no matter where your customers buy from you. So, for example, if you have a physical farm store but also sell select cuts online, a farm store POS system updates your in-store inventory when someone buys from your webstore.
This also ensures your system shows the right prices (including promotional prices) anywhere you sell.
Even for farm stores that only sell in person, syncing your stock online can improve the shopping experience for your customers. With an accurate online stock list, customers have another way to discover your business and browse your selection, motivating them to come in and make a purchase.
We get it: Finding a farm POS software you can trust with all of these features can seem daunting. That’s why we’ve done the hard work for you and outlined three of your best options.
If you’re looking for reliable, user-friendly farm POS software with all the features you need to take your operations to the next level, GrazeCart is your best choice.
Our farm POS was designed by independent farmers for farmers and is both powerful and user-friendly. All of our pricing tiers include the essential sell-by-weight and inventory functions farm stores of all sizes need to offer convenient DTC farm sales.
We offer both a fully featured e-commerce suite for farms that sell primarily online or a POS system for physical farm stores. Our features are powerful and easy to master, making it ideal for brand new and established farm businesses.
If you’re ready to get started, check out our pricing tiers to find a system that’s the right fit for your needs.
Barn2Door is a POS software solution specifically designed for the farming industry.
Barn2Door’s software allows you to sell your products directly to consumers, whether you’re running a physical farm stand or launching an e-commerce website. They also offer add-on design services to help you develop your farm’s brand.
While Barn2Door is a bit pricier than other options, they also manage your store logistics and website for you. What you lose in control, you gain back in time.
If you’re taking your first steps into the world of POS software, Square might be a solid option for your farm. With built-in payment processing, a user-friendly interface, and a few basic inventory features, Square can help you make sales more easily and keep your farm store running more smoothly.
The downside of Square is that it’s not a farm-specific POS solution, so it’s harder to manage sales by weight or track inventory across different produce bundles.
That said, not all farm stores need that level of detail. If you primarily sell fixed-weight items, then Square is a cost-effective and user-friendly option.
Choosing the right POS software for your business is a big deal. Farm POS software plays a major role in how you:
Many of our customers come to us after wasting time and effort on a generic (but cheap) POS that was never a good fit in the first place.
GrazeCart makes selling fresh food easy with powerful tools that are purpose-built for farm stores and DTC farm sales.
To see GrazeCart in action, schedule a personalized demo today.