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Drip, drip, drip.
That’s how it feels when you’re struggling with your farm store’s sales volume. Customers are finding your website and placing orders, but the revenue isn’t flowing quickly enough to outweigh your farm’s operating expenses.
What’s the solution?
You need to increase your average order value and generate repeat business from loyal customers.
In this blog, we’ll share the two most powerful ways to boost profitability — bundles and subscription boxes — plus everything you need to know to get started.
Bundles and Subscription Boxes: The Basics
When customers visit your online farm store for the first time, they aren’t looking to stock their freezers — they’re looking to try your products. That’s why they often place piecemeal orders for a few pounds of chicken or two steaks.
Unfortunately, these small orders aren’t always profitable for your farm, and you might even spend more time and money fulfilling and delivering them than you make in revenue.
But there’s a win-win way to increase your average order quantity and frequency: offering bundles and subscriptions. Here’s a quick overview:
- Bundles are curated collections of your products offered at a slight discount to encourage shoppers to try (and get hooked on) your bestsellers. Customers will enjoy the value and variety, and you’ll benefit from higher average basket sizes.
- Subscriptions are recurring shipments of your customers’ favorite products. They entice customers to rely on your farm exclusively to stock their freezers with grassfed beef, chicken, and pork.
Combining these strategies can transform your farm’s revenue, but getting started can seem overwhelming. Let’s take a closer look at three simple steps to offer each of these sales-boosting products on your farm store website.
How To Offer Product Bundles
Bundles are a powerful marketing strategy that can increase your average basket size, making it easier to turn a profit on every single order.
Plus, bundles are a great way to promote your underperforming products, like less-common cuts of steak or unique items like housemade sausage.
Let’s explore how to create and sell bundles in your online farm store.
1. Build Excitement and Value
Focus on creating bundles that customers can’t turn down.
Clearly display the bundle’s actual value compared to the sticker price to show what a great deal they’re getting. For example, they can try all of your bestsellers (usually a $250 value) for $200 — a $50 savings.
Along with the right price, make sure your bundles include an exciting combination of products to inspire shoppers in the kitchen or at the grill. Here are some creative bundle ideas to try:
- Bestsellers box: Curate a bundle of your loyal customers’ favorite products. Include a few items from each category to give a well-rounded introduction to your farm’s selection.
- Summer grilling box: Lean into seasonal changes and get customers ready for grilling season. Include hand-cut steaks, convenient burger patties, and unique items like bratwurst. Consider adding a housemade seasoning blend for added value!
- Holiday box: Help customers prepare for holiday celebrations by offering preorders on must-have meats like whole turkeys, Cornish hens, and hams.
Creating these bundles eliminates shoppers’ decision fatigue, helping them feel more confident as they place larger orders.
2. Make Bundles Highly Visible
You’ve created enticing bundles — now it’s time to promote them.
These bundles should be the first option customers see when they visit your website, so place them at the top of your product pages.
Along with the right website placement, make sure you’re advertising bundles on your other marketing channels. Include them in your social media posts, and send email or SMS updates when seasonal bundles like grilling or holiday boxes are available.
Free Resource: How To Build a High-Converting Farm Store Website in 7 Simple Steps
3. Take a Smart Inventory Management Approach
Without the right inventory management approach, offering bundles can become a headache.
That’s why you should continue tracking inventory at the individual item level. Instead of treating each griller box as a unique product, think of it as selling multiple steaks, burgers, and chicken wings — keeping you organized whether you’re selling in bulk or individually.
Whether you’re focused on selling bundles or individual products, you need an order management system built for variable weight products like meat. This helps you earn customers’ trust by ensuring they get exactly what they pay for — down to the last ounce.
Related Read: Farm Store Inventory Management: 7 Best Practices
Product Bundle Success Story: Seven Sons Farm
Wondering what this strategy looks like in action? Seven Sons Farm, the founding team behind GrazeCart, has a full selection of bundle boxes that appeal to customers and drive sales.
Here’s what we love about the Seven Sons Farm bundle page:
- It’s the first category on their website’s menu, making it easy for customers to navigate to.
- Each listing includes a clear distinction between the boxes’ actual value and sticker price, highlighting how much customers can save when they purchase multiple products.
- Each product listing emphasizes the farm’s commitment to humane treatment, regenerative farming, and high quality.
Head to their website for more inspiration!
How To Manage Subscriptions
Want customers to depend on your farm store for all their protein needs? Then you need to make it as convenient as visiting the grocery store.
That’s where subscriptions come in.
With subscriptions, customers can opt into recurring deliveries of their favorite products, ensuring their refrigerators and freezers are always well-stocked with delicious, regeneratively-farmed meats.
Let’s look at our top three tips to launch and manage your subscription service.
1. Prompt at the Right Time
Customers are more likely to subscribe after you’ve won them over, so don’t ask them too early in their shopping journey.
Instead, include the subscription prompt on your checkout screen so they see it after they’ve explored your site, learned your family farm story, and built a full cart of delicious favorites.
Don’t forget to emphasize the benefits of subscribing! Highlight how much they can save (usually 5% to 10% on each order), and emphasize your flexible options.
2. Make Adjustments Easy
When it comes to subscriptions, customers want flexibility. The less trapped they feel in their subscription, the longer they’re likely to stay subscribed — and the more money they’ll spend.
Make it easy for customers to:
- Change their delivery cadence to be more or less frequent.
- Adjust their cart to add or remove products.
- Skip deliveries during holidays or vacations.
Managing these adjustments might seem like a lot of work, but your farm e-commerce solution should do the heavy-lifting. For example, GrazeCart includes subscription tools right out of the box — making it a breeze for you to fulfill these orders accurately and hassle-free.
Bonus Resource: The Complete Buyers' Guide to Farm E-Commerce Platforms
3. Send Timely Reminders
Successful farm subscriptions require excellent communication between you and your customers. They should never be surprised to see a charge on their credit card or a box of farm-fresh meat outside their door, so prioritize timely reminders on the status of their box.
Along with letting them skip or adjust their delivery, these reminders also give customers a chance to add products and spend even more on new arrivals or special seasonal products.
You probably don’t have the time or resources to manually write and send email and SMS updates, so make sure your farm e-commerce platform includes contact management and marketing features to simplify the process.
Subscription Success Story: Polyface Farms
Promoting your subscriptions the right way is crucial — and Polyface Farms, a GrazeCart customer, does a fantastic job of communicating with customers and encouraging them to subscribe.
They emphasize the benefits to customers, including a 5% discount on every order, guaranteed access to bestselling cuts, and easy cancellation and skipping.
They also make it easy for customers to understand how this service works, helping them feel more confident about their decision to subscribe.
How GrazeCart Makes It Easy To Manage Bundles and Subscriptions
Ready to increase your farm store’s revenue and customer retention? GrazeCart, our all-in-one farm management software, includes all the features you need.
With GrazeCart, you can:
- Create bundles and monitor inventory at the item level.
- Offer and manage subscriptions.
- Stay connected with customers through email and SMS.
- Build a custom website without complex coding.
- Monitor inventory levels and sell by weight.
- Offer perks to loyal customers.
- Launch preorders for seasonal products.
…and more! Explore our flexible pricing options or schedule a demo with one of our farm store experts today.
