Weekly Veggie Box Success - Avoid CSA Overwhelm (Carrot Cashflow)

Hey farm, small farm, smart listeners, it's Diego. And today's an exciting day because I'm launching a brand new podcast, carrot cash flow. This is going to be a 100% business focused small farm podcast. While a lot of my episodes in the past have focused on business, they've also focused on other things like growing. The new podcast carrot cash flow will focus just on the business side of market farming. I'm going to be airing the first two episodes right here on farm, small farm, smart. If you enjoy those and you want to hear more episodes, then you're going to have to subscribe to carrot cash flow to listen to those episodes. This is something I've thought about for a long time. I've talked about it for a long time and it's something that's really a long time in the making. It completes the split of the podcast that I initiated last year and going forward, carrot cash flow will be for business and farm small farm smart right here will be for growing. Thank you for the support that you've given me throughout the years. This new podcast really came about because of you and for you, a lot of you asked for this, a lot of you wanted this and I know this is going to help a lot of you. So thank you, together we really made this happen. Also heads up, I'm really excited because I have a farm sales book called Ready Farmer One coming out in a few weeks. Stay tuned for that. Enjoy the new podcast and have a truly amazing farm business journey. Now let's get into it. It's carrot cash flow. Very cash flow, profitable farm business starts here and today we're talking, getting the most money you can for your product with a unique sales model with farmer, Vanarati. Welcome to carrot cash flow. I'm your host Diego, D-I-E-G-O. And today's episode of carrot cash flow, I'm talking to farmer, Vanarati. And she's someone who's doing something interesting at her farm to get the most that she can for her products. In the competitive market of Asheville, North Carolina, Van has had to try and find a way to stand out, a way to build a deeper connection with her customers. What she's found that worked for her was a unique CSA model that she calls her veggie box. It's a curated way for her customers to experience seasonal local vegetables. It takes into account some of the good things of a CSA but eliminates some of the bad things around a CSA. It's a really unique model that I think a lot of farms can apply to both meat and vegetables. And that, I think there's a lot of tips and tricks that you can use in this one to help your farm business. As a side note, Vanar will also be featured in my new upcoming book, Ready Farmer 1. The farmer's guide to create, design and market, an online farm store. That book will be dropping in a few weeks, stay tuned for that. Now let's jump right into the episode. This carrot cashflow would farmer, Vanna Roddy. I'm Vanna Roddy. I am a first generation young farmer. My farm's called Incumpus and I'm in Black Mountain, North Carolina, which is about 20 minutes outside of Asheville. Most of my sales go into Asheville through a customizable veggie box. I do a single farmer's market where I mostly sell flowers and I grow on a network of seven suburban front yards. Getting your start in the Asheville area, I've always heard that's a competitive area for farming. What was your experience like going into that market? When I first started farming, I definitely dreamed about the farmer's market. I loved being there as a customer. I assumed that I would do multiple markets and that would be my main sales outlet. My first season was spring of when COVID first hit and so not only was I struggling with competition against other established growers, I was really struggling with people not showing up to markets or market rules being constantly changing due to COVID. I think I'm one of those growers that benefited in one sense but also dealt with the whole new host of challenges because of the pandemic. I definitely came up with the whole veggie box program as a response to COVID. Most of my sales shifted to my online store which I had already had set up and almost a hundred percent of my revenue then started to become veggie boxes which people ordered directly from me and picked up at different locations around Asheville. With COVID, how did you start to build up that initial customer base for that veggie box program? I would say that my email list is my most powerful subscriber generation tool. I do a weekly email that outlines a bunch of recipe ideas based on what's currently in season so based on what I'm harvesting that week and there's direct links after all those recipes to then purchase a veggie box. I have about almost 400 subscribers to that email list and I generate new customers through that every day. People sign up for the email list directly on the homepage of my website and I also collect emails at the farmer's market. So the email list having recipes is that primarily how you would describe that newsletter. It's an email series that goes out or is it farm based but it has recipes in it or is it more recipe centric? I would say it's recipe centric. Occasionally, I do farm update especially right now as I'm in the middle of a big transition but it's mostly there to provide value for potential customers, gain trust, get them engaged with the program and then occasionally I'll do farm updates. You have a recipe in there and then it's after it is it sign up for our buy this produce. What's the verbage you're using to communicate, go here to buy? Absolutely. There's about six to seven recipes in the email but there's a link to purchase at the very top of the email and then there's the recipes and then a secondary link at the bottom so it's showing up twice for them. Also at the top of the email is just like here's what's in veggie boxes this week giving them an idea of what the hardest will look like then the recipes provide even more ideas as to how to use it and then they have multiple options to click and buy. Got it. How do you find recipes have worked as an email series? I don't know about the summit I've never asked people. I could see some people say yeah it's played out. People don't need that as much now they've seen it too much but it seems like it's really working for you, what's been your experience to getting success out of a recipe centric letter? Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with the particular customers that I'm chasing. Like my ideal customers are urban professionals or parents, people who just want to grab the box and go at the farmers market and then have a bunch of easy ways to prepare it. So I try to keep the recipes super simple, I want to keep their time in mind, they tend to be under 15, 20 minutes in preparation and so I'm really catering to the family, the busy family who just wants to be able to pick up their veggies, make a couple easy meals for the week and do it all again next week. Think about the veggie box, it's different than a CSA in your case, right? And what would you say makes it different than a CSA for somebody listening to this? Yeah, I'd say the biggest thing is that it's not the whole season long commitment. So folks can choose their subscription length and they can buy a single box which is $28, they can buy a one month subscription, so four boxes which the price goes down to $25 and then a three month subscription, $12 boxes the price goes down to $23 per box. So they're being incentivized to subscribe for longer but people have that flexibility. I see how that can be advantageous for the customer because some people get that 25 week paralysis of oh, I got to write a $900 check or whatever it comes out to right now and I'm not going to collect on all of that for 25 weeks. So this makes it easier for customers to potentially dip their toe in the water, participate in the program. With having subscribers that have different terms and different sign updates, how's that worked out in terms of crop planning? Yeah, it's interesting for sure. I tend to I'm at a pretty small scale and so I'm always struggling with can I accept the amount of customers that are interested this week in the winter time that's really true for me when the plants slow down. I'm always trying to fill Veggie Boxes compared to the amount of demand that the program has. In the summertime it flips. I have way more veggies than I have demand for the Veggie Box. And I imagine that's just because people have so many other options. And that's why I keep my one farmer's market. So I bring excess to the market. And then in the wintertime when things slow down, I have a cap. I can only accept like 20, 25 subscribers a week. And then the single box goes away. So in the wintertime they only have the option to purchase one month or three months. Got it. So you treat it as the longer subscribers in essence get priority or locked in spot. And then you only have so many spots to offer. If there's surplus spots, okay, for example, if you had 25 spots, if the three months filled up all 25, there's no one month, there's no single. If there was room after three months, then it goes to the one month and then it goes down to the one week box. Exactly. Got it. Where would you say your distribution is across those groups? If you had 100 customers, let's say 24 customers or 25 customers, like you do, where's that breakdown? Yeah. So about a month ago, I just brought the single boxes back historically. That was always most popular. But I found in recent months that the three month subscription is my is majority of my customer base. And again, I think a lot of that has to do with people just want to sign up and pick up their boxes for 12 weeks and then not have to think about it again for another three months. And so that also has to do with I have a really great core of people that re-subscribe every single month or every single three months. With the one box product, have you found that's been useful as a is a hook to get people to try where three months can be daunting up front. It's like a try it for one box. If this works, then go back. How's that worked? That's been the most powerful tool I have. Again, small growers know that the quality of their produce is when people try it, they want it again. And so with the single box, I allow people to customize it. And it's definitely a pain in the butt for me. But 75% of them end up turning into one month or three month subscribers. I also make little fridge magnets with QR codes. So every single new person who produces a single box gets their veggies. They get the email list and they also get this little fridge magnet with the QR code. My logo is on it. The website is on it. They can just scan it. And I just yeah, convenience is where you get people coming back. I like that. It takes them right to the store and then they can re up from there. What's made it successful for you to manage that in terms of logistics? You mentioned your small farm, relatively small customer base. So there's always going to be a limited amount of product. Does it just come down to your your online platform and really dialing in your inventory? So you're not overselling what you have? Definitely. And there's a lot of challenges that come with this. But I'd say I have it relatively dialed in at this point. I use square for my website and people customize at checkout. And what that looks like is they I have the entire list of what I'm growing for that season. And they have the opportunity to opt out of three items. So they can choose I don't like tomatoes. I'm going to opt out of those. I don't like kale. I'll opt out of that. And I will then give them double of something else that they do. With having customers order boxes in advance, there's a few options you can do to get those two customers. There's delivery. There's picking up at a farmer's market. There's picking up at just a other agreed upon location. What's if you found his worked best in terms of a model to one, make it convenient for customers to make it convenient for you. And three make it. So most people show up in a relatively tight window and show up. Yeah. So I have four pickup locations currently. I'm looking to scale that as I also scale the farm. But right now the main pickup location is at the farmer's market that I do. And that's really valuable for me because I'm already standing there. I already know I have say $250 in sales on the coolers behind me. And I'm just selling the excess on the table. So that feels really good to just show up to the farmer's market and know what I have. But my particular market really struggles with parking. And so I know that it's likely stressful for my customers to be driving around in circles trying to find a place to park. And that's why I started reaching out to mostly other local restaurants in the area. One of the main ones in West Asheville. It's an outdoor pickup location under a covered patio. So people don't even have to go in. They just park. They grab it. And then they're gone. A second one is at a distillery and a local distillery that makes really unique products. And the same story. They just there's great parking. They go in there. They grab it. They're gone. And then yeah, the third, the fourth location actually has cold storage. And so that's the biggest window that people have. Typically they only have an hour at the restaurants to come pick it up because they're sitting in a relatively open area. But the fourth pickup location has cold storage. They have about four hours that they can come pick it up. If that location with cold storage, do you stay at that location or is there just a cooler in the processes? Hey, they go in. They find their bag and they go. Yep. Because all the bags have names on them. They just let the staff know, hey, I'm Cameron. I'm picking up my veggie box and the staff will go and grab it for them. If you count the farmer's market, it is one day. Are you at the other two locations another day or another two days? Are those on different days? How's that work? Yeah. Farmer's market is Friday. And then the two kind of self-serve pickup locations are on the same day. I don't hang out at either of them. I just drop the boxes and go and they have different time windows to come pick them up. And then same story with the fourth pickup location with the cold storage that's on a Monday. And that's really close to where I live. That's in Black Mountain. And so I just drop them off. I go. And I've never had a problem getting people to come to the pickup locations, mostly because I've timed them so that people as they're getting off work can just stop and grab it and go home anyways. Yeah. Okay. So that's cool. So you're not even at these pickup locations. You're not they're waiting around for all the boxes to be claimed. They're just stacked or start the bags to be claimed. They're just there. And then customers come get them during the window and then that's it. Yeah. And I think that has been a challenge. Originally the only pickup location was the Farmer's market and then an in-person meeting in Black Mountain. And it is a very personal relationship because I have a small subscriber base of really, you know, consistent repeat customers. A lot of them have really missed that interaction as I've transitioned and as I've grown. But I don't really have a solution to that yet. Yeah. Yeah. What's the with a limited number of subscribers? Why so many pickup locations? Are they just in different geographic areas? And you're trying to make it more convenient versus Farmer's markets one. And you know, ex location is pickup two. Why so many? Yeah. Great question. I just created the additional two pickup locations like two weeks ago. And so originally with 30 subscribers, I only had two pickup points. But this fall I'm going from about 10,000 square feet in production to over an acre. And yeah. So I'm before I even put crops in the ground, I want to make sure that I have the other locations in order to grow my subscriber base. When you think about having that core subscriber base, the group that comes back weekend and a week out, how do you increase or build up that report? Is it just finding the right customer in the first place? I know that sounds how to even do that. But turnover in a lot of CSA programs is fairly large in some CSAs. And really, I think to be successful in a CSA model, really an online store model is you have 50 plus percent of your customer base that's just, quote, regular. And they come back all the time. Quality of produce gets you a little ways down the road to doing that. Packaging delivery price that helps along the way. But a lot of it is, well, hey, I could go by this produce somewhere else. What do you want to do to what do you think that makes that core sticky? Absolutely. I think the biggest benefit is just knowing who your ideal customer is. And at this point, I'm in my second season and as soon as an order comes in, I can tell this person is high maintenance. They want all of the options to opt out and they're contacting me additionally for more things. Whereas the orders that come in for three month subscriptions, they've opted out of nothing. They show up on time every single week. Those are the customers that I'm touching more. I'm going out of my way to follow up with and get them coming back and create a relationship. And it comes back to, again, what clients do I want to serve? And finding your niche in that way is, yeah, I'm really catering to the busy people, the people that are working and just want to grab the bag and go and make a quick meal. It was a newer business, a growing business. Sometimes there's pressure to say all customers are ones that I need to keep. I might not want to keep them all, but I need to keep them all. How do you reconcile between growing and the higher maintenance customers that in a perfect world, you'd rather replace with a more ideal customer? Yeah, it's a hard lesson I had to learn. There are a lot of missteps and challenges, definitely. There are customers who no matter what you do, they're not going to be happy. And so to me, there's no point in pursuing that customer. Whereas the customer who wants what you have and will show up every week to get it, those are the people that I spend my time getting to know and making sure that their needs are met. No, as you build up this core customer base, there's a couple of different ways to grow a business and a couple of different schools of thought on how to do it. One is you get more of those ideal customers. So you're just selling more product to more customers. Another is these customers that I have are really loyal. They're the super fans. And the strategy is I'm going to offer them more stuff. Maybe that's add-ons to the bags. Maybe that's flowers like you have. Maybe that's aggregating product. As you grow and look forward to growing, you're obviously adding more land. So growth is in the future. How do you think about growing? Is it scaling up getting more customers or is it about providing more to the customers that you already have? That's a great question. And at the end of the day, I think it's going to be more about providing more to the customers I already have. Because if I just wanted to move lots of product, I would be a wholesaler. But the Veggie Box program is super valuable to me because I get the highest dollar for what I'm putting in the boxes. And I'm providing equality and I'm providing service to these people. And so I'm able to charge what I want. And I think keeping that in mind as I grow is what's going to help me continue with this success. Because if I just start focusing on, OK, I've scaled up. Now I just need to move all this product really quickly. I think the heart of what the Veggie Box is would be a little diminished. If somebody wanted to add on, get more of what you had. Do you have a way to do that? Similar to their options to opt out at checkout on Square, they have options to add on. And currently, those options are flowers. So they can add on a bouquet. And they can add on seasoning blends. So I dehydrate green onions. I dehydrate poblano peppers and blend them with Cecil. I have three different blends. And people really love those. Because again, it's reinforcing the quick and easy meal model. So I'm bringing them one step closer to a complete meal, if I'm also offering them a seasoning to put on their vegetables, which I make from essentially waste products on farm, like the trimmings from green onion tops or what get dehydrated and put in the green onion blend, that kind of thing. And I am adding on the new land. We're getting laying hens this year. And so eggs will be an add on here in the future. In the past, I've added on other people's products, like bread and locally made chocolate. And those things were less popular. It was more of a hassle for me to keep them in stock and communicate with the other producers than it was to offer them at my scale at that time. I may try it again once I have a better facility for storing that stuff. But yeah, it was very seasonal to around Valentine's Day, the chocolates were popular and that kind of thing. One other thing in thinking of knowing that you started on a smaller amount of land. For somebody doing a program like this, I think initially there might be the inherent perceived obligation to provide a lot of diversity in the box. So customers need to get 10 crops, eight crops each week. You didn't have a lot of land to grow on. And that land was even probably a little more challenging 'cause it split up against a bunch of urban plots. When you put these bags together, how did you approach? Okay, it's not just salad going into the mix. It's not a salad subscription. But it's a veggie box of, I need to grow enough to keep it interesting, but I also have to realize, hey, I don't have a lot of land here. So I can't grow 50 different crops. How'd you end up it what you ended up with? Yeah, that's something that I've changed up a lot as I've observed the customer demands. And most of my career as a farmer, whether that was working for other people's farms or even my first year as a compass, I was a salad farmer. I was growing lettuce, really intensively, mostly salinovas. And I realized that it wasn't what I wanted to do. It wasn't what I preferred to eat either. And so I've really, it's been such a gift to be able to transition to veggie boxes for me because it allows me to grow more diversity. And again, you're right, there are some crops that just doesn't make sense to grow at a small scale. But the cool thing about the veggie boxes, I can charge whatever I want for that crop because I'm putting it into a box with a set price. So I grew potatoes on a small scale. And I love it. I grow broccoli and cabbages. I grow bulb onions and garlic and put them in veggie boxes. And those are all things that like traditionally, small farmers have said that they can't make money on. But I really enjoy it. I'm making a living. It's what I prefer to eat as well. Yeah, and it's what my customers really want. And again, because I'm year round, it also feels like I'm more of a valuable part of a real local food system when I can provide these higher nutrient value, higher calorie crops that are actually supporting people. So yeah, I really, I enjoy that aspect and I've enjoyed figuring out how to make that work for me. Given one other negative on CSAs or long-term CSAs, it's so much pressure to deliver on the farmer side. And I've heard people say things like, you get paid upfront, maybe say in March. And by the time you get to September, you feel like you're working for free 'cause you got paid so long ago. With these shorter subscriptions three months, do you feel like that solves some of those problems? One, it's less than the pressure. And then at least every three months, you're getting paid versus every. Well, that's not, what is that? Three months is 12 weeks versus six months later. - Definitely. I worked on a lot of CSA farms before I started my own farm and heard the same things over and over again, both from the customers and from the farmers. And the farmers especially, like, well, even the customers, everyone was ready for it to be done at the end of the season. Whereas this model occasionally, especially during the cold months, three months even feels like a long time, you know. When people end up resubscribing and there's that kind of turnover where the money starts coming in again, that feels great, obviously. But yeah, CSA is great for a lot of people. And this is the exact opposite of a CSA in a lot of ways. Just based on what I had observed from both farmer quality of life and the CSA customer. - Right on, I love what you're doing. I love the fact that here you're growing and expanding and that it's working for you. For people that want to check out what you're doing, follow along with you on Instagram, you know, maybe model what you're doing, where are the best places to go? - Absolutely. So you can find my farm on Instagram @encompassfarm. And if you're looking to grow in the same model using urban sites, using front yards, I provide a lot of growing content through encompass land design on Instagram. And my website isencompassfarm.com. - Thanks for listening to this episode of Carrot Cash Flow. you can learn more about Vanna and her Veggie Box program by checking the links to this episode. If you want to learn more about farm sales and marketing, stay tuned for my new book, Ready Farmer 1, the Farmers Guide to Create, Design, and Market in online farm store, which will be out in just a few weeks. Thanks for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it, but more importantly, I hope you do something with the information in this episode to make a more profitable farm business. I'm Diego and until next time, be nice, be thankful, and do the work.