Together Farms grassfed beef is one of a variety of meat products that can be chosen for a gift box.
Together Farms grassfed beef is one of a variety of meat products that can be chosen for a gift box.
With everything from streaming platforms to shampoo-conditioners being bought and resupplied with subscriptions, it’s only natural that meat CSAs are seeing a resurgence.
Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, is a business model where farms contract with consumers through a subscription-based delivery service for a particular product. This allows smaller farms to be competitive in personal, niche markets, while also strengthening communal bonds.
“It really seemed to be this amazing way to work within the framework of capitalism as we know it, but in a way that jives with different political ideals that I have, different environmental ideals that I have,” said Chaz Edens, owner of Edens Meats near Cedar Grove, North Carolina.
“I do think CSA has that ability to bring us together,” said Ben Grimes, the owner of Dawnbreaker Farms in Hurdle Mills, North Carolina. “It’s a great way to move the whole animal. It’s great way to build community. It’s a great way to get cashflow. And it’s also a great way to move a lot of product very efficiently.”
Edens and Grimes, along with fellow CSA farmer Noah Ranells, headlined a webinar hosted by the Food Animals Concern Trust, or FACT. CSAs and other direct-consumer-sales models are experiencing a renaissance in agriculture, with U.S. Department of Agriculture studies indicating that North Carolina experienced a 120% boom between 2012 and 2017.
Edens, Grimes and Ranells said establishing, marketing and running a CSA so that it’s profitable and growing can be tricky. Often, it’s about shaping the business in a distinctive way, so it stands out from the competition, while also meeting the needs and desire for convenience.
“That mutual commitment is — I mean, it’s much stronger than merely a thread that brings farmers together with consumers,” said Ranells, who operates Fickle Creek Farm in North Carolina. “You always have to be thinking: time is money.”
“How can we achieve providing great food to consumers? Can it makes sense and not work us to death?”
There are a number of features or operational considerations that prospective CSA farmers need to consider as they hash-out the particulars of their business:
“We thought that it might be a time not just to sell what we had in the freezer, but to really leverage that as an opportunity,” Edens said of his start-up. “To get people on board with the CSA concept, and to make a longer commitment to us.”
Edens defined three challenges that Edens Meats takes on with each customers and purchase that they make.
For one, Edens said it’s a challenge to figure out how his CSA operation could allow customers to customize their orders. It could be a matter of novelty or preference, he said, but also dietary preferences that dictate just what and how a product goes into the box. That wasn’t the case when he ran a fresh vegetable operation for charitable causes.
The second challenge, Edens said, was figuring out a scheme that enabled consumers to use different payment methods and payment plans depending on their own preferences or means. Many customers paid in advance, Edens noted, while some prefer a monthly or quarterly rate. Edens Meats advertises a farm family plan at $200 a month, a homesteader plan at $100 a month and a city slicker plan at $50.
Then, after experimenting with numerous platforms, Edens Meats now utilizes Braintree Payments.
Choosing a delivery system was the third challenge, Edens said. It can be difficult, but also rewarding to work in conjunction with other farms for deliveries. For example, Edens said it was impossible at times to schedule his meat deliveries that aligned well with vegetable deliveries by a partner, but there were also many situations where potential customers — in this case, breweries — liked the option to purchase eggs, vegetables, cheese and have them all delivered in one truck.
In the end, it’s often about building a sizable, committed membership for the CSA. Edens noted that unorthodox tactics — like, say, adding free brewery vouchers attached to orders — can bring new members in.
Grimes said he’s always changing his offerings to keep his online listings different, unique and eye-catching for perspective buyers. He offers free samples. He also typically avoids business jargon and sales measurements, like meat poundage, which often confuse or alienate perspective buyers who have a poor sense of scale. A CSA should be approachable.
And, in the end, Ranells said, a CSA operator has to be keenly aware of the market they occupy — whether that’s the little niche market of their local communities, or the global economy at large.
“Retail pricing dynamics can be difficult,” Ranells said. “If you’re not keeping track of your cash flows and risks, the process or relationships, then you can’t stick it on the customers when things go wrong.”
Contact: gabe.lagarde@ecpc.com
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