Background

Joseph and Kerly, originally from pharmacy and engineering backgrounds, discovered their true passion in the fields of northern California. When they opened Living Being Farms in 2020, they brought 13 years of farming experience and a love for growing. 

However, providing top-notch customer service while scaling a CSA–as well as managing multiple farmers markets and a family at home–proved to be a challenge. They needed some off-farm support.

The challenge: Scaling a sustainable CSA

After a few years in business, Joseph and Kerly quickly became well-known within their community, and could be found at multiple farmers’ markets every week. However, they recognized that they didn’t have an efficient way to capture shoppers’ information, whose busy schedules limited their farmers market visits. As a result, Joseph and Kerly had more occasional buyers than regulars–even if their customers wanted to do more to support the farm.  

Joseph and Kerly saw the opportunity to turn infrequent shoppers into subscribers with a CSA program that provided local home delivery. They couldn't find the right software solution to support their CSA model. There were high upfront costs, difficult setups, and missing features (like delivery route generation). Recognizing the potential to serve their community beyond the farmer’s market with a flexible, convenient CSA, Living Being Farms partnered with Farmhand.

The change

In a matter of days, Farmhand launched a secure, mobile-friendly website, online sign up form and managed platform for their CSA, and provided flyers and signage to display at their farmers markets.  

The new site quickly converted visitors into paying customers, thanks to Farmhand’s online subscription management, SMS alerts, and the flexibility to skip any week. And the customers weren’t the only happy ones–Joseph and Kerly loved how easy it was to use the platform, and how there were no upfront costs.

Within minutes of launching, Joseph and Kerly were able to eliminate hours of administrative work, passing off customer communications, delivery alerts, and invoicing to the team at Farmhand. Plus, with the ability to quickly print pack lists and generate delivery routes with one click on the Farmhand dashboard, Joseph and Kerly were able to refocus their attention to expanding their sales channels to wholesale, CSA and retail add-ons, and farmers markets–all run on Farmhand. 

In their own words, “Our CSA was a mess before you. We love knowing we can trust Farmhand with everything from communicating with our customers, to generating an optimized delivery route to save us time.”

Living Being Farm’s journey with Farmhand not only resulted in real growth, but also provided a solid system that can grow and scale alongside them.