Turn Up the Heat: 5 Ways to Crush Holiday Meat and Veg Sales on Your Farm
Increase end-of-year market sales & prep for the future
There is a lot to consider when raising and selling livestock from your farm, so it can be easy to forget a marketing and sales strategy. While I know some farmers who have developed their sales skills (and even a persona!) over the years, and eventually grew to love it, cultivating sales and marketing know-how doesn’t come naturally to everyone.
If you find yourself struggling to achieve your sales goals, I recommend finding a partner farm that can help you move more products this season — or deciding that you, too, can become a pro when you allocate your time and resources wisely!
Confidence and joy in selling your products is absolutely essential; your customers will follow your lead. I believe you can do it!
Continue reading for five tips to turn up the heat and help you move your meat and other holiday products. One thing you should never forget about farm sales is the value of holiday marketing — take your vacation in January!
Why target holiday sales?
Local meat and farm products may well be more pricey than what consumers are seeing in the grocery stores. As small farmers, we have higher costs for inputs and processing, and you don’t need to compete with grocery store prices.
During the holidays, consumers are often willing to spend a little extra for food that they feel good about — delicious, humanely raised, and from a producer they know.
A survey by the Progressive Grocery found that 86% of shoppers were looking for high quality products during the holiday and more than half were willing to shop from a “high-quality retailer” (that’s you!) during the holiday season.
Differentiate your product
Make sure that consumers know why your farm products are special. Always talk about how they’re raised and emphasize your sustainable practices and any certifications that apply to your farm.
According to a recent survey by Deloitte, more than half of young consumers prefer sustainable products — and that trend isn’t going away.
On our farm shop, heritage breeds and heirloom products are of particular interest to shoppers; consumers are looking for unique and flavorful items that make their holiday dinner even more special. And as an independent farmer,
Provide certainty & offer pre-order options
One of the nicest — and most obvious — advantages of holiday marketing is that there is a very clear purchase deadline. While this may cause havoc on your end as you furiously manage a slew of orders, the good thing is that the hard deadline gives a real sense of urgency to consumers. Capitalize on your limited quantities to make your customers feel as though they’ll miss out on something great if they miss your order deadline (because they will!)
Given the all-at-once nature of the holidays, it is very important to put your inventory into an online ordering system. I know a few farmers who still stay up all night comparing spreadsheets and inventory on paper and Excel, but this is not where you want to be spending your limited time.
Offering pre-orders and advertising ordering ahead benefits everyone: you have peace of mind and your consumers know exactly what they owe, how to pay, and when they’ll receive their items.
Offering pre-orders on your farm shop ensures your consumers know exactly what they owe, how to pay, and when they’ll receive their items.
On our farm we load up our Grownby shop with our own organic vegetables, local turkeys, pies, and fruit. Our shoppers order weeks in advance and they pick up their products just a few days before the holidays.
We have a specific inventory, representing sales targets, and we share the shop link and order deadline details to all of our customers via email and social media.
I was lucky enough to be part of the development of the GrownBy inventory systems along with other farmers, so we made sure that there are lots of options for decimal weights, buying options, promo codes, unlimited pickup times and locations, and we continue to expand these options with regular updates.
Customers can pay by check or credit card, and receipts and reminders are all automated, which means we can spend more time tending to our farm duties and creating a solid marketing plan for our email contacts and social media followers. Before we sold on our GrownBy shop, we had much more limited offerings during the holidays due to time constraints.
In preparation for the holiday (meals), we set up a special one-time share for our customers to order in advance.The wide variety ensures that our customers can prepare fresh fall produce, with plenty of storage vegetables that will last through early winter. View the Thanksgiving Vegetable Share on our GrownBy shop.
Bundle your items around a theme and partner with local food purveyors to increase variety and visibility.
Although you might only grow vegetables or livestock, you know that your customers are going to be buying much more for their holiday meals — premade pies for dessert, fresh bread for stuffing, condiments, etc.
The more variety you offer, the better experience you can provide.
We partnered with other farmers and local food producers and started offering local turkeys, maple syrup, apples, and a selection of fresh pies from a local baker. Our customers can do most of their holiday shopping within our farm’s online shop.
When you’re picking additional products to order, do make sure that they reflect your farm’s values — for us, that’s high quality and local.
In addition to a pre-Thanksgiving special that includes a generous amount of our own organic produce, we offer add-on options for our own pasture-raised hens, maple syrup from local farms, and apples from local orchards all of which share our values and views on sustainable practices. View the Thanksgiving Apple add-ons.
On GrownBy, you’re able to offer multiple dates and times for pick-up, so your customers can order in advance.
Nail down timing & logistics now.
Being the supplier for a holiday feast isn’t without some pressure. If you don’t get that turkey to the table, someone will be upset! Again, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of using an online shop to manage your inventory to make sure that there are no mistakes.
Another consideration is freshness. When is the ideal time to deliver your products? Some local producers freeze their turkeys to guarantee certain weights. If that’s the case, be sure to get your turkeys to your customers several days in advance so they have time to defrost!
On the other hand, our local pies are best fresh. To accommodate it all, we offer separate pickup options for turkeys and pies for this reason — turkeys pickups on the weekend before the holiday and pies the day before! We appreciate the flexibility and unlimited pick-up options available on our sales platform, and your customers will, too!
Cook and take photos for future content.
Don’t forget to take time to enjoy the fruits of your labor! Please make sure you eat well this holiday season. For many of us, now is the time to recharge and put your feet up for a few moments.
As you’re cooking and preparing food with family, be sure to take photos to share with your community. It can save time for next year’s marketing campaign and even secure end of year sales when you showcase your delectable meats cooked to perfection.
We wish you the best of luck with your holiday sales!
Be sure to let us know any sales strategies and meat marketing ideas you have for conquering this hectic time of year.
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