7 Keys For Launching A Thriving On-Farm Store

Twelve years ago our farm converted a modest 8ft x 10ft garden shed into a self-serve farm store for the purpose of selling our pasture-raised eggs and meat products. To our amazement, since its launch this self-serve store model has sold nearly one and a half million in total sales. In 2014 we reached an all time high of over $300,000 in self-serve sales in a single year. Keep in mind we are not located on a busy road and we don’t spend money on advertising. How is this possible? In hindsight our strategy has been surprisingly simple. In this article I will layout 7 keys that I believe have been essential to the success of this modest little store. Key #1 – Choose The Right Location Any successful retail model requires a certain level of accessibility to a populated area. We are located 15-20 minutes from Fort Wayne Indiana, a city that has a population of around 250,000. While this has had a key impact on our success, I believe there’s hundreds of farms across the US that have this same advantage but fail to leverage it. One reason for this is that too many farms falsely assume that a store would require exposure to a heavily traveled road. We have proven that this assumption may not always be correct. Part of our farm has frontage on a heavily traveled road, however for several reasons we purposely chose to locate our store near our farmstead on a far less traveled road. Sheltering our store from the general public helps to ensure that the only customers who