- Mail Orders: This is classic ecommerce that would allow anyone in the world to order your value-added, shippable products.
- Restaraunt sales: Each restaurant has a unique username and password to log-in to your store where you list products available during a given week. The chef can reserve and pay for the items online and then arrange a drop-off.
- CSA Share Sales: Each spring thousands of CSAs sell shares to members - allow your members to pay online directly through your farm website.
-
Buying Club Sales: Your weekly customers can pick their items through
an online system so they get exactly what they want instead of the classic
CSA system. This one is the most unformed in my head and I am not sure
exactly how it will work or what type of farm it could serve. I am talking
to Neil Stauffer of the
Penn's
Corner Farm Alliance [2] this week about his ideas because he wants to run a
service like this in 2008.
Are there any other types of sales that you would like your farm to be able to make online? If you want to be involved in the design process, please make your voice heard and many of your requirements will go directly into the software.
We are using Google Checkout [3] which will allow you to create an immediate trust with your customers that is extremely important with credit card sales over the Internet. We will never hold your bank account information or the credit card numbers of your customers - we will allow Google to do the heavy lifting (and security) in this situation. The buying process will be completely on your Small Farm Central site, but when the customer is ready to checkout they will be sent to a Google site to finish the checkout process and then a link will allow them to come back to your farm website.
We are excited to bring this new product to you and hope that there will be some input from the community. There are several existing Small Farm Central members who are driving the development so far, but there is room for more voices. Leave a comment or contact us to get involved [4]. This service will be up and running for the Christmas rush.