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November 9, 2004: For Harmony Valley Farm,
CSA deliveries continue into December, but this time of the
year we also begin to get commitments from current and new
members for 2005. In our area, the Upper Midwest, many CSA
farms end their season in October and it is wise to broach
the topic of signing up for the next season while you are
still remembered fondly. An added bonus is that you may still
have a free way to distribute agreement forms, either in the
CSA boxes or alongside newsletters at the delivery sites,
if you don’t wait until after deliveries have ended.
And, to be brutally honest, in our case we want to approach
members before they have had the opportunity to tire of winter
veggies. Delivering into December means the members get a
hefty dose of root crops, some beloved (carrots and sweet
potatoes), some challenging (rutabagas and sunchokes.) The
winter boxes are treasured by many long-time members, but
they can catch new folks by surprise—having to learn
to use and enjoy six or seven new vegetables over the period
of a couple months is a challenge for some! So, while the
taste of tomatoes and watermelon are still recent memories,
we ask for commitments for next season.
Our return rate varies each year, but it
has been as high as 85 percent and as low as 75 percent. There
are lots of factors that effect return rate and not all are
under our control. The economy in our area is quite good,
relative to some other parts of the country, but more and
more people are feeling edgy about their job security. That
has played a part in returns in the past and we guess it could
easily be a factor in 2005. In 2002, after 9/11, early signups
were very difficult to come by. By January, people’s
confidence had begun bounce back and nearly 80 percent of
our members returned.
Whatever the reason, it is hard for us to NOT take it a bit
personally when a household doesn’t renew, even when
our rational minds tell us not to. Being perfectionists, we
are forever striving for return rates in the 90 percent range,
trying creative ways to meet our members’ needs. We
know that the foundation of our CSA is high quality produce,
delivered in a dependable way with a readable and informative
newsletter. We also know that sometimes that isn’t enough.
Over the years we have concluded the obvious: you can't please
everyone all the time. However, we have also made a less obvious
observation: CSA is a value added product, and much of that
added value is derived from “service.” So while
we can tweak the variety of produce in the box to some extent
to better meet our members' needs, we shouldn’t forget
that we can also tweak the type of service we offer to better
meet our members' needs.
Here are a few of the service-oriented plans we have used
to attract and keep members:
Every-other-week share
While many CSA farms offer two sizes of shares, we decided
after our first season to eliminate that aggravation. I used
to be adamant that offering a small and a large share was
just a very bad plan. Now I’ve seen the error in my
position: it is a bad plan for our farm. We bunch many items
for wholesale, our market stand and to sell to retailers.
It is inefficient and problematic to make smaller bunches
for those small CSA shares. As a result, every time a bunched
item is in the box, the small share gets a bigger bunch than
it should. Repeat this scenario for bulky items like cabbage,
watermelon, cauliflower and you end up either giving the small
boxes a reduced variety of items, giving them more than their
share, or creating a sorting, harvesting and packing nightmare
trying to pull and keep separate small cauliflower, small
watermelon, etc.
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Maybe we were just not organized enough to keep the details
straight that two box sizes require, but we keep a lot of
other details straight and this one just seemed like a complication
that didn’t have enough payback to make it worth it.
Believe me, our farm crew was 100 percent behind our decision
to drop the smaller box size. I could write an entire article
to dissuade CSA farmers from having two size options unless
they offer a bulk box/pack-your-own type of set up, but I
think it's best to just get down off the soap box.
The second year, without a half-share option, our small member
households felt left out in the cold. We, of course, encouraged
them to split a box with another small family, but that didn’t
work for everyone. So, a member gave us the simple idea of
selling a box that was the same size, but just delivered every
other week. It has worked great! Freshness hasn’t been
a problem because everything starts so fresh and we deliver
it using a refrigerated truck. When fragile items, like raspberries,
are included in the box, the members get used to the idea
of eating those items first. We charge more than half the
cost of a regular share because an every-other-week membership
still incurs the same overhead of bookkeeping time, newsletter
writing and printing time, and delivery time. For the 2005
season, an every-other-week box will cost $365 for 15 boxes
delivered over 34 weeks. The weekly vegetable share costs
$640 for 30 boxes delivered in the same time span.
There can always be hidden consequences to new plans but
by pricing the every other week share in a way that creates
equivalent compensation to us as a weekly box, we really don’t
have a preference which membership a family chooses. We had
no idea what percent of our members would pick an every-other-week
share, but it has leveled out at about 30 percent. On the
downside, of those 30 percent, you know some of them are going
to get mixed up on what week they are supposed to pick up
their box. It does happen, but I can’t say we feel it
is a serious issue. A significant, unforeseen benefit is that
it offers new members a less costly way to try out CSA. Our
members tell us that their friends are much more willing to
pay $365 for something they aren’t yet sure of, than
over $600 for a weekly share. We are going to continue to
offer the every-other-week share. Perhaps you should consider
it for your CSA if half-shares are not working.
Helping members with waste
Everyone hates paying for something they don’t use.
Sometimes members don’t use what they bring home in
their box. It spoils in their refrigerator. They waste it,
and they hate waste. Too much waste means a member doesn’t
want to renew, so we give them lots of help in this department:
recipes in our weekly newsletter, free or discounted cookbooks,
member tips posted on our website, and soon, a way to find
indexed recipes from previous year newsletters on our website.
Short of cooking it for them, help is there! We even had veteran
members offer to serve as mentors to new members who were
being introduced to new foods for the first time. The mentor
program has not been well utilized in the 12 months since
a creative group of members put out the offer, but we still
think it has potential. Our core group will put their brains
to work on this one this winter.
Flex plan
Another way members pay for something they don’t use
and feel like they have wasted their money is when they can’t
pick up their box on delivery day. Fitting in a trip to the
delivery site each week can be challenging for some of our
busiest or most disorganized households. When it came to sign
up time again last spring, we heard this line more than once:
“I’m just too busy (or away from home too much)
in the summer.” This year we tackled that problem by
creating the “flex plan.” If weekly or every-other-week
shares don’t work, then we let members pick the weeks
they want deliveries. They must buy at least 15 boxes (weekly
members receive 30.) Members can either fill out a delivery
calendar upon sign up or they can call ahead to skip a delivery.
Received boxes are subtracted from the total purchased and
when they have received all that they have paid for, their
season of membership ends.
We knew we’d need a fool-proof way of keeping track
of each flex plan schedule and that there would be a cost
to do so. We used weekly planner software to keep track of
the flex plan deliveries and we tacked on an additional charge.
The flex plan per box cost came in at $25 per box, nearly
$5 more than the cheapest weekly option and a couple dollars
more per box than the regular every-other-week plan.
We didn’t introduce the flex plan until more than half
of our membership had signed up this past spring, so we had
only a handful of flex plan participants. Our bookkeeper breathed
a sign of relief knowing that the “experiment”
was less risky with fewer members. As it turns out, the scheduling
was easy and not very time consuming. With most of our season
over we have a good record. No errors were made on our part
or on the part of the members participating. We have yet to
get much feedback from the members, positive or negative,
but we plan to offer it again in 2005.
Perhaps the flex plan will never have extremely wide appeal
because we let our members know that with a few days advance
notice we can arrange to deliver their box to a different
site or, if they are every-other-week members, we can switch
the weekend on which they pick up, then switch it back when
they are back in town. Once we established a system for recording
phone or e-mail change requests it really became a simple
matter. Most members who do ask to make a change do so only
once in a season, but it really means a lot to them. They
appreciate each and every box and don’t want to miss
out. We are often told how much it means to them that we are
flexible.
Maintaining a connection when membership
ends
Pre-paid cards:
Finally, for members who have decided not to renew, but who
love our produce and want to support us (this describes 90
percent of the folks who choose to drop out) we are trying
a pre-paid “Supporter” card. We have had the suggestion
from members who are dropping out at least once a year for
several years now. They buy a card that is redeemable at our
farmers’ market stand and that gives them a discount
on what they buy.
I decided to take the suggestion more seriously this year,
and so I made a mock up of a “Supporter” card
to bring to our upcoming core group meeting. We’ll be
running this idea by the group: For $95, the purchaser receives
a pre-paid card the size of a business card with numbers printed
on the front equaling $100. When a purchase is made at our
market stand, we'll mark off the value of the purchase by
punching or slashing the numbers on the card face equivalent
to the purchase total. We think 5 percent is about the smallest
discount one could offer and not make it insignificant, but
we don't want it to be greater than the discount CSA members
receive. Our CSA members generally receive 5 percent more
in produce than if they had purchased it from our market stand.
We find that if we charge less than that for a share, or give
members more produce value than that, we don’t have
a sustainable, viable business.
Whether core group advisors will react positively to the
card idea I can’t guess. Richard and I have been pretty
lukewarm about the idea in the past, but it would be very
low-cost and low-risk to implement. We’ll take our core
group’s advice about this one.
Web pre-orders:
Recognizing that households do opt out of CSA with the intention
of shopping more at our market stand (and thus gaining more
choice), we are trying to make it easier for them in another
way. We vend at a very large market, crowded and unfriendly
to the serious, busy shopper, but one that offers great rewards
in its varied selection of quality, local products. To reduce
shopper frustration in dealing with the crowds, we are offering
pre-ordering on our website. Shoppers can view a list of what
we will be selling and how much it costs. Then they fill out
a quick form, essentially an e-mail to us placing an order
that we will have reserved and ready for them when they arrive
at our stand. We hope this makes shopping at our market stand
easier and increases the actual number of times they attend,
since even the most well-intentioned former members don’t
shop very regularly.
I hope these ideas for how to offer improved services to
CSA members stimulates ideas for ways your members might be
better served, making your CSA more sustainable and viable.
I can’t emphasize enough that creative options are not
a substitute for what CSA is fundamentally about: your fresh,
high quality produce. But you already knew that! 
I would find it very interesting
to hear of the many creative ways other CSA farmers have
tried to meet member needs through alternative seasons,
quantities, vegetable combinations or other services. I
can be reached at harmony@mwt.net.
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