Author: Harvie

In over 15 years working on farms and around farms, I’ve never seen anything like the last few weeks in the local food market. As restaurants close and cities shut down, the local food market is booming.

Our farmer’s sales at Harvie are up almost 200% in the pandemic crisis. If you are in the business of selling local food to consumers, you know how in-demand your products are right now!

It seems like a convergence of factors: people want to be closer to their food producers for perceived safety; they realized that maybe the grocery stores won’t always be full of food; they want to support their immune systems to fight this virus; they are cooking at home a lot more so they want great ingredients to cook with.

It all has resulted in a surge of demand for our food.

To be fair, this is also a difficult time of change. For farms that relied on restaurant or wholesale sales, there is a lot of pain ahead. Some farmers market are shutting down or requiring online pre-orders — many farmers are using Harvie for this. Many farmers are starting to do home delivery, which comes with many challenges — and Harvie is also built for this.

I have put everything on the line — financially, emotionally, and professionally — to build Harvie over the last 5 years. So to have worked on this problem of direct-to-consumer farm sales for years and now to have Harvie be part of the solution, it is gratifying to me. In times like these, it feels good to be useful.

One question I have: how long will this surge of demand last? Once we get beyond the crux of this crisis, will the demand continue? I think to an extent it will continue, but it is important to build systems on your farm that are habit-forming for these new customers, like building a subscription/membership program into your business like Harvie is built on. I think this is really important for long term business sustainability.

I wrote up a press release about the surge in demand which I will paste to the bottom of this email or grab it here:
https://www.harvie.farm/blog/press-release-demand-for-local-food-skyrockets-in-pandemic-crisis/

Please share this story with anyone you know in the media so we can get some press about what is going on in our industry.

I also want to put a huge shout-out to the team here at Harvie that has been working long hours since the beginning of this crisis to on-board new farmers, support new consumer members, set up pop-up farm stand sales, and build new tools into the Harvie platform. They have shown their commitment to this work and I couldn’t do it without them.

I’m interested in your stories. Are you seeing demand spike in your neck of the woods? What factors do you think are contributing to this increase in interest?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 3/29/2020

Contact

Simon Huntley
CEO, Harvie
412-352-9673
simon@harvie.farm
http://harvie.farm

Demand for Local Food Skyrockets in Pandemic Crisis

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Demand for local food on Harvie’s farm-to-consumer platform is up over 200% in COVID-19 crisis.

“It’s a convergence of factors,” says Simon Huntley of Harvie, “all of a sudden as grocery stores have been emptied, restaurants are closed, people are cooking at home more, and people want to take care of their health. In response, they want to secure local food directly from their local farmers.”

Harvie works with over 150 farms across the United States and Canada helping farms run a farm share which is a farm membership program (inspired by Community Supported Agriculture – CSA – programs) where local consumers can buy a flexible, customizable membership from a local farm and get deliveries throughout the growing season direct from their local farm. Consumers also have the option of purchasing one time orders through the farms.

“We’ve never seen demand quite like this for food from our farmers. We sent out an email to a few hundred people offering a home delivered farm box and ended up receiving more than an order per minute until we had to shut down sign ups. We originally weren’t planning to make deliveries until May, but circumstances have changed. For now the demand is outstripping the infrastructure for deliveries. We are working to expand our capacity to meet the expanded demand,” says Neil Stauffer, General Manager of Harvie Farms Pittsburgh which organizes home deliveries from multiple farms in the Pittsburgh area.

Buying a Harvie farm share or a CSA box from a farmer is a concrete way to support individual health, support a farmer, and ensure high quality food in the kitchen all season long.

Lisa Duff from Oak Spring Farm in Freeland, Maryland says, “There is an outburst of demand by customers who’ve never purchased from us before. People are grateful, thanking us for selling food direct and earlier in the season than we ever have. First time customers are marveling over the beauty of our fresh harvested greens, beets and radishes from our high tunnels. It feels good to provide our healthy, nutrient dense food in these uncertain times. It feels good to be part of the solution. Food is medicine!”

###

Last time I was in touch, I announced our new Harvie Farms Pittsburgh service and the response has been overwhelming!

We are over 60% sold out for the home delivery program already! So we are going to sell out well before the deliveries start in late May. We will add more spots in the program through the season so even if you miss out on the first deliveries, you will have a chance later in the season to join us.

If you would like to join, visit the sign up page: http://harvie.farm/pittsburgh

In this email, I am going to introduce you to one of our founding farms, Who Cooks for You Farm in New Bethlehem, PA.

Chris and Aeros are in their 12th season of farming and you can find them at some of Pittsburgh’s busiest farmers markets, including Bloomfield on Saturdays and Squirrel Hill on Sundays. They always have an amazingly diverse, beautiful and fresh display. This is the kind of farm and produce that I am so excited to connect you with via Harvie Farms Pittsburgh.

Extra bonus, they are certified organic!

I asked them a few questions about their farm, you can view the video here or read below:

What’s going on at the farm this week?

This week on the farm we are building a large greenhouse, it’s an unheated structure. We are planning on extending our seasons both this spring and fall, so that we can take greater advantage of that market when a lot of people don’t have a lot of fresh produce very early and late in the season. We will be growing lettuces, beets, carrots, some herbs, late tomatoes, and fall greens. So we’ll have greens further into the winter, fresh greens!

Is there anything specific you’re excited about growing this year and getting into boxes and getting to the market?

I’m always excited about everything because it seems like the longer we do this the better we get at being able to harvest and grow really nice produce. I’m really excited to be able to bring that produce to market and have everybody just come and buy it. It’s really, really satisfying.

As far as this new addition of the home delivery and Harvie Farms Pittsburgh, how does that fit into your plans this year?

It changes the game for us. We can reach more people because we want to grow food for people. It’s really exciting to be able to have food in someone’s house, right to their doorstep grown locally and being a part of that local network of growers is exciting.

What we find is that probably our greatest challenge is market access. Access to people that want to buy our product. We think that being able to partner up with Harvie is going to help us get that food out. Because we grow the food and we get the food ready to go to market. It always seems like the hardest part is getting that food to people that want it. It’s just that we need that middle person and we’re really looking forward to making this model work. I’m really excited about.

What is the biggest challenge about being a farmer in Western Pennsylvania or generally?

I think market access is. We can grow a lot of food but getting it in people’s homes is hard.

It’s tough and there’s a lot of farmers out here and a lot of them can do a really good job. It seems like that is the greatest bottleneck. There are other bottlenecks out there such as land and access. However, if the market demand is there then you’re in a good spot. You could be in a really good spot. That seems to be the biggest challenge we think.

Harvie offering delivery to someone’s door allows us to reach people that can’t even go to a local pickup center. They can’t go up to the store, they can’t make it to the farmer’s market. You’re a very busy person you could still eat locally. You don’t have to go to the farmer’s market if, at that certain time in the week, you can’t make it.

It’s huge. A really big deal.

Is there anything you’d like to see change in local food in the Pittsburgh area?

We would love there being greater access and more convenient access to local products in general. We would love to see those products be offered in a more convenient style. So that the farmers, local producers, local entrepreneurs, everybody, that this can all grow. We’re leaning in that direction all the time and oftentimes just coming up against the wall. So we would love to see Pittsburgh really bloom and flourish. That includes the rural parts around Pittsburgh. To make Pittsburgh a sustainable city like they say it is. This could reach rural parts of the Pittsburg area and supports Pittsburgh growing food and bringing food into the city.

—

We look forward to serving you this season with produce from Who Cooks for You Farm and the rest of our talented group of growers and local food producers!

-Simon Huntley (CEO, Harvie) & Neil Stauffer (General manager, Harvie Farms Pittsburgh)
https://www.harvie.farm/signup/harvie-farms-pittsburgh

P.S. If Harvie Farms Pittsburgh sells out or you want to check out another option, we have a farm in the Pittsburgh area who has been using the Harvie platform for the last few years, Cherry Valley Organics, so please check out their sign up page and consider signing up with them: https://www.harvie.farm/signup/cherry-valley-organics

We are happy to announce Harvie Farms Pittsburgh, a new service that brings together the best local farms in the Pittsburgh area, allows you to customize your farm box before each delivery and then brings the harvest right to your doorstep!

Lettuce growing at one of our farms, Who Cooks for You Farm in New Bethlehem, PA

We know you love local food, but it’s often hard to make it to the farmers market, CSA programs can be inflexible, and the “local” claims of grocery stores are dubious at best.

To make it easier to love local food, we are happy to announce a whole new way to get access to fresh food directly from your local farmers: Harvie Farms Pittsburgh.

In the local farm community here in Pittsburgh and across the country, we recognize that food buying habits are changing.

We are a group of experienced local farmers, distributors, and farm technology folks who want to make it easy for you to get access to the most quality local food for your home kitchen. Think of Harvie Farms Pittsburgh as the ease of online shopping, Amazon, and home delivery meets the unique tastes and freshness of CSAs and farmers markets.

We have been running the successful Harvie platform (we are a Pittsburgh-based technology company) across the US and Canada for the last four years, with over 150 farms using the platform delivering over 500,000 farm boxes to 50,000+ consumers. Now it’s time for us to bring Harvie to our hometown: Pittsburgh!

I’ll tell you more about “us” later. First let’s talk about what we can do for you!

Why Harvie Farms Pittsburgh?

• We work with multiple farms across the Pittsburgh region so your farm box can include vegetables, fruit, cheese, eggs, bread, meat, milk, and more!
• Home delivery (or delivery to your office!) to the city of Pittsburgh and near suburbs.
• Customize your box each week so you get exactly what you want and nothing you don’t.
• Get your farm box on your schedule! When you are out of town, just pause your box or reschedule it for another week.
• Built in cooking and recipe tips plus connect with farm share members all over the world (literally!)

So how does it work?

• Start at the sign up page: https://www.harvie.farm/signup/harvie-farms-pittsburgh
• Pick a farm box, small ($29), medium ($49), or large ($79) — plus a $6 home delivery fee — which will include a full customizable product selection each week.
• Choose a frequency of delivery: weekly or bi-weekly and remember you can schedule around your needs.
• If you want beef or pork, choose a customized butcher box for delivery once per month from Jubilee Hilltop Ranch.
• Complete contact info and payment info.
• (Optional) Set product preferences so Harvie knows what you like and what you don’t like and we’ll pre-customize based on your product preferences.
• Wait for deliveries to start in late May!
• Our initial run will be for 26 weeks from late May to mid-November.

We are looking for 250 families to join us for this first season to make Harvie Farms Pittsburgh fly!

To encourage you to join us, use the coupon code FIRST250 to get $29 off your seasonal farm box. Sign up here:  https://www.harvie.farm/signup/harvie-farms-pittsburgh

Next I’ll be in touch to tell you about our farmers, who “we” are, and why we are doing this!

If you have any questions, just respond to this email and I’m happy to talk.

-Simon Huntley (CEO, Harvie) & Neil Stauffer (General manager, Harvie Farms Pittsburgh)
412-352-9673
https://www.harvie.farm/signup/harvie-farms-pittsburgh

First the positive!

I was talking to one farm who was an early adopter of Harvie this Fall and she told me that they are seeing lots of farms going out of business in their local area and due to Harvie, they feel like they can serve this market and plan to double their business in 2020.

That is why we built Harvie!

On the less-positive side, as the Harvie farmer noted, it feels like a lot of farms are going out business or changing business models.

Close to my home, it’s been a dispiriting few months in the local food scene here in Pittsburgh. Our largest local food distributor, Penns Corner Farm Alliance, went out of business and was taken over by a large main-line distribution company. Many local CSAs have gone out of business so we only have a few CSA farms left here. There are a few vibrant farmers markets here, but many of the markets do not have the sales volume to support medium scale farms. Despite the fact that the food scene here as far as restaurants have gotten a lot of positive press, there are very few farms growing at any scale in this metro of over 2 million people. Older farmers who have been stalwart farmers here are aging out and the younger generation is not taking over.

I’m seeing this across the country as well with many farms shutting down, moving to wholesale sales channels, and in general leaving the farm-direct sales like CSA and farmers markets.

I just got an email from the Farmers Market Federation of NY entitled “Reversing the Downward Trend” with the first line, “In recent years, farmers markets have been experiencing a loss of customer base and consequently, farmer sales.”

I can take some solace in the fact that I have been pointing this out since 2015, for example in CSA, We Have a Problem.

But now it feels like what I was predicting has happened. I feel right and sad at the same time!

Consumer buying habits have changed and in local food we have not kept up with the trends.

So is this the end of local food?

As always, yes and no.

I still believe that consumers want to buy from their local farmer. They believe that this food is fresher, healthier, tastier, and better for the environment.

However, we need to find a way to fit into the lives of our customers.

That is what I’ve been working on since 2015 when I started my research on the declining CSA numbers. This research later led to the development of our Harvie platform. I am proud of what we have done at Harvie and I believe that it is a potential future for local food. Our farmers our selling out and many reported having their best year of sales yet in 2019.

I don’t think of Harvie as “CSA software” — it’s not that. We don’t call Harvie a “CSA program”, although many of our farmers refer to their program running through Harvie a “CSA”. It is a business model for a farm that wants to serve the local consumer market in a profitable and scaleable manner. I’ve been asking this question for years: how can we make it as easy to buy from local farms as it is from Amazon Prime? At the same time we still want to keep everything that is special about farms and local food in the model. Harvie is the answer for that.

There is a market out there for farms and local food entrepreneurs who are ready to innovate, but this is a moment where doing nothing is not an option. What worked 5-10 years ago will not continue to work in the future.

We are planning a major new initiative here in Pittsburgh that I would like to tell you about over the next 6-12 months. Maybe I can inspire some of you to come along with me and bring local food to the mainstream in your local markets too!

Are you seeing the same things? What’s going on in your local market? I would love to hear your stories! If I get some interesting responses, I can do a follow up post.

I know you are tired of hearing about Harvie from me, so I have organized a series of webinars featuring four farmers who use Harvie on their farm.

They will spend about 30 minutes talking about how they use Harvie and how it has benefited their farm business. There will be time for Q-and-A following each webinar.

The webinars will occur each Tuesday in November at noon EST / 11 am CST / 10 am MST / 9 am PST.

Here is the schedule:

• November 5th: Mike from Steel Pony Farm – “How Harvie helped me grow my farm while doing more of what I love”
• November 12th: Noah from Rora Valley Farm – “How Harvie helps my farm increase financial stability and profitability through selling more product to a highly satisfied membership”
• November 19th: Robyn at Park Ridge Organics, “How we pack 350 customized farm shares per week”
• November 26th: Curtis from Millsap Farms, “How Harvie Vanquished ‘The Dread Of The Empty Box’ On Millsap Farm Or “how I learned to stop worrying and love the algorithm…”

You may come to one or all of the webinars in the series.

To kick things off and set the scene, I’ll do a demo of Harvie sign up, the member profile, and run through a whole delivery process tomorrow.

• Oct 29th Simon Huntley, Harvie Demo

To register, fill out this form:
https://smallfarmcentral.typeform.com/to/aUX6pT

I will send a Zoom video conference link the morning of each event.

-Simon Huntley
CEO, Harvie

“Harvie is not a cost, it is a pricing opportunity.”
-Robyn, Park Ridge Organics

I know a lot of farmers get hung up on the transaction fees for Harvie.

However, Harvie is not a fixed cost like a new tractor or labor. Harvie is a transaction fee that gets passed on to customers in margin.

In other words, Harvie is free for farmers. Members pay for Harvie.

Cost is mostly irrelevant when thinking about whether you want to adopt Harvie.

When you determine that Harvie is the best tool for your farm and for your members based on the functionality and service offerings, then it is a matter of pricing Harvie into your shares. It’s a win for your farm, for the farm’s bottom line, and for your customers!

So, how to price Harvie into your farm share?

There are four main levers to pricing your Harvie farm share:

The per share price that members pay

For a vegetable farm share (although the same principles will apply to any other type of farm share like a meat share), you might have three price points: Small ($18/delivery), Medium ($27/delivery), Large ($40/delivery).

Members have the option of purchasing weekly or every-other-week frequencies.

This determines the gross amount of money that is coming into the farm share program.

The target value of each share

The target value is how Harvie determines how many products should be put in each members share each week, based on the per-product pricing that the farm sets (see lever #4).

By default, this value is the same as the member pays so a $27 share gets a target value of $27.

I suggest that farms adjust the target value a bit lower to cover per delivery costs such as distribution (unless those are covered in lever #3), packaging, and packing labor.

In the spreadsheet example, a $27/delivery share gets a target value of $25.25.

Delivery fees

The cost of transportation and distribution can be covered by a delivery fee. This especially makes sense for home delivery.

In the spreadsheet, I have set the home delivery cost to $10/delivery.

If distribution cost does not get covered by a delivery fee, for example in the case of group pickup locations, distribution cost should be figured in the target value of the share after calculating a “per delivery distribution cost”.

Per product pricing

Per product pricing is where the majority of the action is in this model. This is the retail price of each product that goes into a Harvie delivery. This is the price Harvie will use to determine the contents of each members share, based on each member’s preferences and the harvest estimate, to pre-fill each member’s share.

Setting prices in Harvie’s delivery estimate builder.

The spreadsheet model works back from a cost of production (let’s call that cost of goods sold or C.O.G.S.) to a retail price. The cost of production should include everything required to get the product ready to be packed into shares, including post harvest handling. This should include a fair salary for the farmer too!

On top of the C.O.G.S., we add the percentage costs of Harvie, credit card fees, marketing/administration, and a healthy 20% profit margin.

So on average in our system, farmers have listed potatoes at $2.23, based on this model, the target C.O.G.S is $1.12. Can you produce a pound of potatoes at $1.12? Your C.O.G.S. may be different on your farm so you can adjust this up and down to get your actual retail price that you should list in Harvie in each delivery.

I am excited to announce that we are now accepting new farms for Harvie for Fall 2019 and 2020.

To see if Harvie is a fit for you, go to our Harvie For Farmers page and request a free proposal:
https://www.harvie.farm/forfarmers/

After that, we will schedule an Initial Needs Assessment to discuss your current situation and your goals.

We will work to determine if Harvie is a fit for your operation. I genuinely believe in helping local farms succeed, so we only work with farms that we feel like we can help. Whether or not we decide to work together directly, my desire is for your farm to have the tools you need to succeed and grow the local food marketplace.

I encourage you to read this letter I wrote about this year of Harvie and looking towards the future:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14MaUyRBXf6UGGPtgJn9Rybv_wmYQfjLg/view?usp=sharing

In the coming weeks, I will be sending a video course titled, “How to launch a Harvie farm share program” detailing everything from pricing to distribution, so watch your inbox for those emails.

Happy farming,

-Simon Huntley
Founder and CEO, Harvie

Harvie (http://harvie.farm) is a Pittsburgh-based company that connects local consumers with local farmers across the U.S., Canada, and Australia who deliver shares of farm fresh products customized to their personal preferences.

Our company was started in 2006 to meet the technology and marketing needs of local farmers across the US, Canada, and internationally and has served 1000’s of farms in the last 13 years. The Harvie platform was introduced in late 2016 to address the changing landscape of food buying and to help farmers grow sales and profit by making local food more accessible through a customer friendly CSA / farm share model. The concept has grown rapidly. In 2019, Harvie will help 100 farmers deliver over 500,000 farm shares with much more growth planned in 2020 and beyond.

Harvie is a small team of 15 smart, dedicated individuals. We are an innovative, fast-moving, and fast-growing company.

We are looking for a software product manager with strong UI/UX skills to take feedback from throughout the company, talk to farmers, and talk to customers to build out our technical roadmap. As with any small team, you will wear many hats and we will expect you to build a product team as we grow.

Responsibilities:

• Talk to other Harvie team members, farmers, and end-consumers to understand their challenges
• Integrate feedback from across Harvie to develop technical road map
• Write detailed specifications that can be handed off to developers
• Evaluate success of features after they are released
• Coordinate QA testing of new releases
• UI/UX experience is a plus
• In essence, guide product features through their entire creative cycle: ideation, specification, development, release, analysis, and iteration

Important details:

• Full-time position with some flexibility (40 hours/week)
• Competitive salary adjusted upward with experience
• Health benefits, retirement plan, and paid vacation
• Harvie farm share paid for by the company and delivered to the office by Rivendale Farms!
• Office on North Shore of Pittsburgh, 10 minute walk from downtown, free parking
• Relaxed dress code and office environment
• Equal Opportunity Employer

Requirements

• Experience generating outstanding results as a Product Manager 
• A desire to grow the local food market
• Ability to utilize user insights, data, and statistical analyses to inform decisions
• An instinct for creating simple and intuitive user experiences
• Proven ability to learn quickly
• Demonstrated ability to be resourceful and innovative
• Experience leading projects and teams
• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Business, Design, Psychology, or a related field

Apply

Send resume and cover letter in PDF format to simon@harvie.farm with subject line “Product at Harvie”.