Jenny (00:30)
Welcome back. Today we are talking about one of the most underrated income boosters for small scale flower farms. And it surprisingly happens in the off season. Now in the last episode, episode number 77, I talked about a related topic, which was how to create a holiday gift guide to help increase your end of year revenue. So if you miss that, feel free to go back and check it out. But today I am talking about
how to increase your off-season sales with a CSA or subscription sales launch. Now, if you don't do a subscription or a CSA, you will still get something out of this episode, but I'm focusing this episode around that, mainly because I get so many questions about how to sell CSAs and subscriptions. But the same sort of framework will apply to just about anything that you sell. You can do sales launches.
meaning you kind of like open up sales at one specific time for pretty much anything. You could do it for weddings and events. You could do it for workshops or whatever you sell on your farm. So just know that even if you aren't doing a subscription or a CSA, you can still take these same principles we talk about in this episode and apply it to your farm. But the reason why I'm sort of, I have two episodes in a row around this topic.
of generating off season income is because I think that this really matters if you are not earning enough cashflow during your regular season. Most flower farmers have massive cashflow dips in winter, but most of our expenses are incurred during winter, or at least mine are like fall and winter is when I spend the most amount of money within.
my flower farm business, but I generate the most amount of money in like the spring and then subsequently like the fall and then the summer. But we have actually been able to make it so we have, I don't want to say relatively even cashflow, but more even cashflow throughout the entire calendar year by promoting our services and our products during the winter, primarily around the holiday seasons.
So I'm going to dive deeper into that today because typically like, you know, we're selling our subscriptions and our bouquets and bunches through our farmers market from like, you know, March or April through the end of November. But then what happens the rest of the year? It's like, you can't have no cash coming in. I mean, you can, a lot of businesses do that, but we have our CSA subscription that we launched for the holidays. And then we have our daily tuber sales that we launched kind of in late winter that help us generate more cashflow.
to kinda just help with starting off the season with less stress and more money in the business bank account. So, it's important to think about that when you have a flower farm business. Another part of this is that customers are actively buying during the holidays in the new year. This is gifting season, this is resolution season, self-care prioritization season, know, around the new year at least.
And so people are really thinking about like spending money during this time. And if there is a way that you can capitalize on that, I think that you should.
And a well-structured launch, a product launch for your CSA subscription workshops, whatever it is, can help smooth out your revenue, give you that working capital, and make spring just feel a whole lot more stressful. Now, before I go on, I realize I haven't actually talked about what a CSA is. So if you are new to that term, CSA just stands for Community Supported Agriculture. This is basically just a farm subscription. This...
term kind of started in the veggie world where I don't even know what year many years ago where people sort of come together from the community and purchase a share of the farms harvest for the year. So this means that whoever buys into that CSA is also buying into taking on some responsibility of the risks and the rewards of farming. So if you have a very abundant harvest, the idea is that the people who bought shares would get more of that.
abundant harvest. And if you had like a natural disaster and a hurricane that wiped out your flowers, they would probably get nothing and they would be okay with it. Now I think that there are some more modern ways to kind of set that up, but that is where it came from. But basically all you need to know for the purposes of this conversation is a CSA is basically a type of farm subscription program and you can kind of format it in any way you want. We'll talk about that a little bit in a few minutes.
But we're gonna cover like when to have your product launch, what to include in your offer, how to promote it, and how to make it a total no-brainer purchase for your customers. So first, let's talk about why CSA sales shine in the off season. Now the majority.
of our CSAs slash subscriptions, whatever you want to call them, are sold during the winter months because people buy them to give as gifts during the holidays. And quite frankly, it's an awesome gift to give because it's different. They spend basically the same amount of money that they would at like a really fancy forest to get several weeks of flowers. And it's truly just something that's very different and unique. So I think that's why it's awesome. But you're also pre-selling
getting that revenue in during months when you're not actively earning. This helps you buy all those seeds and supplies and pay your winter expenses. And CSA buyers really become your most loyal repeat customers. You can also take one-off customers and turn them into loyal repeat buyers with a CSA or subscription program. And off season often means that you have less competition for attention.
If you're in a really crowded market where there's a lot of other flower farmers, this might be a way for you to kind of differentiate yourself and have this product launch of your CSAs or your subscriptions where you generate excitement and then get people to buy during a certain time. And another thing I love about subscriptions, especially spring flower subscriptions, is that people really want something to look forward to.
In the springtime, especially like maybe this is only a cold climate thing. So you have to tell me like, if you live in a warm climate, if it's not a thing, but at least in colder climates, winters are rough, man. Like here in Rochester, New York area, winter is from like November through April. At least that's what it feels like. It feels like it's forever. And it's so many months of no sunshine.
or very little sunshine, so cold and miserable, and everybody has like seasonal depression, and we just all can't wait for colorful pops of spring to come, and that's why spring flowers are so popular around here. So this is why I think it's a great opportunity to sell something like your CSA during this season, because people can give them as gifts. There's all these benefits to trying to promote this right now. Now, I hesitated about talking about this because
There's so many different ways you can choose the right CSA or subscription model. There's truly so many ways to do it, but I guess I will talk about it because there are so many different ways you can structure it. So regardless, if you already have a subscription or if you're going to in the future, here are just some ideas that might help you think about how to structure it in the future that kind of makes this gift giving easier for people because you want this to be an easy gift.
And this is something I have learned over time is that sometimes when you give somebody a limited time subscription, like they sign up for a flower CSA, but it's only during the month of May or June, or it's six weeks in May or six weeks in spring or however it's set up, it can be really confusing for the buyers. And the more confusing it is, the less people are you going to have to buy. So you want to make sure however your subscription is set up that you make it very, very clear.
what is included, what they're going to get, what they can expect, okay? So some options are like a traditional weekly bouquet subscription. So you could say, you know, this starts the first week of April or whenever it would for you and goes through the end of our season, which is end of October, insert your specific climate or season here. But just make it very clear and easy like.
You get a bouquet once a week, you pick it up every Wednesday from our farm or our pickup partner, whatever. Super clear and easy. You could also do a flex CSA or like a punch card pass. ⁓ this is really nice for people who have unpredictable schedules. gives customers choice and gives you cash upfront. So this is sort of like a gift card, but I guess a little bit different. Now there is a florist near us who does this really, really well.
they have this like flex subscription program
where whoever signs up for the subscription gets one arrangement a month or one bouquet a month, whatever it is. And it's up to a certain value. You can structure it however you want, up to $35 or up to $50, but you have bouquets available all the time and they just come and pick up whenever they want. Now this is obviously going to be difficult for a lot of farms to kind of commit to that sort of schedule unless you have an outlet where you have flowers.
all the time. Like if you're somebody who has a farm stand and it's open the same like three days a week or same four days a week, this could work for you. ⁓ Or if you have a flower shop, this could work for you. If not, this may not be the right option because you would have to try to like guess how many people would come on which days of the week you'd have to have bouquets available every single day. Or maybe you could just do designated days. Like you could pick up on Monday, Wednesday or Friday or just Fridays. Like I said, there's so many different ways that you can structure this.
The key is that you just have to make it clear. And I like this option because it makes it super convenient for people, especially when people are traveling and they have unpredictable schedules. So great option. Something else you could do is mini seasonal subscriptions. So you could do like spring only or Delia only in the fall or summer only. This is sort of what ours is like. We do it by the month. So you can sign up for the month of May or the month of June.
So on and so forth. So this is sort of an easier entry point for new customers. If you know a full season CSA with flowers is a big commitment. We offer that but it's like almost $800 for the whole season. And yes, we have a lot of people who sign up for it but like that's a big commitment to give as a gift this time of year. And ⁓ you know, we definitely have customers that do that. But for most people, it would be a lot. So if you have sort of a mini subscription,
or it's just a few weeks or a month, that might be an easier entry point for somebody to give as a gift.
All right, so I don't wanna spend too much time on this because there's so many different ways that you can structure your CSA or your subscription model. ⁓ I will talk about this a little later, but you don't want to have too many options for people. It just really needs to be clear and simple. Yeah, let's talk about that now because in order for this to work, a successful subscription or CSA offer, no matter what you're offering, it has to be clear and simple.
and easy to understand. Like if a five-year-old can't understand how it works, your customers, well, I don't wanna like bad mouth your customers, but like chances are you will probably have some customers who don't understand how it works. So the clearer, the better. You're gonna hear me say that a thousand times in this podcast because I'm trying to get it into your head, but just give them like three to five choices maximum. Three to five choices maximum. The more choices you have,
the more decision-making these people need to make and the more likely they're just gonna get confused and be like, well, I don't really know which one to buy. So like, I'll come back to this later. And then it's the kiss of death because they never come back later. So you either, if you have a lot of options, you need to make it very clear and easy, like who it's for, how they can buy, you know, all that, or just have very simple setup and options. Also, this is obvious, but make sure you price it for profit.
You know, think about the cost of goods or cost of labor. you're delivering, like make sure you cover your delivery costs, all the labor time it takes to like pack it up into your van, drive around for several hours, come back home. Like how many hours did you spend delivering it? How many, how much money did you spend in gas and tolls? the, the wear and tear on your vehicle, like all of that stuff has to come into place. Your insurance. I mean, I won't go off on a tangent with that, but make sure that when you set your prices, they need.
to be profitable. So.
I'll leave it at that. Another part of your offer is to have some sort of urgency, some sort of scarcity built into the offer. And this is not to like be like sleazy or anything. It's because people genuinely are so insanely busy and they may genuinely want your flowers. But if you don't give them a reason to do it like right now,
They're just continually gonna be like, I'm so busy, I'll do this later, I'll do this later, I'll do this later, I'll do this later. And then they never get around to it. And then they end up not having enough time to buy it. And they just like go down the street to Walgreens and buy a gift card to, I don't know, the Cheesecake Factory or something as a gift for somebody instead of your flower subscription program. People are just so busy. Everyone is. And you need to give them a real reason why now is the time to sign up for it if they want it. Okay? And if they don't want it,
fine. That's totally fine. It's not for them, but give them a reason. So scarcity or urgency. this would look like ⁓ scarcity is if you can only offer so many subscriptions, which as most of us are limited on how many we can offer, we can't just like magically pull flowers out of our, you know, what's in the middle of the season. If we oversell our subscriptions, I mean, we'd have to go purchase from other farms or supply it in a different way, but
If you genuinely can only offer a certain number of subscriptions or workshop tickets or whatever it is, say so, use that because you're being honest. Like you should never be dishonest ever. Like I don't, that's not something I align with. I think it's gross when people lie about that kind of stuff. So just be honest, be like, yeah, we only have enough room for 50 subscriptions and they're going to go fast. And that will help sell them. If people want that spot or want to give it as a gift.
As far as like urgency goes, you can use limited time offer bonuses. Like for example, we did an early bird sale earlier this year and we only offered it in this scenario. You could offer it to other people if you want, but we only offered it to past CSA members and we gave them this early bird deal where if they signed up before October 31st, they got a pile of amazing bonuses that pretty much all went away after that October 31st date.
So they got a free ticket to an on-farm event that we're doing in June where they can pick their own P &Es. And it's like this whole event that we do specifically for CSA customers. It's a private event. Like we don't invite the public out to it. So exclusive, exclusivity here. They got two weeks free off of a full season subscription. And I do that discount because if I give two weeks free, I'm basically paying them, you know, $70, but they're buying $700.
worth of stuff for me. So I'm willing to spend, you know, 50 to $70 to get a $700 customer, if that makes sense. But discounts are not always the way to go. You need to make sure you know your numbers around that. They also received a $20 gift card to spend at the farmer's market anytime they wanted in 2026. And they also got a full flower arranging and flower tips and tutorials, like a whole library of videos around flower arranging, flower tips, keeping them alive.
Feel like I'm rambling at this point, but you get what I'm saying. So this is just a series of videos I filmed like a couple of years ago. I spent one day filming a bunch of valuable emails for my customers and they just get the whole library for them to go through. So in my opinion, this is worth a lot. This is a lot of value that people would pay a lot of money for. And we gave all those bonuses to them for free if they signed up by a certain date. And guess what? It was a very successful launch.
And I felt really good about it. My customers felt really good about it. You could do something like that too.
Right. So that is what is included in a successful offer that actually gets people to buy. Now, when it comes time for actually like promoting your offer, the timing is important here. So typically when you do a product launch, this product will be unavailable up until a certain day, a certain time. If anybody here has ever seen like, you know, the Dalia tuber launches, same idea, just doing it with a different product. So I think.
November, December holiday launch is a great idea. You can market your CSA subscriptions or whatever else you sell, workshops, experiences, yada yada, as a gift to give. People are already shopping, you capture that holiday spending. Now, you can also do a launch around the new year. So this could look like fresh start energy, giving yourself the best self care in 2026.
People want those kinds of experiences, local support, self-care. They want that energy in the new year. And then, of course, you can use other holidays to do launches as well, like Valentine's Day and so on and so forth.
And you can also do little mini launches, like mini promotions. shouldn't say mini launches would be mini promotions throughout the winter time to sort of increase your off season cashflow. Like doing this holiday early bird special or new year, fresh flowers or spring is coming flash sale or dead of winter. Pick me up. Like buy flowers for now, get them in spring. Like something to look forward to all that kind of stuff.
So I know that we're like basically in the holiday season now and it might be kind of a rush to put this together, but if it's too late for this season, work on it right now for next season. Like you have the time to do it now. You're not out trying to run around weeding and stuff. I mean, maybe some of you are listening to this, but for most of us, this is a slower time of year. And so if you feel like it's too late to implement something like this now, start putting the things in place now for next year. So,
You can get through the winter, get through the busy season in 2026, and then when it comes time for the holiday season, you'll be ready to roll.
All right, I'm gonna wrap up this episode with just a few more like tips and tricks on how to make a CSA launch or whatever it is you're launching around the holidays, no-brainer purchase for customers. Like I just said, I went over a bunch of like member perks, limited time bonuses, like those are all things that you can use to make this a no-brainer, but also having some sort of like flexible policies. Like I...
I used to be the worst at this. used to be so rigid, like not flexible at all. I'd be like, you sign up for this. You can never like flex a week. You can never take a week off. Um, you get what you get, but I really think that people just really appreciate it when you can be flexible if you can. So allowing friends to pick up for them when they can't pick up their flowers, allow for like two for one weeks occasionally, like not all the time, cause this is hard to manage, but like
If someone misses a week and they let you know ahead of time, give them two bouquets the next week. And of course the timing has to work out with that. Let them pause once or twice. Offer payment plans. You know, like sometimes buying $800 worth of flowers at one time is a lot for people. So break payments into a few months and make, you can either even like tier it. You can make higher tiers of a subscription, lower tiers to make things more accessible. And you can also sell things with social proof.
So this means testimonials, photos, talking about what your CSA members loved the most last year. Those are all things that you can use to sell during the holiday season. And of course, promoting this through email, social media, website updates, and partnerships. Those are all great ways to do it.
All right, so to wrap up here, these off-season sales can make a huge difference in like your stress level around money during the winter months. So if this particular model we talked about today won't work for you, I suggest sitting down and thinking about other creative ways that you can generate some revenue during the off-season. Look at all of the different things that you offer and try to get creative with how you can offer them.
And if you missed the last episode, which was episode number 77, I went over how to create a holiday gift guide that can boost flower farm revenue. feel like these two topics just go hand in hand. So highly recommend you going back and listen to that
And again, if you're listening to this in the winter, now is the time you can even start working on it for next year if you haven't already. I hope that this was helpful, gave you a little bit of ideas on how to generate that off-season cashflow. Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. As always, I'd love to hear from you guys. And if you thought this episode was helpful, please leave a review. Love seeing those positive reviews.
We have hundreds of them at this point, but it always helps for other flower farmers to find this valuable information so they can also grow a profitable and sustainable business. So leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, wherever you're listening to this, it would be greatly appreciated. And with that, I will see you next week. Don't forget, we publish new episodes every Monday, so we'll see you next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.
