by Whether it’s a fried steak basted in butter and shallots or a hamburger fresh off the grill, nothing beats the taste of grass-fed beef. But raising, marketing, and selling high-quality beef isn’t easy.
Unfortunately, even if you have the products people want, that doesn’t always mean you’ll be able to sell them. However, with the right tools and processes, you can turn your passion for quality meat into a thriving business.
Here are seven tips from our farm-to-fork experts on how to sell grass-fed beef.
1. Have a User-Friendly Website
Meal kits, subscriptions, and direct-to-consumer sales are primary drivers of financial growth for small farm stores and food producers. Even people looking for locally sourced food primarily search for it online.
If you’re serious about selling grass-fed beef, a modern, user-friendly website is a must.
In addition to having convenient online sales, don’t forget these other key points.
- An About page: People buying local food want to know who they’re buying from, so create a friendly About page that tells your story and shows some friendly faces from your business.
- Mobile-friendly: Choose a website template that looks good on smartphones or computers.
- Colors and logo: Create a memorable brand logo and use inviting colors. That way, even if someone doesn’t purchase from you right away, you’ll stick in their mind when they’re ready to buy.
- Product descriptions: You know your products better than anyone, so show off your knowledge and expertise by writing in-depth product descriptions. Include how you raise your animals, potential uses for different cuts, and other unique facts.
Designing a powerful, user-friendly website doesn’t require hiring a designer or having an IT person. Look for e-commerce platforms that offer no-code website builders.
2. Use E-Commerce That Supports Sell by Weight
Unlike big chain grocers that look for perfectly uniform cuts, cuts of grass-fed beef can vary drastically. That’s why it’s important to sell your various cuts by weight instead of for a fixed price.
Unfortunately, not all e-commerce platforms support selling by weight or require paid add-ons to work. In that case, you would have to spend more or manually weigh, price, and update inventory, which is time-consuming and error-prone.
That’s why we recommend finding an e-commerce solution that supports sell by weight natively.
Sell by weight features are also essential for accurately tracking inventory. With a system that supports sell by weight, you can input what weight of each cut you have in storage, then automatically update it with every sale.
3. Let Your Personality Shine on Social Media
We can’t emphasize this simple point enough: people buy local food because they want to buy from people. The more you can share your passion and personality with customers, the better.
One easy way to do this that doubles up as an effective marketing tool is to use social media.
Create a business account on your social media platform of choice and post regularly (at least a few times a week). Highlight your staff, your pastures, recipes, special promotions and offers, or anything else to showcase your business.
Include links to your newsletter (if you have one) and your website on your profile. Sometimes, seeing is believing, and you’d be surprised how many sales you can drum up through some great social content.
4. Offer Subscriptions
Unless someone is meticulously planning their meals weeks in advance, they probably won’t be as interested in buying a few steaks here and a pound of ground beef there.
Instead, many people like the convenience of buying beef in bulk, which is where a subscription box comes in.
There are many ways to offer a beef subscription box. For example, you could let people opt into a monthly subscription of any cut for a discount, create pre-selected boxes of staples, build tailored subscriptions at a markup, or combine the three.
What style of meat subscription you offer will depend on your customers and your capacity. Regardless, subscriptions are a great way to upsell customers and generate recurring revenue for your business.
Selling subscriptions is also not supported by all e-commerce solutions out of the box, so unless you want to sell at a fixed price or handle the details manually, we recommend using a platform with built-in subscription support.
5. Follow Inventory Management Best Practices
Effective farm and meat inventory management is essential when selling directly to customers. An unexpected stockout could erode trust in your brand and cost you sales.
That’s why having a real-time view of what beef you have in inventory is essential. Instead of spreadsheets or other manual input methods, use inventory management software that supports weight-based inventory tracking.
That way, you can input your price per pound into the system, weigh your stock, and track it automatically as you make sales.
You can also input custom products or product bundles into the system and use a label printer and scanner to correctly price them at checkout or at the time of delivery.
6. Use a Reliable Cold Shipping Service
Food safety must be a priority when starting a farm-to-fork business. The FDA has strict standards for food safety, and a single bad incident could result in fines or a cascade of bad customer reviews.
In addition to following best practices for perishable food packaging, use a reliable cold shipping partner to ensure your fresh meat is delivered on time and in good condition.
For more tips and best practices, take our perishable shipping course.
7. Don’t Forget Farmers Markets and Local Events
Until now, we’ve mostly discussed tools related to online sales, marketing, and inventory — but don’t forget about local events.
Farmers markets and other local events are a great chance to meet customers directly and make people aware of your brand. If you can support a great first impression with a newsletter signup or a visit to your website, even better!
Consider approaching local businesses and restaurants to see if they’d like to partner with you. Partnerships can be a reliable source of income and a good way to promote your brand.
However, if you enter a business partnership, you’ll be obligated to meet their demands before individual customers. Don’t enter a deal that will prevent you from growing your direct sales.
Simplify How You Sell Grass-Fed Beef With GrazeCart
Ethically raising grass-fed animals is extremely rewarding, and e-commerce tools are making it easier than ever to share that passion for quality with the world.
GrazeCart is designed specifically to simplify how you sell food online, with built-in features like a no-code website builder, sell by weight functionality, subscriptions, marketing tools, and more.
Try GrazeCart free for 14 days to see it in action for yourself, or reach out to our experts to schedule a custom demo.