FAQ's

Since September of 2019…

Farm Fresh Network, our flagship platform, began hosting its first multi-vendor marketplace— after a year-long collaboration with the market owner to realize their vision. Their existing online presence fell short; they needed streamlined market management, enhanced vendor product control, and a vastly improved customer experience. Our ongoing support, mirrored for all clients, fueled this market’s expansion.

Since 2019, it’s added more vendors to meet local demand, boasts 20% annual growth, and recently earned a community award for its reliable supply of fresh, local produce and artisan goods.

Where will your market be in five years?

Over 30 Farmers & Artisans use our platform to bring their products to their local communities.

But our target number is just one: you.

Big platforms boast about the hundreds of users they’ve got on board, and with so many clients why wouldn’t you be one of them?

With so many users, it’s only a matter of time before the numbers cloud their sight of what truly matters: connecting you, your market, your vendor, and their customer to fulfill crucial needs.

Our focus is the one-on-one connection, that helps ensure we meet expectations and catch the fire of your vision. We’re working hard for our clients to make sure their success is our success. So the real question isn’t how many people we have now, but can we take one more?If you’re just another number on your platform, the answer is yes. But only if you’re ready to be number one.

Pricing That Never Changes!
• $750 – Program Start-up Fee, waived after first market established (fee is dependent on initial market size)
• $0 – Website creation, branding, and maintenance ($15,000 value)
• $85 – Maintenance and Support – billed monthly
• 3% – of gross market revenue- billed monthly
• $0 – Consultative Services for first 30 days, limit to 5 hours per week ($5,000 value)
• Customizations are available at the client’s request (additional costs may be incurred), but only at the customer’s request.

FFN knows our clients: moms and dads, kids and family, they’re our neighbors across the street and farther down the road. We serve small, local businesses crafting wholesome, unique products with limited resources. Our clientele? Our community.

FFN works hard to ensure our pricing reflects this. We’re not in the commercial game; we support small farmers, artisans, and crafters. Commercial pricing hurts our mission—whether it’s boosting vendor income or strengthening the community, inflated prices undermine our clients.

Our pricing model is more affordable than our competitors’. We offer reliable, consistent rates—unchanged by success or circumstance. We’re invested in your success.

And your platform? If they claim “equitable and sustainable” systems, do their prices reflect that?

24 hours, that’s all we need!

Our state-of-the-art online storefronts and marketplaces are pre-built platforms that allow you to customize with your logo, message and colors.

Your storefront or marketplace will be your own platform with your unique brand. But the hard coding and the technical work is already completed, while you read this, your venue is already made and waiting for you to populate it with your products. But whether it’s a uniquely branded single store front, or a fully functional online marketplace with multiple vendors and their own inventory, the answer is 24 hours from the time you sign up for our services.

Farm Fresh Network will accept up to 50 vendors in a single market to ensure we have you with a fully capable ecommerce-ready online venue without any issues. For single online storefronts, we’ll accept up to 500 products to migrate over to your new store. While we can do more than these numbers, we’ll need to talk with you to ensure you understand requirements and timelines based on your situation.

Don’t forget, that’s 24 hours to go from thinking about it to having a fully operational ecommerce venue with a single price that never changes for the life of that market on our platform unless you request customizations.

Does the other platform make you wade through tiered pricing schedules to get what you need? How long is that gonna take?

Seamlessly!

Business websites are an important part of telling your story online. Many of our customers come to us with an existing website that does the function of telling their story. What makes the local agriculture and crafters industry so popular right now is the fact that customers want to know what your story is. They often seek out stories to be a part of that they take pride in when explaining where they got a product from. Integrating your existing footprint means brining in your story to let your customers be a part of it.

Our platforms allow just that.

Whether it’s a uniquely branded individual storefront or a fully functional online market, your online market is only half of your online presence. It doesn’t do any good to have your market online if you aren’t able to sell anything in your online market. So we take care of that.

But your personal, external to CWD, web presence is the other half. It doesn’t do your market any good if your customers don’t know who they’re buying from. You already took care of that.

That’s why all of our platforms integrate not only your branding and your message, but your existing web presence. From our platforms to your existing web presence, your customers, and potential customers, will seamlessly pass between both sides of the ecommerce equation. The best part is, it will all appear as one solid web presence.

Does your current platform allow integration of your external web presence to be a welcomed part of your ecommerce platform?

While it depends on which level of ownership you have of the platform you’re using, you can be assured product inventory is an simple process. As we’ve said many times before, our service applies to those who have more to do than sit on a computer and figure out the technical side of web presence. That’s what we do.

If you are selling your products on a uniquely branded website, you’ll enter your inventory and maintain it on the site owner’s dashboard. How much you’ll have to do will be up to the site owner. However, the process is simple and is covered in the onboarding when you begin with our services.

If you sell products via one of our multi-vendor marketplaces, you’ll have a dashboard that is specifically designed for each vendor to create and edit their products in the market. Again, the process is created to keep your process simple and your products beautifully visible and readily available.

Absolutely!

This is a market platform that’s meant to reflect the care and quality you put into your products. That principle isn’t met when your online inventory doesn’t reflect the actual stock you have on hand. It creates chaos in the market, distrust of our platform, and looks bad on our vendors.

That’s why all things inventory are automated, to include inventory limits. Wanna know what else is automated?
  –  Inventory limits
  –  Backorders (on/off)
  –  Product remaining display
  –  “OUT OF STOCK” display
  –  Real time vendor notification of sales
  –  Store open and close automatically
  –  Vacation status automatically

Our platform carries these critical automations for the same reasons you think they’re important. They allow the market to run with better accuracy while ensuring simultaneous communication across the market in real time.

This builds confidence in the customer that your market, or your uniquely built storefront is as trustworthy as they need you to be. It builds confidence in the vendors that the market is going to do what they need it to do. And it ensures your able to do what you really do…and that isn’t sit at the computer and run your market…

Does your current platform let you automate routine tasks so you and your vendors can keep the inventory production up?

100% Responsive on all devices!

Laptops, tablets, smartphones, even the neighbor’s gaming computer is welcome. We’ve tested it all. We even tested it on our smart TV. Bottom line, there is no platform out there that your customers can’t get to your products on. Even better, there is no platform out there that you can’t manage your products on either!

On a serious note, we know that in today’s digital world, the need for websites to be responsive on a smartphone is mandatory. The customer base, for all markets, are pressed for time and look to maximize what time they have. That’s why Farm Fresh Network is a great solution for those looking to keep up with the customers.

Because it isn’t just that your market has to be visible on a cell phone. Your market has to be response to the need that drives the cell phone requirement. With our automations for markets and vendors, the customer can maximize their time on whatever platform they’re using, and know that what they see is right, and will be ready for pickup when you say it will be ready.

Does your current platform just have the option to use the cell phone? Do they even know why that’s important to you?

Customers can pay through the online market, or at the physical pick-up point, it’s up to you.

Our platforms have several payment types to choose from as well as “deferred” payment types that you can implement. These are some payment options our clients currently use:
  –  Cash on pick-up
  –  Cash on delivery
  –  SNAP / EBT
  –  ACH
  –  Apple Pay
  –  Google Pay
  –  PayPal
  –  Stripe
  –  Traditional bank card processor

That one is up to you.

There’s a lot of buzz going around these days about how to handle credit and debit card fees. Just like you, they have a cost for the services they provide. How that service charge is covered is completely up to you.

Our platform has the capability for you to provide your customers with a payment gateway for credit and debit cards as well as automated clearing house (ACH) payment methods. Which one and whether or not you offer these services is up to you.

We found this article to be helpful, and it may give you some insight on how to proceed.

Yes. 

Absolutely yes!

Understand what that means though.

Currently, EBT can only be used with a certified EBT point of sale device.

There are several options out there that make it seem like your customer can purchase products using EBT through your market. But those options require specific business certifications to use specific authorized apps or equipment. That is something that your business will have to pursue.

So then why did we say yes?

Our platform makes it easy for vendors to designate which products can or cannot be purchased with SNAP / EBT benefits. The system also automatically tallies each purchase as either a traditional purchase or an EBT purchase. When the customer goes to check out, the system will display two totals, traditional and EBT. Our system allows customers to make the traditional payment online and the EBT payment is tracked on pick-up or delivery of the products.

Does your current platform track these payments separately, across the market, and notify the different vendors in real time that the product was purchased using SNAP/EBT, separate the totals, track the payment made online and then carry that tracking through to the physical pick-up or delivery…

…whew! Sorry, ran out of breath. Anyway. Well, do they?

Yes! Seriously, was that the whole question?

This is your business, and as a business no matter how big or small, if you want to stay in business, you have to generate more business. This is a core competency you have to possess as a business. That means your architecture (i.e. your market) needs the built-in capability to get creative.

That means discounts, coupons, promotions, sales, and more!

These are core competencies of your business, so their core competencies of our platforms. More than that, we don’t charge extra so you can do it, and we aren’t going to limit how many times you can get creative before we charge you.

Most of the competition would charge you extra for this ability and then also limit how many times you can do it before it costs you even more.

So that begs another question. Are sales and promotions not important to their own business?

Because if it is, why are they charging you extra? 

Immediately as a uniquely branded storefront owner or as a market manager.

Our platforms accept the payment, calculate commissions, and let the market managers know immediately what all payouts are. If you own your own uniquely branded storefront, or if you are a market manager, the buck literally stops with you. As a storefront owner not in a market, you’re paid.

As a market manager, you have the opportunity to look over the books and authorize the payments. The reason for this is that it’s your payment gateway, so the payments go to you.

As a market you then have the option to pay out commissions as you’ve established in your market. But with our platforms you have the control to decide to pay out daily, weekly, or monthly. All in accordance with your market’s established procedures.

Does your current platform give you the flexibility to pay your vendors and yourself as you see fit?

For the uniquely branded storefronts how you handle tax is up to you. Sales tax can be calculated by the platform for you, or you can just include tax in the price of an item.

However, for a marketplace with multiple vendors sales tax is typically not set up to be calculated by the site. Ultimately, tax owed on an item being sold is the responsibility of the vendor conducting the sale. We don’t recommend market managers handle tax for items sold through their market.

If you think your situation is unique, you should talk with us about what your options are with our platform.

Yes, it’s possible.

We currently don’t offer any direct integration capability with any specific accounting software. Simply because there are many options out there. Our platforms in their made-for-you configuration offer export capabilities that all accounting programs accept (.csv., .xlsv, .pdf).

If your market requires specific accounting software to integrate into your market, it’s definitely possible. We would need to talk with you about what you need. As a policy, we never add to your basic platform package without your authorization. Depending on what software you need, there may be a small licensing fee you’d need to authorize.

Both the uniquely branded storefront and the online market platforms have the capability to print out:
  –   Invoices
  –   Packing lists
  –   Address lables

They’re not only capable of printing these, but the system automates who gets what label, per order. That means each vendor gets the label they need to put on their part of the order. This allows market managers to curate orders with accuracy, without having to step in and make sure each of the vendors gets each of their labels for each of the sales. It’s automated here, cuz that sounds hard.

Is your platform automated? Just how much routine work are you doing these days?

Yes we’re compatible with route planning and optimization, but no, we don’t currently offer it as part of our ready-for-you package on any of our platforms.

That doesn’t mean we can’t add that to your base package. As we’ve stated before, the base package is only the package with the most automations and tools used by our clients today. But our clients aren’t all alike. Adding customizations like the route planning and optimization tool may be more important for your market than it is for another market. That’s why we are always open to a conversation about customizations you might specifically require.

As a quick note, if additional capabilities are required, we provide them free for the first 30 days. If it is something you want to continue with a small monthly fee will be added. Again, our policy is to never add a customization without talking it through with you first.

Live Customer Service
• Our customer service is always handled directly by us, no outsourcing, no getting your own contractor.
• One on One customer service during initial set-up
• Priority email support during the first 30 days of on-boarding
• Free product migration of up to 5,000 products for established markets
• Done-for-you back-end site maintenance

Just want to make sure the point here is made, you talk to us AND we talk to you, usually on the same phone call or email. No intermediaries, no contracted help you had to go find, and everyone you’ll talk to about IT problems are located in our home state of Georgia.

Our client identifiable information is never disclosed. This includes both the uniquely branded storefronts, markets and their vendors. We may us non=uniquely identifiable cumulative data in our marketing and promotional efforts, but nothing identifiable as a single entity, business, storefront, market or vendor.

We have a number of great features we’d love to talk to you about!
To know the basic platform, don’t hesitate, check out the demo now. Don’t need to call for an appointment just to check it out. In case we hadn’t already mentioned it, this is what you get with our ready-for-you base line market package:

• Fully Branded with colors, message, and logos
• 13 pages to ensure market is fully functional for e-commerce, vendor activity, and member management ($15,000 value)
• Fully functional with all our signature automations and tools
• No limits on members, vendors, or transactions
• E-commerce ready upon delivery

If you’re coming over to our platform some of the customer service you can expect beyond what was mentioned in the earlier question.

• Our customer service is always handled directly by us, no outsourcing, no getting your own contractor.
• One on One customer service during initial set-up
• Priority email support during the first 30 days of on-boarding
• Free product migration of up to 5,000 products for established markets
• Done-for-you back-end site maintenance

For established markets we offer our Partnership program. This is specifically designed for established markets, organizations, associations, government agencies that are involved in large community regenerative projects. Our partnership program works to get the start-up processes streamlined and our services. Our objective is to make our services easily accessible to projects building regenerative capacity through local economic systems. All of this is just a fancy way of saying we want make sure our platforms are easily created to fit multiple markets under a single project.

Be sure to as us about our consultative services. We work closely with our clients to ensure that their successful. You don’t have all the answers, and neither do we. But we have the experience of working alongside successful markets and vendors. Not only that, but we’re also farmers and artisans ourselves. Our consultative services help you with the insight of our experience, and help you see options available to you.

For those operating with an FMPP or like type of grant, we offer the education platform located here. This platform allows you to create classes, courses, and discussions that help you meet your education requirements. Combined with our Jitsy program, your education efforts can really take off with online, virtual, or mixed participation audiences. This is a powerful set of tools to teach future makers, bakers, artisans and farmers how to become the next generation and capitalize on the cutting edge innovations happening now.

We also offer our community platform which allows our customers to build public and private groups online in support of their markets or the message. This is a fully operational social media platform that you moderate yourself.