Sell with HarvieTens of thousands of families want your local products

What is Harvie

Harvie is a sales and distribution platform used by tens of thousands of families each week to buy local food from farmers and distributors. Harvie believes that it should be as easy to buy local food as buying on Amazon.com, so we focus relentlessly on the consumer experience. We believe that building effective distribution networks is the game-changer that local food needs to find wider adoption.

Features and Benefits for Your Business

Build a subscription business

Powerful subscription tools allow members to sign up and manage weekly, bi-weekly, and every-4-week delivery schedules.

Competition in a Changing Marketplace

Local food and claims of local food are everywhere now from your local grocery store to meal kit delivery services to big new competitors. Consumer attitudes towards convenience and technology are changing rapidly and our goal is to help your farm compete in a quickly changing local food marketplace.

Broaden the Market for Your Farm Share Program

Harvie makes it easy to be a part of a farm share and support a local farm. Customized boxes, recipe suggestions, and an accessible platform for desktop and mobile make it easy for new members to connect with you. We also provide you the opportunity for add-ons and extras, which is a great way for you to increase top-line sales and widen your reach to market your products.

Marketing and Customer Acquisition

We are here to help you “grow!” Using Harvie is like having your own personal marketing team at your side. We offer:

Personalized marketing analysis and planning
Weekly marketing calls with Harvie staff and fellow farmers
Website reviews
Customized print materials
Customized email marketing campaigns
Social media help and much more!

We’ll help you write, implement and track the campaigns so you can focus on the farming.

Seamless Management of the Customer Relationship

Harvie helps you manage your members from signup through delivery. Our platform gives you tools that make it easy to run your farm share. Automatic emails to your members, customized labels for each box, and easy reporting and exports of all customer and financial data make it easy to manage your business. You’ll spend less time administering your farm share and more time in the field!

Improves Time Management

Allows you more time with your family and gives you time to work on other tasks because we handle the site, customer service and provide marketing support to help bring you success at a faster rate because of our subject matter knowledge. Harvie will help to reduce clerical errors or misses because we are your second pair of eyes!

Customer Support

Harvie staffs a help desk for you and your members, so you can spend more time farming and less time replying to member emails. You are copied on all responses to your members so you can stay in control, but our support team takes the burden of support off of you!

How does it work?

Benefits to Your Members

Customized shares

Customized shares based on what your customers want! Customized boxes will allow your members to select preferences at sign-up and then customize each week based on your harvest. This will help them use everything in their box because they love everything they are getting!

“I liked the idea of being able to see and edit my baskets contents before pick up day. Customization reduces waste and makes menu planning more efficient.”

Sonya, Member at Heritage Family Gardens Farm

Reduce Food waste

Food waste is the #1 reason folks don’t return to a CSA and we want to fix that! Because they are getting what they want, they’ll see less food getting tossed or composted which is going to ensure they are getting the biggest bang for their buck.

“I adore farm-fresh food; however sometimes with a “regular” share you get piles and piles of something you just can’t stand. Harvie lets me tweak my share so food doesn’t go to waste.”

Susanna, Member at Rise N Shine Farm

Value Added Sales

Want to give your customers the opportunity to order “extra” items from the farm? With just a few clicks of a button we’ll give you that alternative marketplace option, which means less trips to the grocery store for your members and increased customer satisfaction!

Weekly Payment Plans

Tired of managing payment plans for members who choose not to pay in full? Members can choose the payment plan at check out and their card will be charged automatically each time their share is delivered. Keepin’ it simple and easy for you!

Vacation Holds

If they have a vacation planned or need to change their dropsite? No problem. They can easily put a “hold” on their share and schedule two boxes on a different week so no more missing out on those veggies they paid for.

Recipe Suggestions

Harvie is working hard to provide your members with recipe suggestions, cooking tips, storage, and food prep resources to assist them when they are scrambling to get dinner on the table from a fridge full of farm fresh product.

Success Stories

Falcon Ridge Farm

Falcon Ridge Farm in west Tennessee has grown in membership count with Harvie and has attributed that to the marketing assistance we provide. Bart, the farmer, says “Our Spring memberships were up 80% over 2017. It went above my expectations.” Bart is a very committed marketer who does a great job with his farm promotion, but he says of his choice to use Harvie:

“When you start explaining to people what a CSA or farm share is, normally the first question you get when they figure out the gist of it is, ‘Do you get to pick what goes in your box?’. We’ve always had to say, ‘No, unfortunately not’ – this is why, and this is how it works. Now we have the ability to say, ‘Yeah, you do have a say in what you get and can pick what is in your box and customize it to your likes and dislikes.’ That’s been great! We’ve been able to get some of the customers back that we’ve lost, before not having that option. They tried the CSA, but didn’t like not having the choice of what they get.”

Bart, Farmer at Falcon Ridge Farm in west Tennessee

Bart talks about why he chose Harvie:

Rise ‘N Shine Farm

Rise ‘N Shine Farm increased average retention year-over-year from 40-45% to 70.5% after using Harvie — an increase of almost 30%! Auto-renewal, custom friendly farm share features and customer support contribute to this increase in retention.

“Our farm was losing customers to aggregators and meal delivery services in Atlanta and I needed to change that trend. I was searching for a solution that included giving my members the option to customize their box and make it easier for more people to join. Harvie filled the need for me. My members love it and it shows in the retention rate. Harvie has an auto renew feature that saves my members the hassle of enrolling every year, which makes marketing much easier.”

Mitch, Farmer at Rise 'N Shine Farm

One Straw Farm

Harvie generated close to 200K in sales from warm lead campaigns for the 19 farms who participated.

“I would be very encouraging to anybody to try the warm leads (Harvie marketing lead) campaign. It blew me out of the water. I have people coming back from years ago. I’ve even been getting emails from people saying they are sorry they moved away. I’m happy all the way around. I’ve gotten 188 shares with Harvie’s marketing campaign.”

Joan, Farmer at One Straw Farm

Sustainable Harvest Farm

“Harvie understands farmers…and we’re a unique and diverse bunch. They’re always 2 steps ahead of me. Its pretty cool to come in from the fields to grab lunch and see where the support team has helped multiple customers of mine solve problems, before I even check my email. The Harvie Support team makes me feel lazy.”

“On the rare occasion I can’t figure something out, I usually get a response within 1-2 hours. However, if I really need something fixed urgently, I can call and they are on it instantly. I’ve received great support 24-7.”

“Wait a second … a company that legitimately wants me to succeed? That’s right! If I succeed, Harvie Succeeds. Gotta love that!”

“The Team at Harvie – they’re the kind of people you’d want to invite over for dinner with your family.”

Ford, Farmer at Sustainable Harvest Farm

Ford talks about why he chose Harvie:

Pricing

$500 one-time initial set up fee
$0 / monthly
7% transaction fee*
2.9% + $0.30/transaction for credit card sales

Since Harvie is the credit card processor, each farm gets paid out on a rolling schedule minus fees.*Discounts are available to farms with $250,000/year in transactions.

At Harvie, your success is our success so we will help you design a pricing strategy that will ensure that your farm is more profitable, while you are paying us the Harvie percentage. Harvie only gets paid when you get paid.

We offer a 90-day money back guarantee.

Cancel your account within 90 days of paying the initial set up fee and we will refund 100% of the set up fee and any other fees you have paid us and give you an export of your data.

Here are some ways to pay for Harvie:

Many of our farms increase prices to cover the fee since this is a service to the customers.
Many farms give 10-30% more retail value in shares than members pay for. With Harvie’s technology and customized shares, members get what they want and they get retail value. This means that our farms can generate 10-30% more revenue off the same production.
Decrease in admin time means saving on staff costs – many of our farms report not needing a dedicated farm share manager.
Harvie helps farms grow membership so the same equipment can be used to serve more members which increases profitability.
Moving farm sales from low margin channels like wholesale to high margin farm share sales increases profitability.
Reduced marketing expense due to higher retention rates.

We will work through a cost-benefit analysis with each farm to help provide some real numbers. Check out our cost benefit analysis spreadsheet.

For example, an average 250 farm member farm can see a yearly net-benefit of $72,000 by joining Harvie.

Requirements to sell with Harvie

We believe that strong partnerships will lead to positive outcomes. Harvie is invested in the success of your local foods business.

Some attributes we look for:

Able to offer home delivery (by the business itself or via couriers)

Minimum $100,000/year goal in sales

Growing local food or ability to source from a variety of local producers

Focus on consumer experience and a willingness to grow sales

“Harvie farms” are farms and distributors that are looking to take their business to the next level.

Sell with Harvie

Let’s discuss how Harvie can benefit your business. Start a conversation:

Sell with Harvie

We look forward to succeeding with you!

About Harvie

Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Harvie is the result of over a decade of working closely with farms to meet their technology needs as well as observation, interviews, and research into the CSA/Farm Share market and the local food system.

In 2006, Simon Huntley started Small Farm Central to serve the technology needs of farmers across the United States and Canada. The initial service was “websites for farms” and grew to include online sales technology and CSA member management and has served over 2000 farms. Harvie was built to address the concerns of Small Farm Central’s farms as they started to lose local food market share to bigger companies capitalizing on the popularity of local food.

To learn more about us:
What is Harvie?
CSA: We Have a Path Forward
CSA: We Have a Problem
Cooking Simply: The Harvie Way

About Simon Huntley

Simon HuntleyFounder and CEO

Raised on a farm in southwestern Pennsylvania, as a child Simon was more interested in programming languages than making hay and building fence. He studied Information Sciences and Technology while becoming re-interested in agriculture and especially the business of small and medium scale agriculture. He helped a fruit farmer in western Colorado start a CSA in 2005 and 2006, and then started Small Farm Central to address the need for technology solutions for farmers selling into local markets.

In 2016, Simon wrote Cultivating Customers: A Farmer’s Guide to Online Marketing.