CSA eSigning Made Easy

Csa esigning

[Music] so we pack a lot of CSA boxes around here you've got 124 that go out every week we do Tuesday and Thursday or our pack days and so this is sort of where we where we do it all and making making that pack out as efficient and sort of as accurate as possible is really important to us so Luke built these awesome tables to help make that as smooth and pacifies and basically how it works we fold up all the boxes you know let's say it's our Thursday delivery we pack 70 boxes so we fold up 70 boxes we haven't sitting here we put all the vegetables and that are going out in their crates up on this top shelf here and then for each box we put it right here we've got a label on it so every single member has their own label that gets printed the night before and that's because we do a customized CSN so we use the software called Farmiga and that allows our members to log in see what the default boxes that they would be getting and then make changes to it so if someone's like oh I hate arugula I really just want more Tomatoes they can make that change and they're stay in a box and it means then that every single box will be packed is totally different so we print these labels it says for every member whose the box is going to what their pickup site is and what should go in their box and then what that means is for each box we put a label on it and as we're going down the line you know we're grabbing out Tomatoes we're putting in summer squash and we're checking like oh did this person get kale they didn't get care system yeah but instead they got basil so we put basil like that the box and basically just like move down the and I'm coming along another back packing of the filing to get to the ends the Box they get stacked right here they get folded then once we've got like a whole pickup site in the walk-in cooler is right here at the end of the line and maybe some weapon boxes go in there and they're off you don't throw the box I think that like I mean having it this set up this way and at like this height so that you can really read the label is really important because with the customized boxes if some if one of us makes a mistake then we have to go through all of the boxes to correct that mistake because we really want our customers to get what they asked so there's a lot of thought that went into this guys I know it looks very simple if you just look at it here but the ergonomics the height you're mentioning the slope of the bins on the top and then you keep you keep stuff underneath - right and it's like all slopes so the water drains out and a weight for everything I mean we can pack on Thursday we packed like 70 boxes in like probably 2025 minutes so it's pretty fast and it's pretty fun so you're harvesting the day before you're packing or her yeah we're usually harvesting most things the day before especially greens that we want to have totally chilled you know because our drop sites are usually people's front porches and the box may sit on that front porch for five hours in the shade in the shade always but it might be up for five hours in the summertime when it's 95 degrees out and so we want to make sure all the lettuce is totally chilled so it all gets harvested the day before usually a few things we harvest on the morning of but usually the morning up we're just bagging we're folding up the boxes and we're packing them yeah and they go out that afternoon so you said the boxes are customizable and they go your customers go online to make those selections when's the cutoff for let's say the Tuesday pack day when is that cutoff Sunday night yes so our newsletter always goes out Friday afternoon at 4:00 and that's when they can start to log in and customize their box and then we have the window closed Sunday night so that Monday morning before we head to the farm we just quickly take we export what everyone has ordered into a spreadsheet that gives us our harvest list and we use that to start harvesting on Monday morning and then Monday night before we are getting panic boxes we print out all the labels you know so everything's good to go Monday morning we show up we pack our boxes okay so these totes up here that it'll have all your produce you already know how much you're gonna be putting in boxes so that's what you've harvested yeah so like on Monday morning we're like okay tomorrow is Tuesday's delivery you know forty people want to kale in their box we're harvesting 40 kale and we're packaging in such a way that it's in these crates it's gonna be really easy to pack and load up I say do you have to put limits on the website like you'll have to go out and find it like I think we will have about 40 we have and what we can put in the swaps yeah because we try to you know people want to be able to customize their box and so we want to put everything we have on there so there might only be seven items going in the box but would they log on there might be 20 different things they can choose from to put in their box so we'll estimate okay it looks like we've out 15 bunches of radishes left it's not enough to put in the box but we'll put it online so a couple people could swap it in if they you know don't want their kale or something like that and it's kind of nice from a farming standpoint because it makes like it makes it more like a market farm as opposed to a CSA farm like if we have a small amount of something we might be able to move it whereas you know if everyone's getting the exact same seven items every week then a small amount of something is useless and it means that every single week we have amazing data on what our customers want you know we see exactly what they wish their order was and each year we can shape our CSA based on those orders and so you guys are doing 2 2 packs and deliveries a week yeah what's the reason behind doing it is it just like to divide up the work it ok too much for one then okay like some people are sign up for a Tuesday or a Thursday yeah and it's Geographic like we go to Chapel Hill and Carrboro on one day and there on the hills there on the other day yeah so you'd say like in terms of like hours is it like a full-time person just like organizing CSA and packing boxes and delivering or no I mean when we've worked it out because we've really thought about should we be a farmers market farmer a CSA farm and and we've gone the direction of CSA farm but in order to make that decision you know we really thought through basically what are all the hours devoted to marketing through each outlet and the CSA of the way we have it set up is actually fewer hours than having to you know bag everything from market load up your van go to market stand there sell everything load up go home the CSA ends up being less than that so you're saying you're recording a lot of data with you know what you're selling and you're getting all that stuff from your your customers and what they're buying you do find like yeaterday year that there's less waste yes yeah because you guys are frantically you know what you should be growing yeah definitely feels like it gets like more fine-tuned each year and as the CSA grows it also makes that work more efficient because we're already writing a newsletter we're already sending you know like the mant the CSA management stuff it just makes sense to keep growing the CSA because it's like that work is already going in and then you're just adding more customers and you already have your systems in place and that's key yeah yeah I mean it's the only way to do so many shares in a small space [Music]