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Farm shop e-commerce development

For growers, farm shop owners and box scheme operators who need an online shop that understands harvest windows, weights that are only known at packing, delivery rounds with cut-offs and customers who want the same box every week.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

Most growers selling direct have tried a standard shop platform and bent it until it broke.

  • A whole chicken is listed at a fixed price because the platform cannot charge by weight, so the farm either loses on the heavy birds or overcharges on the light ones.
  • Strawberries stay on sale after the final picking because stock is a number someone typed in June.
  • Box scheme customers are kept on a spreadsheet with a column per week, and a holiday pause is a text message that gets lost.
  • Orders arrive at any hour, so the Thursday round is packed from a printout that is already out of date by the time the van leaves.

Where it gets harder

Delivery is by round and by day, not by postcode band: the Tuesday van goes west, the Thursday van goes to the town, and the village hall collection point is Friday only, but a standard checkout offers every customer every day.

  • Trade customers, the two restaurants and the deli, want a weekly price list and an invoice rather than a card checkout, so they phone the order through and someone types it in.
  • The result is money lost on weights, produce listed that does not exist, a packing shed working from stale paper and a box scheme that lives in one person's head.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom farm shop e-commerce build normally covers:

  • A catalogue where every product carries a season window and a harvest-dependent stock status set from the packing shed rather than a fixed quantity
  • Variable-weight products sold By estimated weight with the final price settled when the item is weighed at packing, and the customer told the difference before the card is charged
  • Produce boxes with weekly contents published by the grower Subscriptions as standing orders with pauses, skips and swaps
  • Delivery rounds defined by day and area Each with its own order cut-off, so a customer sees only the days their address is served
  • Collection points with their own collection windows
  • A trade price list and account terms For restaurants and shops ordering on invoice
  • Packing and round sheets generated once the cut-off passes

We follow three real orders through the business first: a one-off order with a variable-weight meat item, a weekly veg box on a standing order with a holiday skip, and a trade order from a restaurant. Each point where their paths differ becomes a named stage in the scope document: order by cut-off, pack with final weights, settle price, load round, deliver or collect, repeat subscription, invoice trade.

Deliberately out of scope

  • The accounts ledger, field and crop planning, and courier shipping to the whole country, which is a different business from a round. Organic certification and food hygiene inspection outcomes are shown as records you supply, with the certifying body named, and are never asserted by the shop

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A grower with two vans, three collection points and forty trade customers needs rounds with different cut-offs per day, trade orders that skip card payment and roll onto a fortnightly invoice, and meat sold by weight with the final price settled from the packing scales. The cut-off logic and the weight settlement are what make it a custom project.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from following three orders, retail, subscription and trade, through packing and delivery
  • A scope document naming each stage from cut-off to settlement and what is out of scope
  • Design of the shop front, the season catalogue, the subscription controls, the packing sheet and the round sheet on phone, tablet and desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours, with the payment provider connected and weight settlement tested
  • Migration of products, customers, standing orders and trade accounts from your current platform or spreadsheets, where relevant
  • Training for the packing shed, the drivers and whoever manages the subscriptions, with a written guide per role
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the current shop platform, the subscription spreadsheet, the round list and the payment account, with a named person as day-to-day contact.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Order walk-throughs with the grower, the packer and a driver; the scope document and milestone plan are agreed, including the weight settlement rule.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the shop front with season status, the subscription page, the packing sheet and the round sheet, reviewed with the people who use them in the shed and the van.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: catalogue and seasons first, then checkout with rounds and cut-offs, then variable-weight settlement, then subscriptions and trade accounts.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    The business runs a test week on real produce: orders up to and past a cut-off, a weighed item settled, a skipped box and a trade invoice run.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Changes from the review, particularly to cut-off times, settlement wording and packing sheet layout, are made and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Customers, standing orders and trade terms migrated, next week rounds loaded, cut-over planned between one packing day and the next.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The shop runs on the new system; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Card payment providers that support authorising an estimate and capturing the settled weight price
  • Direct-debit providers for subscription box collection
  • Accounting packages for trade invoices and daily takings
  • Email and SMS providers for cut-off reminders, box contents and delivery notices
  • Route planning tools for ordering stops on each round
  • Label printers and scales in the packing shed
  • Mailing list tools for what is new this week

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A grower with two vans, three collection points and forty trade customers

In this scoping scenario, a vegetable and meat producer ran a Tuesday round west of the farm, a Thursday round into town and Friday collections from three village halls. Retail customers needed to see only the days their address was served, with a cut-off the evening before. Meat was sold by estimated weight and the final price only known at the packing scales. Forty restaurants and shops ordered weekly from a trade list and paid on a fortnightly invoice, never by card.

The scope we would propose: rounds by day and area with per-round cut-offs and collection points with windows, variable-weight products authorised at the estimate and captured at the settled price with the customer told the difference, standing orders with skips and swaps, and trade accounts whose orders bypass card checkout and roll onto an invoice run. The reason this needs a custom build is the settlement and cut-off behaviour: standard shop platforms charge a fixed price at checkout and offer every delivery day to everyone, which is exactly what this grower needed the shop to stop doing.

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of rounds, collection points and cut-off rules
  • Variable-weight products and the payment provider that must support estimate-then-settle
  • Box scheme size and the subscription rules for pauses, skips and swaps
  • Trade accounts, price lists and invoice runs
  • Volume and condition of product, customer and standing order data to migrate
  • Packing shed hardware such as scales and label printers to connect
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Farm produce shop package

Season-aware catalogue, variable-weight pricing settled at packing, produce boxes with standing orders, delivery rounds with cut-offs, collection points and trade price lists for farm shops and growers selling direct.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

When is a custom build the right choice rather than the package?

When your rounds, settlement rule or trade terms break the assumptions of the farm produce shop package. During discovery we lay your three order walk-throughs against the package and say plainly whether configuration covers them or whether, for example, your per-round cut-offs and fortnightly trade invoicing need custom work.

How is a variable-weight item charged?

The customer orders at an estimated weight and price. At packing the item is weighed, the final price is recorded against the order and the card is captured for that amount, within a tolerance you set. Where the difference exceeds the tolerance, the customer is told before capture. The rule is yours and is written into the scope document.

Can we keep our standing orders and customers from the old platform?

Usually yes. We export products, customers and active subscriptions, map them to the new catalogue and rounds, and reconcile the standing orders before cut-over so nobody misses a box in the changeover week. What can be carried over is stated once we have seen the data.

Does the shop show our organic certification?

As a record you supply. The certifying body, the scope and the date are displayed as supplied on the products you mark, and you update them at renewal. The shop does not verify or assert certification on its own.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code and data are handed over at delivery; hosting and maintenance are optional, separately agreed and movable to another provider.

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