We have been having an ongoing healthy debate in our veg box scheme about whether to deliver or not.
There is no doubt we will get a lot more customers if we deliver, if we don't we will be missing out. On the other hand deliveries are expensive in time and money. In such a rural area we could spend more time on the road than on the farm.
Profits could quickly be eaten up by doing deliveries, but then again we could just charge the customer a delivery fee to cover it.
With a subscription service is it realistic to expect people to come and collect their weekly veg box?
We decided to try to get people to collect in the first instance - acknowledging that if it doesn't work we'll have to resort to deliveries.
We are going to offer 4 collection points which will be open on a Friday and Saturday for people to come and collect.
We are going to encourage people to sign up in groups of friends and family so they could co-ordinate their pick ups. We are also going to look for bigger groups, maybe community groups, gyms, schools etc that might want to set up their own collection point which we can deliver to for 10 or more boxes.
Hopefully that might avoid the need for deliveries. Interested to hear thoughts on this?
I reckon veg boxes are the best way of selling vegetables for multiple reasons including the cost of actually selling them. For that reason I deliver them for free in order to maximise the amount of veg boxes that will be purchased in that way. Mind you I am in a fairly densely populated area.