Farm-to-Table Delivery in a Dynamic Macroeconomic Landscape
The farm-to-table delivery and consumer-supported agriculture (CSA) market is evolving quickly! Despite headwinds, more consumers are excited to discover farm-to-table delivery options that supply fresh, organic, delicious products. They want these products at home, and many prefer them while dining out.
Still, economics and public perception trends can shift at any time. This can either lead more consumers to farm-to-table delivery as an option for fresh, quality groceries or drive them away.
Public Opinion Can Shift in an Instant
Consider, for example, the massive chicken egg crisis that began in 2022 and continues through March 2025. Families faced with purchasing eggs at exorbitant prices will seek other options. They may be happier to pay premium prices for a guaranteed supply of locally grown, higher-quality eggs from humanely farmed chickens.
And, if convenient farm-to-table delivery is available, that’s one more reason to skip a trip to the giant corporate grocery and big box stores, which primarily lured these families with affordability.
Once attracted to better eggs, the next step is introducing them to other popular ingredients or produce.
Increasing Opportunities Lead to Increasing Competition
The good news is that opportunities for farm-to-table delivery programs are growing. The not-so-good news is that these opportunities create competition from every angle. From the new backyard egg farmer selling eggs to her neighborhood watch members on Facebook to factory farms and “big meat” rebranding with “natural” subsidiaries or partner farms, competition looms. For farm-to-table producers, these competitors threaten profit margins, diminish community goodwill, and inconvenience retention efforts.
As a result, it is critical that farmers, co-ops and community CSA programs stay ahead of these trends. Focus on new customer acquisition today and customer retention tomorrow.
Key Trends Shaping Farm-to-Table Delivery
At DeliveryBizPro (DBP), we understand that modern, educated, discerning farm-to-table consumers demand a customizable shopping experience. Our food delivery software programs empower farmers to thrive, attracting new business and servicing current clientele.
We also understand the key farm-to-table delivery trends cropping up every season. From transparency and sustainability to the challenges of software sprawl, keep reading to learn about key farm-to-table trends.
Sustainability & Transparency Continue to Grow as Core Values
In 2023, McKinsey and NeilsonIQ completed an extensive study to understand the importance of sustainability to US consumers.
Their research shows:
- 78% of consumers claim a sustainable lifestyle is important to them.
- This is an 18% growth above 2020 results.
Getting granular, products marketed with environmental, social, and governance (ESG)- related claims saw 1.7% more sales growth than products made without these claims. Food items made the largest gains, with sweet snacks and yogurts among the best performers.
Today, your customers expect complete transparency in food sourcing. They wish to understand the environmental impact of their foods and the packaging in which they arrive. They actively seek eco-friendly products, packaging, and restaurant dining experiences. Climate change remains a major concern.
Keep Up With This Trend & Make It Marketable
At DBP, we recognize these core values and can help farm-to-table providers stay on top of this trend. For instance, we can help your organization streamline delivery routes to cut costs using less fuel, while saving delivery driver and packaging time.
Our farm-to-table food delivery software can also help you protect reusable resources, like crates and glass bottles, with deposit fee tracking. Once these solutions are in place, they make excellent content for your social media marketing. Ensure your consumers know how much you value their beliefs and the steps you take to honor their wishes for clean, green foods.
Next, consider the importance of convenience for your farm-to-table customer base.
Convenience Matters
US consumer shopping habits have changed a lot since the 2020 pandemic. Grocery and food delivery apps abound, and your customers crave a seamless purchasing experience, similar to what they would experience with e-commerce giants and big box stores.
Farm-to-table delivery customers are looking for:
- Practical, convenient delivery options, like doorstep delivery using their preferred shipper, and pick-up/will-call options.
- Flexible subscription options, which can be changed, paused, or canceled with a few clicks.
- Convenient tech, like cell phone apps.
DeliveryBizPro’s mobile-friendly interface makes all these options available for your customers. Whether they need to pause a subscription, double their order, or change a delivery address, they can accomplish everything in moments from their cell phone, tablet, or laptop.
This nicely leads to our next point: food subscriptions are becoming incredibly popular.
Food Delivery Subscriptions Are Taking Center Stage
Food subscription models are popular because customers appreciate the ease and reliability of the ordering process. As promised, food arrives fresh and on time, often with simple menus and basic preparation instructions.
These subscription models offer increased revenue and endless branding opportunities for farm-to-table operations.
Staying on Top of This Trend
Farm-to-table and CSA farm delivery operations can leverage their food subscription services by:
- Making re-orders very simple, “order now” one-click options are great.
- Automating subscription billing and order management with tools like DeliveryBizPro.
- Encouraging loyalty through incentives and discounts.
- Providing perks and exclusive products for long-term subscribers.
Free product samples are another excellent use of your farm-to-table delivery subscription software. Organizations can find customers for a product before it expires by introducing new items to their client base. Think of it this way: If they ordered your goat milk cheese, maybe you can get them hooked on your yogurt product. The ability to select free samples and trial sizes could generate a lot of new sales.
This segues into our next section, modern technology as a game-changer.
Technology is a Game-Changer and No Longer Monopolized by Big Box Food
Small businesses, family farms, community co-op farms, and CSAs no longer rely on roadside stands to generate sales and build their brands. Drag-and-drop website design services abound. Social media is free to launch and relatively affordable to use for growing your reach as a farm-to-table food delivery provider.
However, all this tech does come with a few downfalls, like software sprawl.
What is Software Sprawl?
Software sprawl usually exists when two things happen:
- Current software expands, and users don’t take full advantage of services.
- Additional software items are purchased, sometimes repeatedly, by individual departments to fulfill their needs.
Many farm-to-table delivery businesses find themselves buying software for points like:
- Bookkeeping and tax prep
- Customer data analysis
- Route management
- Marketing management
- Email & SMS marketing
Fees add up. Data is compiled on disconnected platforms, and your team needs to run X operations on various machines and fight their way through a disjointed process. Software sprawl becomes a triple threat as your organization pays for more software, more labor hours to learn it, and more time integrating these tools.
Instead, know all these things can be handled using a single integrated ERP, logistics, and e-commoerce program by DBP.
Tackle This Challenge With DeliveryBizPro
With our specialized, unique approach to subscription shopping & regional routing, you can say goodbye to clunky shopping experiences and pesky phone orders. Your customers will enjoy a familiar and intuitive marketplace designed to showcase how your fresh foods can be delivered to their doorsteps. Our proprietary routing automation makes growing your delivery reach easy, so you can spend more time outside in the sunshine.
Plus, no hidden add-ons or extra fees are sneaking up. Your farm-to-table delivery business functionality is native to DBP, so you won’t need 10 more integrations and plug-ins to run your business. Customer service has become easier than ever, which is one important way to build brand loyalty.
Fostering Customer Loyalty
You’re likely aware that new customer acquisition is far more expensive than retention marketing. Forbes.com suggests it costs five to seven times more to attract a new customer than to market to an existing one. In the long run, keeping your current clients utterly satisfied is the best way to evade those looming Facebook farm sellers and big-box organizations.
Since we’re talking about fresh food products, farm-to-table delivery services must actively pursue and build valuable customer loyalty. Let’s face it: Order errors happen. A piece of fruit arrives bruised. An order doesn’t arrive on time during the holidays, thanks to a winter storm. We’ve seen it all at DBP.
Tactics for Building Loyalty in 2025
Food is a very personal experience. Your customers want to buy their food from a brand they trust, and they will often understand a minor mishap if they get enough attention in a customer service setting.
You can build brand loyalty by:
- Providing outstanding customer service when things go awry. Leave the customer thrilled with their experience, not merely satisfied.
- Following up on orders re-shipped, using a human touch.
- Creating a community around your brand (think social media, shared menus, customer recipe videos).
- Offering seamless, user-friendly shopping experiences.
- Continuously marketing efforts toward sustainability.
- Offering deep discounts for repeat orders.
We can help you accomplish that with one food delivery software program. For farm-to-fork businesses and CSAs, DBP makes shopping easy. And when the inevitable hiccup happens—thanks to bad weather and road closures, for instance—our software makes customer service fast and easy, too. From the initial contact to re-order and follow-up, we make the constant contact and human touch easy for you.
Now that your individual customers are beyond satisfied, let’s explore wholesale expansion as a key trend in the farm-to-table industry.
Wholesale Expansion Is Your Next Level
Farm-to-Restaurant-Table
In 2025, small US farms are expected to provide 35% of the ingredients used by domestic restaurants, up 12% from 2020. Therefore, it’s time to start building a relationship with at least one local restaurant or chain.
According to USDA Economic Research, which is run by the Department of Agriculture, even more wholesale opportunities are opening up for small farm operations.
Farm-to-Grocer
Major supermarket chains have come to respect consumers’ choices for fresh, wholesome, locally grown foods with few ingredients. And, while wholesale deals often run very thin profit margins, they are an excellent way to increase your reach to new customers with minimal marketing investments. Wholesale opportunities with a grocer are ideal if you’re hoping to scale up this year because those ongoing bulk purchases can provide ongoing, instant capital.
Farm-to-Institution
Finally, don’t forget to approach local institutions with your product.
We’re talking about:
- Schools
- Hospitals
- Churches
- Non-profit organizations
- And corrections institutions
A few major clients in these arenas can generate tremendous sales and excellent social media marketing opportunities. Some have grants available for purchasing fresh, healthy foods from local sources, and you can even do the research for them. Imagine how thrilled your local church, magnet school, or homeless shelter will be when they discover you can provide them with freshly farmed local foods at no cost. And imagine the “likes” and “shares” on social media when your brand delivers these foods to people who need them most.
If the idea of wholesale deliveries is intimidating, DBP can help. Our farm software is designed to help you manage B2B orders with ease, plus digital invoicing and membership pricing. Go ahead, take the plunge!
Final Thoughts on Farm-to-Table Delivery
With everything happening on the world stage in 2025, this will be a banner year for small farm operations, farm-to-table delivery services, and CSA farm delivery programs.
Your farm business might have started with whimsy, but it’s time to level up by staying on top of key trends in the farm-to-table category. Pay attention to current consumer thoughts on sustainability and climate, and mirror them. Ensure your customers can enjoy a streamlined, smooth ordering process and try to limit software sprawl.
DeliveryBizPro is proud to stand beside you during this epic year. We’re ready to help you centralize and streamline your farm-to-table operations, grow your business, and scale with wholesale suppliers.
We invite you to explore DBP with a free demo to see how we can simplify and transform your business for tomorrow.
Related Reading & Resources:
OrganicConsumers.org: Boycott Big Meat