For food hubs & co-ops

Forty growers. One coordinator. A box list due Thursday.What you need is a Farmhand.

Every grower's catalog, every buyer type, every route — in one place. Retail, wholesale, SNAP/EBT, and member boxes, sold off one inventory and packed off one list.

When anything changes, you text it.

Book My 15-Min Demo See what you'd save

15 minutes with Ari — our founder, and a farmer.

Aliza PickeringThe Day Dream Farmer · Wilton, NY

Hubs, co-ops and collaborative CSAs running on Farmhand

Live on Farmhand

You already run a hub.
Can it run without you?

These can. Each aggregates from other growers and sells member boxes alongside a full shop. The growers have their own harvest list, the members change their own boxes, and whoever's packing on Thursday pulls one report themselves.

40+ farms, one box

County-wide hub · farm to school

One weekly box aggregated from 40+ county farmers and producers, with nine add-on lines and a separate farm-to-school box running alongside it.

3 box types · 7 pickup & delivery areas · EBT/SNAP

BIPOC farmer network · food access

Same box, same delivery, two ways to pay — $45 prepaid or $20 with EBT and Double Up Bucks, from a network of Alabama BIPOC farmers.

6–8 items weekly · weekly or biweekly · skip any time

Collaborative CSA · certified organic

First Rain, Bluebird and Starbright Acres each grow what they grow best — livestock, greens and flowers, certified-organic row crops — and sell it as one CSA.

Year-round farm store · 3 partner farms

Collaborative CSA

Nevada County, CA

Visit the hub ↗

$12.50 with the match

Community food council · seasonal box

EBT customers pay half — $25 becomes $12.50 — funded by a donation pool other members pay into at the same checkout.

$25 & $45 boxes · July–November · beef & coffee add-ons

Del Norte County Harvest Box

Crescent City, CA

Visit the hub ↗

How it actually works

"Hey farmhand,
can you…"

Your catalog changes every week, and someone has to change it. On Farmhand that someone isn't you — text what you need, and a real person on our team makes the change and texts you back when it's live.

New producer. New add-on line. A pickup site that's full. A route running late.

You don't file a request. You text someone.

How hubs run on Farmhand

FarmhandText message

Monday 6:20 AM

Hey farmhand — put Latremore Pine Ridge's eggs in the shop. $7.50 a dozen, and let members add them to their box.

Live now, and set as an add-on so members can attach it to a delivery they're already getting. Want it in Thursday's newsletter?

Yes.

Tuesday 11:04 AM

One of our growers is short on kale this week. Swap it out of the box list and put chard in instead.

Swapped on every box this week, and noted on the pack list so nobody pulls the wrong thing.

Wednesday 4:47 PM

Skidmore's full — start a waitlist there and open 20 more spots at Malta YMCA.

Done. Capacity cap, waitlist and the signup page all updated, so the next member lands where you have room.

Thursday 7:12 AM

Truck's behind. Tell everyone on today's route we're about an hour late.

Sent to the whole route by text and email. Three replied — all fine. I'll forward anything that needs you.

Friday 5:55 AM

Who's got a failed payment this week?

Four — three already retried successfully overnight. I messaged the fourth. Nothing for you to do.

This is the part I couldn't hire for.

Scroll the thread

From a co-op already running this way

"You can't just open a pickup site and think the memberships will fill themselves."

Aliza Pickering · The Day Dream Farmer · Wilton, NY

She runs a cooperative CSA, a garden center and a farmstand — her neighbors' harvest sells alongside her own, and she added 100+ members in 90 days.

Read her story →

01 — Access & support

Food access isn't a feature. It's half the reason you exist.

EBT/SNAP at checkout, subsidized and sliding-scale shares, a school box on its own price list. And the questions that come with serving hundreds of households get answered by a real person who isn't you.

EBT-eligible items, flagged where they applyMarked at the product level, so the right things are payable the right way.

Tiered and subsidized sharesPay-what-you-can tiers and sponsored boxes sit alongside full-price ones, on one price list.

Real people, seven days a weekChat, email and SMS in your hub's voice — and every conversation stays visible to you, including the ones we answer.

Failed payments chase themselvesDeclined cards retry automatically and the member gets a branded notice with a link to fix it.

You textSet up the school box for fall on its own price list — families and staff only.

02 — The catalog

Multiple producers. One list that updates in real-time.

Every producer has their own availability, units and pack sizes, and the box list changes every week. For a hub the catalog is the product — so it can't be the thing that eats your Tuesday.

Products, variants and units per producerHalf-pints, dozens, bunches, cases. Priced and tracked separately, listed side by side in one shop.

Inventory that reflects what you haveAdjust in real-time when a grower comes up short, and the shop stops selling what you don't have.

Add a producer and inventory by textYou send the name, the price and the unit. We list it. Nobody on your team has to learn the tool, or even log in at all.

gofarmhand.com/shop/…

One shop carrying products from several producers

You textAdd three new growers to the shop — I'll send the price list.

03 — Shares & sites

A full site — and a list of people asking for the next one.

A hub grows site by site, not member by member. So the number that matters isn't total members — it's which sites are full, which have room, and where people are asking to be let in.

Capacity caps and waitlists per siteA site closes itself at capacity and keeps collecting names behind it.

Invites that go out when you say goOpen more spots and every waitlisted member gets an automatic invite to complete signup. You make the call; you don't send thirty emails and referee the race.

Demand you can see by siteWaitlist counts per location, so you know which site to expand and which empty ones to stop driving to.

Weekly, biweekly, or pausedSkips and holds members handle themselves. The Day Dream Farmer added 100+ members in 90 days by adding flexibility like this.

Any share model, changed between seasonsFixed box, customizable, market-style or hybrid. Your model, your choice.

gofarmhand.com/csa/…/plans

Pickup sites with capacity and a waitlist

04 — Shop & add-ons

The box is the standard. The add-ons are the margin.

Add-ons ride along with a delivery you're already making, which makes them the cheapest revenue you'll ever move.

Add-ons on every deliveryMembers top up the box they're already getting. One checkout, one stop, more per order.

Standing add-ons members manageA weekly egg share they can skip themselves, without a message to you.

Open to people who aren't members yetNeighbors who won't commit to a share can still buy. The shop becomes the front door to the subscription.

Your growers' products, your storefrontTheir harvest listed beside yours, under your name, in one cart.

Add-on lines running at NCGA · Harvest Hub today:

EggsCoffeeHoneyCacaoMushroomsMicrogreensSalt flakesApple cider vinegarPantry

A partner producer’s product in the hub’s shop

You textPut Latremore Pine Ridge's eggs in the shop — $7.50 a dozen, and let members add them to their box.

05 — Sourcing & delivery

A week to source it. A day to get it right.

This is the part single-farm software gets wrong. You don't grow most of what you sell — you buy it. So orders have to close far enough ahead that you can go to your growers with a real number before a single box is packed.

An order cutoff built for buying, not harvestingOrders lock when you want them to, giving you the window to source from neighboring farms and fill the box you promised.

Pack lists, labels and site sign-out sheetsStation-separated and in route order, for every pickup site and every driver.

Multi-driver routing across your zonesStops ordered for the shortest run, re-optimized when you add one the morning of.

Members kept posted, including the bad daysAutomatic notices when the box is packed and when it lands, and one message to a whole route when the truck is behind.

Harvest report with pack lists and sign-out sheets

You textRunning behind on the north route — re-optimize it and tell the whole route we're an hour late.

From the hubs themselves

The people aggregating for a whole county.

Coordinators, food council staff and co-op founders on what changed when the catalog, the members and the route stopped living in different places.

“You can’t just open a pickup site and think the memberships will fill themselves.”

Aliza Pickering

The Day Dream Farmer · Wilton, NY

100+ members in 90 days