In GrownBy, there are three types of Products: 

Standard: A product in your shop that is available as a stand-alone item. While Standard products can be ordered for multiple dates simultaneously, they are not a subscription. Payment is requested either at checkout, or on the day of delivery, if the product is being ordered for a future date. Examples of standard products could be a bunch of carrots, a 2 lb package of ground beef, a deposit for a half a hog, a one-week sample box of vegetables, a tote bag, etc.

Subscription or CSA Share: A product in your shop which, when purchased, will be purchased for a predefined series of pick-up of delivery dates. Subscriptions are further broken down into Primary and Add-on Shares. These can have monthly or weekly installments for payment. While not a product itself, you will also find Share collection template under subscriptions. You can learn more about those here. Examples of Subscription or CSA Share products might include an egg share, a fruit share, a subscription to a weekly meat box, etc.

Digital: A product in your shop that is not directly connected to a physical good. This could be a ticket to an event, farm credit, donation, membership fee, etc. 

This article focuses on Standard products and explains them thoroughly so that you will understand when and how to use them on GrownBy. To learn about Subscriptions and Digital products, click the links above. 

Creating a Standard Product

To get started, login to GrownBy and navigate to your dashboard. Click Products and then click Add new product. The screen looks like this: 

Next, click Standard or Digital Product and then click Standard Product. A product creation form will appear that looks like this: 

Some of the fields in this form are self-explanatory but we will include explanations about some of the ones that might cause confusion below. 

Product Creation Form 

The Product Name, Short Description, and Long Description all appear as information for your customer in the shop either beside, underneath, and as expandable text along with the product. Depending on your business and communication style, you might put a lot or a little information here. You can think of the Name and Short Description as the title and subtitle of your product. The Long Description is a place where you can tell customers details about this product or share. You might consider talking in-depth about your production techniques, offering information about variation or sizing, or perhaps talking about logistics for the season. 

Something to keep in mind is that while the short description and name will appear in your shop, customers will need to click on the product (not just “add to cart”) to see the long description. We find that often, customers add products directly to their carts without viewing the long description. So, you shouldn’t count on customers seeing information that you put in this field.

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Category

The category field is intended to help you organize your products, both for yourself and for your customers. Products that you add to your shop will be grouped together in the shop by category. You can add as many categories as necessary to make your shop appear the way you’d like it to. If you have a lot of Products, you will probably want to add more categories. 

SNAP/EBT 

This selector will only appear if you have SNAP/EBT payments enabled for your farm. You can read more about getting approved for SNAP Online here. If you do have SNAP/EBT enabled and set, up, there will be a check box on the page that looks like this: 

According to United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service (USDA-FNS) regulation, not all Products are eligible for SNAP/EBT purchase. If you are offering products for SNAP/EBT, it is your responsibility to know the USDA-FNS regulations and set your products accordingly. 

CSA Group

Units

Under the units field, you can choose whether to Manage Stock Globally. Global Inventory tracks inventory across buying options. For instance, you may have 1,000 lbs of apples total and sell those apples in 5 or 10 lb bags. Uncheck this box if you need to manage inventory by buying option. Tracking inventory by buying option is helpful for producers selling specific packages or cuts of items; for example, if you have packages of cheese or meat in certain weights and you want to keep track of the inventory of packets of each weight. 

Next, you will enter the actual base measurement or unit by which you sell this product. You may add any custom unit and add as many additional units as you need. 

Cost Per Unit is not the same as the price at which you will offer your product to your customers. Instead, it is a field that is for cost of production or, if you are buying the product from another producer, you can use this field to track the cost of the item to you. Doing so can be helpful later to understand the profit you are making on the item.You may leave this field blank.

In Stock is simply the stock of the product you have. When you have the Manage Stock Globally button clicked, In Stock tracks stock across all buying options. When you untick the box, In Stock changes to Price Per Unit. The price below (under Buying Options and Prices) will auto-calculate by multiplying the Price Per Unit by the Units Each field. You can always edit the Price field under Buying Options & Prices if, for instance, you want to offer bulk discounts or different pricing for different buying options generally. Additionally, when you untick the Manage Stock Globally box, In Stock fields will appear to the right of each Buying Option Name. 

You can add as many buying options as you need. 

Schedules & Availability

Products are linked to pick-up or delivery schedules, which determine when the customers can receive the product  You can read all about schedules here.

To the right of the Schedules & Availability heading is a check box that says Only allow Next Day purchases. When checked, customers can only buy this product for the next available day in the schedule. Otherwise, customers can purchase your product across its availability, picking and choosing any date(s) when they want to purchase the product.

To set up the schedule for your product, first select one of the schedules you previously created from the first drop-down menu. Then, you can further filter the schedule under Frequency. 

Next, you can set a Start Date and End Date for the specific product, which will need to be a subset of the dates that you set for the schedule itself. If you’re setting up products far ahead of their actual availability, make this window when you think your product will be available during the selected schedule. This will show on the product page and can help educate customers about seasonality. 

It’s always a good idea to check the Product Schedule Overview calendar at the bottom of the product creator form to make sure that things are as you would like them to be! 

When you’re done, click Submit. 

It’s also always a good idea to check your shop at this stage to be sure that the product page looks exactly how you want it to.

Creating additional Products

From here, you can repeat the process to create additional products. We recommend copying products that will have some similarity and then editing the copy to save some time! To copy a product, head to the Products menu and then click the three dots to the right of the product. Click Copy and then, once the copy appears, click the three dots on it and select Edit. Or, you can just click on the product to enter the editing screen. 

Copying a product looks like this: 

Standard products as SNAP/EBT CSA shares

Using standard products that are paid for at each pick-up/delivery are one way to set-up a SNAP-friendly CSA on GrownBy. Because of USDA-FNS regulations, SNAP customers are not allowed to pay for products ahead of time and therefore cannot purchase subscriptions through GrownBy. If you are a SNAP/EBT online farmer, please reach out to us for advice about setting up your CSA using standard products.