Grazecart: Our Favorite Ecommerce Platform for Selling Beef, Pork, Chicken, and other Farm Products Online

When it comes to ecommerce platforms for farm products, there are a lot of options. In our experience, Grazecart stands out as one of the best, and for meat farmers there’s no better choice. Here are 8 key features of Grazecart that make it one of our favorites for farmers, and 5 things you’ll want to keep in mind before you build.

(Nope, this post isn’t sponsored. We are an official Grazecart partner, but we haven’t been paid to say any of this. We’ve just used the platform a lot and believe in what it can do.)

Grazecart’s Best Features 

• Sell by variable weight 

This feature alone makes Grazecart our top pick for meat farmers. You can charge for each cut of meat by its actual weight rather than a fixed price. No more over or under charging. It works like this: the customer’s credit card is authorized and saved at checkout, but isn’t charged until after you fulfill the order and know accurate pricing for their items.  

• Advanced shipping and delivery

With Grazecart you can easily set up local delivery zones, local pickups or dropsites, and shipping zones. The locations you can set up are unlimited. Each can be customized with unique schedules, product specifications, and prices. Say you deliver within 15 miles of your farm, offer three farmers' market pickups and one on-farm pick-up, and you're expanding into shipping regionally. Grazecart can help you manage all of it.

• Custom product availability 

This feature makes it easy to add or remove products from specific pickup or delivery locations. A great example is eggs—not the easiest to ship. You can assign eggs to be available to local sales channels only. 

• Pricing tiers for different customer types

Each method of delivery has its own costs. Grazecart allows you to assign pricing tiers to different delivery zones to account for unique expenses. This helps avoid add-on fees for your customers, which can be a turn-off when shopping. 

• No coding required 

The page builders for Grazecart are easy to use and require zero coding knowledge. Just drag and drop elements to build out your site. 

• Optimized for mobile 

Most people use their phones to shop and browse the internet, so a mobile-optimized website is crucial. As you build your site you can see how edits look on mobile, tablet, and desktop. Important pages like checkout are automatically formatted for mobile.  

• Real-time inventory management 

Inventory is tracked in real-time as customers shop your online store. Grazecart provides stock-out reports for you to track when popular items are getting low. You can also build out bundles—a great way to increase average order values—and set up inventory tracking so that each item is automatically pulled out of inventory when a bundle is purchased. 

• Great support

The support team with Grazecart is top notch. They are eager to help and they use Grazecart for their own farm, so if there is an issue, they’re on it. They’ve also done a fantastic job providing web tutorials on how to get started. 

Grazecart Drawbacks to Consider

• Setup takes some effort

To really build out a beautiful site, you need to have all the ingredients before you start cooking. This means having a solid brand foundation, good copywriting, a clean product list and prices, strong web and product photography, and finalized pickup and delivery logistics. Missing elements lead to an unprofessional presentation and administrative mix-ups.

• Limited design functionality 

The no-code editor is great, but it does lead to limitations in design. If you know basic HTML/CSS or are working with a web developer, you can implement custom designs. 

• No bulk add for locations or products

If you have a lot of products and locations, you’ll likely find it tedious to upload them all. Grazecart doesn't allow bulk adding or importing from a CSV. You have to build out each product and location one at a time. 

• Not ideal for CSAs

Grazecart offers “Subscribe & Save,” very similar to Amazon’s model.  Every order can be a one-time order or customers can subscribe and get a percentage discount. This feature is great for driving repeat revenue, but it doesn’t match well with CSAs, where inventory changes week after week. 

• Limited route customization beyond zip code

You can set up delivery/shipping zones by state or zip code only. There is no ability to set up a radius for delivery zones. 

Need a hand getting started with Grazecart? We can help.