Quick Preference Update
Fill out the form below to setup or update your standing requests. To learn more about why TC Farm recommends items on a regular basis and how we manage that, scroll down below the form.
Why Does TC Farm Recommends Items?
TC Farm is a member driven farming group. We raise food just for you and need to know what you want ahead of time.
No grocery store or internet farm offers the quality or selection of Minnesota Grown food our members make possible.
The reason we recommend food on a regular basis is in part to make ordering easier for our members. By setting up your preferred schedule, you can set and forget some aspects of ordering. We are working to improve the personalization of the recommendations themselves, and the form below is a step in that direction.
However, TC Farm also needs to recommend items for another key reason that might not be as obvious:
Many farms try to sell direct to families through farmers markets or other means, but the industry makes it very difficult for farmers to actually raise food the way farmers want to. The reason is that in order for the farm to be economically sustainable, they usually have to be able to also sell product through regular distribution. If they are selling fully a la carte directly to families, the orders won't be something they can count on or plan ahead for. They simply must have another place to sell their food or they will go out of business. Once they are selling to regular distribution, they are forced to conform to the lower standards of grocery store or restaurants. Otherwise their costs will be way more than the regular market will provide and they will go out of business fast.
Milk is the perfect example of this. Many small farms with their own creamery and brand want to raise the highest quality milk. Maybe to them that means organic, or A2 or truly raised on green pasture and grass fed. All of that costs extra labor and/or money. Since they can't possibly start off selling 100% of their milk through their own brand, they are lucky to sell 10% of that milk directly. The rest of the milk must be sold to the conventional milk truck that will pickup and pay them feedlot prices. They can't raise the quality of milk they want only to lose money on 90% of their sales. As a result they often pick one thing they can afford to do better and hope to breakeven on 90% of their sales to the conventional milk truck.
By setting up your preferences and having a regularly scheduled order, TC Farm members are literally changing the local food system. Even though you can skip or edit anytime, our group can mostly count on revenue that will actually pay a sustainable wage and cover the costs of higher quality food. TC Farmers focus on raising the most idealistic food because they know our members will support them and their food won't go to waste or have to be sold at a loss.
This is why grocery or other a la carte systems simply can't improve the quality or sustainability of agriculture in a significant way. You are directly making it possible for a radical change in agriculture.
How TC Farm Recommends Items
With your feedback and support, TC Farm is evolving and improving. We started off focused only on the very best meats; nothing in the grocery or farmers' market was available meeting our ideals and we decided to start our own farm. We wanted members to have good recommendations and build our a computer system focused on recommending monthly meat orders.
Speaking of which, if you find that we are recommending meat items that you don't want, be sure to update your meat preferences here.
Over time, TC Farm members asked for other food that was better than what was available in the grocery, not just meat. As we connected with other idealistic food makers, we added more and more items not available in the grocery. These items were not part of the computer system preferences or the system itself.
We are working to build a new version of our recommendations system that will integrate really well, provide better recommendations and give members more control over their food choices. In the meantime, we've made some quick improvements. Here is how it works now:
- Meat Item recommendations: Once a month TC Farm will recommend meat items based on your meat preferences in the amount of your typical meat orders in the past.
- Other Items not listed in the meat preference area will be recommended once a month if you've ordered them in the previous two months. If you don't order any non-meat item for a couple of months, we will automatically stop recommending it unless you have a standing request.
We don't want to continue to recommend an item you tried once and no longer want, but we also don't want to force members to seek out and find items they want on a regular basis. If you ever want to ensure a specific item is never recommended again, just shoot us an email with the item along with any helpful feedback you can offer. - Setup your own schedule: For items you'd like to have on a regular basis, we would be very grateful if you can fill out the form below so we know what to plan ahead. This is really helpful especially for items like produce and milk. The more we can count on the schedule, the better and better our local food system will become.