What does it mean to be a Farmer Member?

This collective, West Sound Floral Exchange (WSFE) is designed to be inclusive to farms and farmers of all experience levels, .and size. You do not have to have a large farm to participate. We have also designed WSFE to enable farmers to interact with the website and exchange on their own terms. We want the farmers to be in charge of what they offer for sale and how much they charge for their products. We see WSFE as facilitating the farmer-florist connection. To do this:

-Member Farmers will be given an account with our licensed software called “Local Food Marketplace” (LFM). This software enables us to have one shop that is updated by all our farmers.

-Every week, Farmers will have from Friday morning until Saturday night to upload their expected inventory for the coming week before the shop “opens” to customers.

-Sunday at 8am, the shop opens to the floral professional customers to order their flowers and remains open until Monday at 10pm.

- In the portal, farmers can see the orders as they come rolling in, but at the close of the shop period, you will get an emailed report of everything that was purchased from you. Farmers will prepare their orders on Tuesdays and condition the flowers overnight.

-Wednesday morning the flower bus will drive around and pick up the orders from farmers. WSFE will not take anything that is not already ordered. We specifically designed the exchange this way because we do not think that the “consignment” model is a good for anyone who grows fresh products. You can then use what you do not sell through WSFE elsewhere, minimizing your waste.

-After picking up everyone’s orders, I’ll then do another circuit and deliver to our customers on the same day. The main benefits are that we don’t have to have a location to store and keep flowers, and minimal handling means better blooms to the end-customer.

-At the end of the day, once all the customers have received their orders and had a chance to inspect them, credit cards are processed and receipts issued electronically. Farmers are paid either every two weeks or monthly.