The Weekly Farm Store Sales Review
By Michael Kilpatrick ·
Every week, I sit down in my office and study the sales reports for our farm store. This isn’t a “nice to have” routine. It’s the reason why we know where to invest our time and energy, so the farm store can keep growing YoY. I’ve talked to farmers who were genuinely shocked when they finally sat down with their books and realized they’d had a bad year. Way off from what they had estimated. And if they’d been checking in weekly, they’d have seen it coming months earlier and had time to turn it around. So knowing your numbers isn’t accounting busywork. It’s how you manage. It’s how you make decisions. It’s how you know whether that new product is actually moving or just taking up shelf space. It’s how you catch problems before they become expensive. Here’s what that looks like in practice.
The Weekly Farm Store Sales Review: My Actual Routine
We use Square at Farm on Central. If you’re on a different system, that’s fine—the principles are the same. The software doesn’t matter here; just that you have a system to pull sales reports and see accurate numbers for the week. Here’s what I check, in order, every single week.
Step 1: Start With Today
The first thing I pull up is the current day’s sales. Think of it as a gut check. How did we do? Does it feel right given the weather, the day of the week, what we had in stock? Over time, you develop a feel for what a normal Tuesday looks like versus a normal Saturday. When something’s off—a slower-than-expected Friday, for instance—you start asking why. For us, the questions are usually, “Did we forget to send the weekly email? Did we not post on socials? Was there something happening in town?” For example, one week I pulled up Tuesday’s numbers and they were lower than usual. I knew exactly why—I’d been at an Amish grower meeting and had forgotten to send out our weekly text blast. Just looking at the sales report showed a direct connection between our marketing text (or lack thereof) and how many people came to shop. Noticing those connections is how you make the right business choices.
Step 2: Check Week-to-Date Against Last Week
Next I compare the week-to-date total to the prior week. I check, are we up or down? This comparison has its limits. If last week was unusually strong—say, a storm was coming and everyone stocked up on bread and eggs—then being down from that week doesn’t mean much. Context always matters. But it keeps me in the habit of asking why, and sometimes the answer is simple and actionable. If we’re down week-over-week and we haven’t sent an email or posted anything on socials, well—that’s the answer.
Step 3: The One That Actually Matters—52 Weeks Prior
This is the comparison I care most about: how are we doing versus the same week last year? Our farm store is deeply seasonal. January looks nothing like June. Sales fluctuate wildly by month. Most farm stores are in the same boat. So comparing this January to last January is a fairer comparison than week-over-week. Year-over-year shows you whether your business is actually growing. Sometimes I’ll pull the comparison and see we’re up 54% over the same week the prior year. That tells me something is working. When I’m up 12% on a slow January week with rough weather? I’ll take it. When I’m flat or down year-over-year? That’s a conversation I need to have with myself about what’s changed and what needs to be done about it. If you’re building a healthy farm store, you should be growing year-over-year. If you’ve been flat for two or three years running, something needs to change. Don’t let it sneak up on you.
Step 4: Dig Into Products and Inventory
Once I’ve looked at the sales numbers, I check inventory—what we have on hand, what’s been moving, and what hasn’t. This is where you catch things early. For example, there were a few weeks where I kept checking inventory and saw that we hadn’t sold a single honeydew, but lemons were flying off the shelves. Good to know. Maybe the honeydew gets a different placement. Maybe we don’t reorder it. Either way, now I know. More importantly, this is how you track your best sellers. Your top products deserve good placement, consistent stocking, and your marketing attention. If you can see arugula is down to 15 bags and it sells consistently, you know you should be growing more. Running out of your best products costs you sales, and it teaches your customers not to count on you. On the flip side, if a product isn’t selling well, something needs to change. Or maybe you cut the product entirely. If you run the numbers and something isn’t profitable, let it go.
Step 5: Check Your Labor Ratio
Payroll is a big expense, so it has to be factored in. At Farm on Central, we run an 8–9% labor ratio in the store—for every $10 we make, we spend about $1 on in-store labor. We work hard to keep it under 10%, because we’re also paying for labor in the greenhouses and fields. Labor is the cost that quietly eats your margins if you’re not watching it. Say we make $3,600 in store sales. That’s a heavy day for us. But maybe we also have six people working on the farm that day, some in the fields and some in the store, and that’s ~ $1,065 in labor. You have to look at profitability, not just revenue. If you don’t know your labor ratio, you don’t know if you can afford to hire, if you’re overstaffed on slow days, or whether the store is actually as profitable as it feels when the cash box looks full at closing time.
Step 6: Look for Patterns, Not Just Numbers
After a few months of doing this consistently, you stop just seeing numbers and start seeing what’s actually going on in your business. You notice that Saturdays after an email blast are reliably stronger than Saturdays when you didn’t send one. You notice that sales spike before big storms—people want bread, eggs, and milk—so you start ordering extra of those whenever weather is in the forecast. You notice that a product you were excited about hasn’t moved in three months, and it’s time to pull it. These things don’t show up in a single week. They show up when you do this consistently over time. Here’s a real example: We noticed that during the weeks we ran our bulk pre-buy program—peaches, citrus, blueberries—overall store sales went up, not just the pre-orders themselves. People were coming in to pick up their order and grabbing eggs, bread, or something random for dinner while they were there. Once we saw that clearly in the numbers, we knew our pre-buy programs were worth doing and worth doing more of. We weren’t guessing anymore.
A Few More Things Worth Knowing
Context matters. A down week in January after a snowstorm is a completely different situation than a down week in July for no apparent reason. Always ask why before you panic or celebrate. Write it down. Keep a simple running log—a spreadsheet is fine. Your weekly total, your year-over-year number, and a note about anything notable that week (“sent email Tuesday, ran strawberry special, snowstorm Thursday”). Three months from now, that context will be invaluable. Be consistent. The power here is in the repetition. Same day, same time, every week. For me it takes maybe 15 minutes, and I walk away with a clear picture of where things stand. End with a question. After every review, I try to leave with one thing to chew on. Why were Wednesdays slow this month? What happened that week in March that made sales spike—and can we repeat it? We’ve been flat year-over-year for a few weeks now, so what needs to change? The Bottom Line: If you want to build a profitable, sustainable farm store, you need to pay attention to the numbers so you can catch both problems AND opportunities early. Look at your numbers. Do it every week. Make changes accordingly.