Farmers Pick
How Farmers Pick became a tech-enabled food business
Farmers Pick exists to solve an avoidable problem: food waste. Every year, millions of perfectly good fruits and vegetables are rejected by supermarkets because they don’t meet cosmetic standards.
In 2020, friends and co-founders, Joshua Ball and Joshua Brooks-Duncan, decided to do something about it; connecting Australian farmers—who would otherwise be forced to discard the produce—with Australians eager to embrace “perfectly imperfect” fruit and veggies, while saving money in the process.
As the brand grew, their custom WordPress and subscription CRM solution was no longer sufficient. Seeking a total transformation, Farmers Pick committed to Submarine's best-in-class subscription technology on top of Shopify Plus to give customers flexibility, visibility, and control. Selecting The Working Party as their transformation partner, the pair reimagined the digital experience from first principles—blending strategic thinking, technical innovation, and a shared vision for a customer-first, tech-enabled business.
Services
- Website migration to Shopify Plus
- Custom UI & UX Design
- Design System
- Retail & eCommerce Strategy
- Checkout customisation
Technology
- Submarine — Subscriptions management
- Klaviyo — CRM and email marketing
- Gorgias — Customer support
- FourSixty — User-generated content
- Search & Discovery — Search and merchandising optimisation
- Checkout Blocks — Checkout customisation
Website
The transformation wasn’t just technical; it was visual
The primary goal of the project was to develop a sophisticated subscription solution that could deliver ultimate customer flexibility while integrating securely with back-end operations, including complex logistics, cold delivery couriers and payments systems.
While Submarine’s flexible commerce software and development team were perfectly placed to enable custom subscription functionality and support secure payments, it was the task of The Working Party to not only integrate multiple technologies together but to make it look and feel seamless.
The new design introduced a fresh colour palette, updated iconography, and modern typography, creating a clearer and more navigable interface.
However, it was the use of illustrations across the user journey that created something special. They established an accessible language for the subscription journey, reinforcing key steps and providing a quick visual reference rather than having to read all the fine print, ultimately achieving the applied UX/UI goal of reducing cognitive load.
Approachable, friendly and informative, the illustrations were essential in shifting the technical-in-nature subscription process into a fun, engaging brand experience aligned with Farmers Pick’s personality.
Mapping journeys increased CRO by 21%
Enhanced functionality requires enhanced strategic consideration— especially since Farmers Pick have been committed to a customer-centric ethos since the very beginning.
To achieve this, The Working Party mapped and analysed every user journey for efficiency and clarity, ensuring no interaction was overlooked. This process resulted in a 21% lift in conversion rates in the first 28 days, and involved the following optimisations tailored to each customer type:
New customers: Flexible onboarding flows were introduced to accommodate different starting points, whether customers began by building a subscription box or exploring pantry extras first. These dual pathways helped unlock targeted acquisition campaigns and created more personalised entry points.
Active customers: The “My Account” section was overhauled to provide greater control, enabling customers to skip deliveries, update preferences, and manage extras—whether recurring, like adding eggs to every one, or the one-off addition of honey. This enhanced functionality powerfully impacts customer engagement, fostering long-term loyalty.
Lapsed customers: Recognising the complexities of subscription churn—such as customers with multiple subscriptions and diverse cancellation reasons—we implemented advanced segmentation strategies using Klaviyo. This approach enabled highly targeted re-engagement campaigns, delivering messages that genuinely reflect each customer’s relationship with Farmers Pick, creating a more cost- and time-effective strategy than acquiring new customers.
A custom cold-food delivery solution
Farmers Pick’s commitment to serving regional Australianas—and dependence on refrigerated courier services—introduced a technical challenge that most eCommerces businesses need not even think about.
Regional postcodes often span hundreds of kilometres, including a mix of serviceable and unserviceable suburbs. Unfortunately, Shopify’s shipping rules only validated addresses at postcode level. This meant that even if a suburb was logistically serviceable for Farmers Pick, it would be excluded if it shared a postcode with unserviceable areas.
The Farmers Pick team, deeply aware of the challenges many families in remote areas face in accessing fresh produce, would not accept leaving any serviceable locations off the list.
The Working Party solved this with a custom two-step address validation system designed to handle these regional nuances. Custom logic was applied to account for discrepancies such as abbreviations (e.g., “Mount” versus “Mt”) and reversed names (e.g., “Sydney South” versus “South Sydney”), ensuring accurate deliveries.
This solution allowed Farmers Pick to reach underserved areas, and reinforced their mission of providing equitable access to fresh food.
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