How to Handle Meat Weights Online

This is another one of our most commonly asked questions: how do you handle variable weight items?

In the past few years, we’ve worked on dozens of ecommerce meat stores and talked to hundreds of vendors. And at the end of the day, we do NOT recommend any sort of “exact weight” pricing solution.

Instead, we recommend pricing your meat in weight ranges.

Here’s what I mean:

Option A: Exact Weight

Some platforms allow you to adjust the order amount when you fulfill the order. 

• The customer places a “deposit” online
• You get the meat from the freezer or meat case
• You put in the exact weight
• The order total is adjusted
• The customer is charged or refunded automatically

This option most closely mimics a face-to-face meat-counter scenario, but we really don’t like it for online purchases. Here’s why:

• At the meat counter, you can go back and forth and choose a different sized cut if your order is going to be higher than you budgeted. You can’t do that online.
• You can also communicate to the butcher at the counter if you want a larger cut or smaller cut. Again, you can’t do that online (at least easily.)
• Customers are more likely to compare your store to other online shopping experiences, and in those situations, they are accustomed to knowing exactly what their order cost will be when they check out. This method of charging for exact weight prevents them from having that information.

Option B: Weight Variations (Weight Ranges)

In this method, you set a certain price for each weight range. For example, a 2.5-3 lb arm roast might be $22.99 and a 3-3.5 lb roast might be $26.99.

While this seems a little strange for those of us used to pricing meat by exact weights, it’s actually really comfortable for most customers because they know EXACTLY how much their order will cost when they check out, and in some cases, they have a closer approximation of the size of their cuts, as well.

One farm selling more than $500,000 of meat online annually told us that switching from exact weight to this system of weight ranges increased his sales dramatically, and he thinks it was because it removed a lot of customer uncertainty.

This workflow is a bit different.

• You bring your meat home from the butcher.
• You sort each cut by size ranges.
• You put the inventory (number) you have of each size into the system.
• The system automatically decreases the inventory for the appropriate size when the customer orders.

ChopLocal was built for Option B, with “drop-down” menus allowing customers to choose the size they want. We recommend half lb increments for roasts and smaller increments for higher-value items like filet mignon. However, these are all customizable on our platform.

Whether you use ChopLocal or not, we encourage you to re-think your pricing and using weight ranges instead of exact weights, and let us know how your customers react!