Should you charge shipping for your online meat orders?

This is such a tricky situation. But after some research and experimentation, our answer is no.

Surveys show that the number 1 reason shoppers abandon their cart is because of extra charges like shipping and 66% of consumers expect free shipping from all online orders (2023). Because of that, most ecommerce businesses (69% on one popular platform) offer free shipping.

That being said, you could still charge shipping fees, and many online meat stores do. But it will affect the number of orders you receive for shipping.

One of the butcher shops we work with wanted to try charging a shipping fee, and when they implemented this fee, their orders dropped dramatically. When they removed the fee a few months later, their orders jumped almost immediately, even without promoting the fact that they had changed their shipping fee.

So we know, from experience, that offering free shipping will increase your orders, and charging a shipping fee will decrease them.

How does ChopLocal handle shipping costs?

On ChopLocal, we offer customers free shipping on orders over $50, if they’re in a location that can be reached via 2-day ground. 

Obviously, free shipping isn’t really free. There are still costs associated with shipping frozen meat. 

So we use our marketing budget to cover some of the cost of shipping and our vendors account for some of the cost in their pricing. (That’s one benefit of selling via ChopLocal - we subsidize your shipping costs on orders that meet the criteria.)

For vendors with a high number of local pick-up customers, we implement an automatic pick-up discount. This discount ranges from 10-20% (set by the vendor) and it is automatically applied to the order when a customer chooses “pick-up” at checkout. There are “stickers” on each item to let customers know about the discount, as well. This seems to work well for the vendors, local customers, and customers ordering for shipping.

What if I REALLY want to charge shipping?

In the end, it’s your decision.

But we would encourage you to consider:

• A low shipping fee. It may not cover the whole cost, but $9.99 or $14.99 takes some of the sting away while keeping fees fairly low for customers.
• Let customers know the shipping fee up front. This may not work well with your platform, but whenever possible, tell customers the shipping fee BEFORE they enter their email address at checkout.
• What’s your ideal order size? Encourage customers to order that amount by offering free shipping for orders in that price range. (Bigger isn’t always better when it comes to shipping meat! The best order size is often 10-20 lbs.) Reduce your shipping costs as much as possible by re-using styrofoam coolers from local sources. (Questions on how to do that? Refer to our shipping resources here.)