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For nearly three decades, Melanie Golba, her husband Alvaro Venturelli, brother-in-law Rodrigo, and dedicated team have built Plan B Organic Farms into one of Ontario’s most recognized certified organic CSA programs. Located in Flamborough, Ontario, part of the Greater Hamilton area, the farm serves over 300 customers weekly with boxes filled with fresh produce, eggs, sourdough bread, and other local products.
“We’ve been farming since 1997, so we’re getting close to our 30th year,” says Melanie. “We started our business with a basic 100-member CSA back in the 90s, and slowly grew it into a multi-farm CSA. We sell produce from our farm and from other certified organic farms in the area.”
Over time, Plan B has become a central hub for local food, sourcing and distributing products from across Ontario and beyond during the winter months. “All the produce we sell is certified organic,” Melanie explains. “We serve Hamilton, Halton Region, and even parts of Toronto on our way to farmers’ markets.”
After running a CSA program for decades, you start to understand which models work best and which ones don’t. Over the years, customer preferences naturally evolve: some households want the weekly subscription box, while others prefer the freedom to pick and choose items as their needs change.
When looking to switch from their existing platform, Delivery Biz Pro, in early 2024, they needed a system that supported a weekly subscription, but also had the flexibility to offer skips and customization options. Local Line combined all those features in a single platform, giving them the tools they needed to accommodate a wide range of customer preferences.
Their model is as follows: “We have the subscription share box as our base,” says Melanie. “People can choose small or large boxes, weekly or biweekly, and we offer a local-only or a local-and-imported box in the winter.” But recently, Melanie and her team have added something new: à la carte shopping through Local Line.
“We were kind of afraid to try that in case people stopped ordering without being locked into a subscription,” she admits. “At first, we didn’t publicize it much. Now we’re promoting it more, especially for customer retention. Some people really love being able to just go in and buy what they want every week.”
This flexible model, allowing both subscription-based and custom orders, has helped Plan B attract new customers and keep existing ones happy.
With deliveries spanning Hamilton, Halton, and parts of Toronto, logistics can easily become overwhelming, so finding a system that supports the complexity and scale of their operation was essential. “We do home deliveries for $5 per order, plus pickup depots, many at people’s houses on an honor system,” Melanie says. “In the winter, we even use electric blankets if it’s really cold. We’ve been doing that for years, it works!”
Today, their team delivers to over 10 different cities and towns and offers over 40 different pick up locations using their two vans. With Local Line, they can easily manage all of these fulfillment options, assign the correct fees, attribute them to the relevant price list, and export routing information directly from the platform.
Local Line helps ensure each order is placed in the right route, with the right fee, and receives automated reminders when their order is on the way or ready for pickup.
Instead of running shares in seasons, Plan B runs year-round with two weeks off at Christmas. “We used to sell summer and winter shares, but it didn’t make sense to kick everyone out and make them sign up again two or three times a year,” says Melanie. “Now we just keep it simple.”
When you have over 300 customers, you inevitably deal with different payment requests. Some customers prefer to pay weekly with credit card or e-transfer, giving them the flexibility to skip weeks during busier seasons. Other customers prefer to pay in bulk to cover a month or two.
“Our cutoff is Saturday at midnight, since we harvest Sunday mornings,” she explains. “People can pay weekly or send a bulk e-transfer that we apply as store credit. Some customers even ask me to charge their credit card a lump sum so I don’t have to pay fees every week, which is very nice of them.”
Local Line’s store credit feature lets Melanie and her team load credit onto customer accounts, which can then be used to pay for weekly or biweekly CSA boxes and à la carte items. Customers who prefer to pay by credit card can have their saved card automatically charged each week. With Local Line, the Plan B team can easily manage both online and offline payments, making the process seamless for them and convenient for their customers.
For Melanie and her family, the farm is a community hub, a way to stay connected to the people who care about where their food comes from. “We’ve been doing this a long time,” she says. “Our customers aren’t just customers anymore. Some of them have been with us for 20 years. We’ve watched their kids grow up. They’ve watched our farm evolve.”
That community connection is what drives every decision they make, from keeping their honor-system pickup depots to experimenting with à la carte shopping so that every household can buy food the way that suits them best.
“We want to meet people where they’re at,” Melanie explains. “Some folks want the traditional weekly box; they like that rhythm. Others want to pick and choose each week. Local Line lets us do both, using the one system.”
Even as the farm continues to modernize, Plan B’s roots remain deeply personal. Every Friday, Melanie updates her online store and sends out a price list reminder to all customers. This is an automated email sent to all the subscribers of her CSA price list. She can track important email metrics such as delivery, open rate, click rate, and bounce rate using the Communications tab.
“I still like to write little updates and reminders,” she says. “Local Line’s email tools make that easy. It’s just one more touchpoint that keeps people connected and thinking about their food.”
Plan B uses Local Line for everything from weekly sales reports to website management. “What I like most is how much you can export into Excel,” says Melanie. “You can make anything out of a spreadsheet, labels, packing slips, reports. I also love how much control I have over our store and website. I can go in, change text, reorganize products, add landing pages, it’s so easy.”
Melanie also credits Local Line’s reports and analytics for helping her grow.
“I use the reports to see my gross sales, average box price, and number of orders. It’s really helpful to track and try to increase the number of active customers, average order value, and order frequency,” she says.
Approaching their 30th year, the Plan B team isn’t slowing down. They’re refining their systems, streamlining deliveries, and experimenting with new ideas, all while staying true to their values of organic farming and community connection.
“We’ve been doing this a long time,” Melanie says. “Local Line gives us the flexibility to keep evolving without losing what makes us who we are.”
Plan B Organic Farms proves that with the right tools, a CSA can stay true to its roots and evolve for the future. Whether you’re managing 50 members or 500, Local Line gives you the flexibility to customize, streamline operations, and deliver an exceptional customer experience, all while staying connected to your community.
Want to see how Local Line can work for your farm? Book a free demo today and explore the tools that help farms like Plan B thrive.
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