Less waste.
More retention.

How Farmers Pick lifted conversion in just 28 days with Submarine, and moved every metric the right way ever since.

224%

increase in total sales

+17%

average order value

149%

increase in orders

Saving food,
outgrowing their stack

Josh Ball and Josh Brooks-Duncan founded Farmers Pick in 2020

20,000 active subscriptions and counting
‍
In Australia, 2.4 billion kgs of produce never leaves the farm - and retailers throw away 500,000 tonnes of perfectly good food before it even reaches its best before date. Farmers Pick are changing that by rescuing it and delivering it to customers around the country - an idea that took off and led to rapid expansion after launch in 2020.
‍
However, as Farmers Pick scaled their customer base, their WordPress setup couldn't keep up with the realities of the business.
- Regional shipping complexities
- Recurring and one-off add-ons
- Multi-subscription households
- Strict order cut offs
- Forecasting across perishable inventory

These aren't problems most subscription platforms are built to solve. Farmers Pick needed a platform flexible enough to match how they actually operate.
‍
The path forward was a migration to Shopify Plus with their partner The Working Party, with Submarine providing the subscription foundation.

Navigating a flexible subscription offering

Farmers Pick launched on Submarine to deliver a subscription program that met both their operational requirements and their customers' expectations for flexibility.

A flexible platform

Self-serve experience

API-first architecture

Smart payment captures

A FLEXIBLE PLATFORM

Subscription rules built around their business

Most subscription apps force merchants to bend their business model to fit the tool. Submarine works the other way around, letting Farmers Pick configure subscription logic natively around how they actually operate.

Instead of bending to clunky workarounds, Farmers Pick combined a high quality front end with Submarine's flexible APIs to implement:
- Truly customisable produce boxes
- Recurring pantry extras such as weekly eggs
- One-off extras, like a jar of honey on a single delivery
- Easy product swaps
- Structured upsells and add-ons
‍
The result is a subscription program that balances customer flexibility with the operational precision a fresh produce business demands.

Submarines fixed subscription plan groups mean Farmers Pick can surface only the delivery days that are actually available - and control exactly when customers are charged.

"Consistency and customisability were the two things we needed most when we made the switch, and Submarine has delivered on both."

Sam Maguire

Associate Product Manager, Farmers Pick

The Farmers Pick customer portal allows customers to add one-off or ongoing pantry items, making their customers' lives easier and their average order value increase.

SELF-SERVICE EXPERIENCE

A robust customer portal that allows flexibilty and reduces churn

Subscription retention hinges on flexibility. Submarine’s signature capability allows customers to manage individual upcoming orders up to 10 cycles in advance.

Customers can:
- Skip individual weeks
- Swap box sizes
- Adjust recurring extras
- Modify one-off additions
- Change delivery address for a future week
‍
This turns subscriptions from a rigid commitment into a habit that adapts with real life.

The flexibility the Submarine API allows to build out the 'My Account' experience gives customers control and takes the load off the customer service team. The result was fewer cancellations, higher engagement, and stronger long-term value.

API-FIRST ARCHITECTURE

Operational flexibility through API-first design

As an API first platform, Submarine integrates directly into forecasting, logistics, and payment systems meaning brands like Farmers Pick can design and implement operational intelligence beyond surface-level subscription reporting.

For Farmers Pick, this meant:
- Subscription data flows directly into their data warehouse
- Unified reporting across revenue, logistics, and customer metrics
- More accurate produce forecasting
- Improved cold-chain route planning

"The flexibility around billing schedules and the ability to build out solutions for our line item order minimums and complex shipping rules has been a real game-changer. It's not a one-size-fits-all platform, and that matters enormously in our category and business model."

Sam Maguire

Associate Product Manager, Farmers Pick

Failed payment recovery, fully configurable. Set your own retry cadence, customise the customer email, and let Submarine handle the rest.

SMART PAYMENT CAPTURES

Payments built for retention, not just checkout

Recurring payments for food subscriptions require precision.
Submarine allows merchants to:
- Define rules around when to capture funds
- Align payment timing with delivery schedules
- Create structured retry logic for failed payments
- Build intelligent recovery flows

For Farmers Pick, this meant fewer failed-payment cancellations and more predictable revenue cycles. Payment flexibility stopped being a backend function and became part of the retention strategy.

Immediate impact

21%

uplift in conversion rate

measured against pre-migration baseline

In just 28 days on Submarine, Farmers Pick saw:
- 21% uplift in conversion rate
‍- onboarding friction reduced
- Increased self-service subscription management
- Decline in schedule-related cancellations

Flexible onboarding flows allowed customers to enter via box-building or pantry-first journeys, unlocking more targeted acquisition campaigns.

Reduced onboarding friction

Fewer drop-offs between landing and first subscription confirmation.

Higher self-service usage

Customers editing their own subscriptions instead of contacting support.

Drop in schedule-related churn

Skip and reschedules replaced what used to be cancellations

Retention became more cost-efficient than reacquisition.

As adoption matured, the gains compounded - particularly around retention:
• Future-order editing strengthened long-term retention
• Forecasting became more accurate through data integration
• Operational planning grew more precise
• Churn recovery became more targeted and effective

With additional subscription data flowing into Klaviyo, Farmers Pick built segmentation strategies around:
• Lapsed customers
• Multi-subscription households
• Cancellation reasons

"Since migrating to Submarine on Shopify, managing subscriptions for our fresh produce and chilled meats business has become a completely different experience. Scheduling accuracy is critical for us because our customers need to know exactly when their order is arriving and must be able to provide special delivery instructions. We also require custom location data and attributes for operational purposes to ensure we deliver orders as expected and in full. Submarine handles all of that seamlessly, keeping subscription data consistent and reliable across every order."

Sam Maguire

Associate Product Manager, Farmers Pick

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