Community
LocallyGrown markets share a lot in common — the same questions, the same seasonal rhythms, the same late-night cart troubleshooting. Here's a plain look at how operators connect today, and the ways we haven't (yet) built a formal space for it.
Sage: the in-app assistant for managers
Market managers and admins have Sage, an interactive chat assistant embedded in the modern footer. Sage is trained on this documentation, so it's usually the fastest way to get an answer when you don't know which doc to open. A few notes:
- Who sees it. Sage appears for admins and superusers on most pages. It's hidden from customer market pages and while you're impersonating a customer, so don't worry about shoppers stumbling into it.
- What it's good at. "How do I close ordering early this week?" "Which CSV has line-item detail?" "How do I schedule a newsletter for Monday morning?" — anything this docs site would answer.
- What it's not. Sage can't see your market's data, place orders, or change settings on your behalf. Treat it as a faster-to-reach docs search.
If Sage gets something wrong or out of date, the source of truth is this documentation — and nudging us about it via support helps us fix the underlying content.
How markets talk to each other today
There's no official LocallyGrown-hosted community, but operators are a resourceful bunch and the knowledge-sharing happens anyway — usually off-platform, often one phone call at a time:
- Direct outreach. Market managers email each other when they want to compare notes. If you'd like to be introduced to another operator, ask via support — sometimes an introduction is possible.
- Regional farmers-market associations. Many states and regions have their own farmers-market associations (the Farmers Market Coalition, state-level groups) that run their own forums and conferences. LocallyGrown is not affiliated with those, but they're the right rooms for broader market-management questions.
- Email other growers in your market. Growers can email other growers in the same market via the built-in Email Growers tool — useful for coordinating harvests or sharing pickup-day logistics. This is for intra-market communication, not cross-market discussion.
Staying informed about LocallyGrown itself
- Documentation. This docs site is the canonical place where platform capabilities are described. If something isn't here, assume it doesn't exist on the platform.
- What's new. See the What's New page for recent changes.
- Roadmap. The roadmap page lists what's planned. It's a single-maintainer roadmap, so timelines are approximate.
Helping each other inside a market
Most of the community a LocallyGrown market cultivates isn't with other markets — it's with the growers and shoppers who show up every week. The built-in tools do more of that work than they're sometimes given credit for:
- The weblog/newsletter is where managers write to customers and growers. Grower spotlights, harvest notes, pickup-day updates — see the Market Weblog guide.
- Announcements in the admin UI let platform maintainers flag maintenance windows and changes to market admins and managers.
- Customer comments on orders and the ability to reach the market manager on any order page give shoppers a direct line.