Training

Ask Sage

If you're a market admin or superuser, Sage is waiting in the footer of most pages. It's an interactive chat assistant trained on this documentation, so it can usually give you a direct answer faster than hunting for the right doc — and it will point you at the underlying page if you want the full version. Sage doesn't appear on customer market pages or while you're impersonating a customer, so your shoppers never see it.

Sage is the training tool LocallyGrown actually has. When something in the UI is unclear, asking Sage should be your first move.

How to learn the platform

Three steps, in order. None of them take long on their own, and together they're enough to get a market confidently through its first full cycle.

1. Read the docs in the right order

If you're setting up a market for the first time:

1. Quick Start — the shortest path to a live market.
2. Market Setup — the full setup walkthrough.
3. Onboarding Growers — inviting growers and approving them.
4. Ordering Cycles — how a market week actually flows.
5. Weblog & Newsletter — the main marketing tool, worth learning early.

If you're a grower:

1. Grower Onboarding — getting added to a market.
2. Managing Products — listing items, photos, and featuring.

If you're a shopper:

1. Shopper Accounts
2. Pickup Day

2. Run a shakedown week

Most successful markets open quietly first — one ordering cycle with a handful of friendly growers and customers who won't mind if something surprises everybody. It's the single most valuable training you can give yourself, because it surfaces the questions no documentation can anticipate, and your neighbors get to be part of the launch rather than the audience for it.

3. Ask, when you get stuck

The Getting Help page describes how to reach out. Expect a personal response, not a ticketing workflow — this is a small platform.

What's intentionally not offered

• No LocallyGrown certification. We don't issue credentials. If your market association or extension program does farmers-market-manager certifications, those are excellent and well-established — go through them rather than waiting on us.
• No scheduled live webinars or office hours. If there's enough demand to pilot something, that'll show up on the roadmap first.
• No premium training tier. There's no two-tier doc system — the same documentation goes to everyone.

External training that markets often find useful

These aren't LocallyGrown programs, but operators have mentioned them as helpful:

• Farmers Market Coalition and state-level farmers-market associations — management training, regulatory guidance.
• Cooperative Extension services at land-grant universities — grower training, food-safety resources.
• Local Small Business Development Centers — bookkeeping, marketing, and general small-business fundamentals that apply to markets and growers alike.

We don't vet these; your state will have more specific and better-suited options.