Graze & Co

The context

Graze & Co sells small-batch cheese out of a farmer-owned cooperative in Amish country, which means every order is perishable and has to arrive cold inside about three days. That constraint sets the economics before a single design decision gets made. One cheese at fifteen dollars cannot carry the cost of refrigerated three-day delivery, so a store built the obvious way, as a grid of single cheeses, loses money on precisely the orders it is best at winning. The range needs explaining too: most people buying artisanal cheese online do not know a brick from a gouda well enough to assemble a good selection themselves.

What the work involved

• Built the storefront from scratch on Shopify with a custom Liquid theme, the whole site rather than a slice of one.
• Introduced boxes as the primary way to buy, in four and six piece sizes, which carries an order past the point where cold chain delivery makes sense instead of leaving it underneath.
• Split those boxes into two kinds: curated sets themed by taste, running from mild through to bold and spicy, for a customer who wants the choice made for them, and build your own boxes for one who already knows what they want.
• Kept single cheeses in the range as an entry point rather than the main event, positioned beneath the boxes instead of competing with them.
• Surfaced the free shipping and box discount at the top of the shop, so the incentive a customer sees is attached to the same boxes the economics depend on.
• Built the subscription offer into the storefront, giving repeat delivery a standing discount.
• Built the store locator for the stockists carrying the cheese offline.

Outcome

The catalogue leads with boxes rather than singles, which is what lets a perishable product ship cold and still add up, and a customer with no cheese vocabulary can buy a considered selection without having to assemble one.