Case study · Shopify Plus · F&B

Dana's Bakery: perishable macarons, shipped nationwide on drop days.

Dana's Bakery is a New York bakery known for American-flavoured French macarons, now selling Mookie boxes, stuffed cookies, Krisp Bars and black-and-whites. The store treats a perishable product that ships nationwide as its central constraint.

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Conversion
2.1×
AOV YoY
+34%
Drops a year
12

Live storefront · scrolling top to bottom

01 / PROJECT DETAILS

The project at a glance.

Alongside boxes, the business runs corporate gifting, wholesale, cookbooks, merch and consulting.

danasbakery.com (opens in a new tab)
Client
Dana's Bakery
Industry
Food & beverage · DTC
Region
United States
Platform
Shopify Plus
Engagement
10 weeks build · Ongoing retainer
Timeline
2021–2026

What we delivered

  • Shopify storefront development
  • Package-protection integration
  • ZIP-gated shipping
  • Drop operations
  • Gifting flow

02 / THE PROBLEM

Baked goods ship badly, and they don't wait.

Every order carries a real risk of arriving late, melted or damaged, and a $47 macaron box that shows up wrong is a refund plus a lost customer. The catalogue also splits across gift, treat and dietary purchases, and the business runs several revenue lines beyond boxes.

Late, melted or damaged

Each perishable order that arrives wrong costs a refund and, usually, the customer.

Three kinds of purchase

Gift, treat and dietary shoppers all use the same catalogue and need different paths through it.

More than one business

Corporate gifting, wholesale, cookbooks, merch and consulting sit beside the boxes.

Drop days were a stress event

Limited releases brought traffic spikes the store had to survive.

03 / THE SOLUTION

Six capabilities built around a product that can't sit in a warehouse.

The cart carries the perishability logic rather than a policy page, and the theme is built to take drop-day traffic.

  • ZIP-gated shipping

    Real-time validation prevents invalid ZIP purchases from entering the cart.

  • Drop architecture

    Pre-staged inventory with countdown, sold-out gates and a waitlist.

  • Gifting flow

    Message cards, recipient addressing, scheduled delivery and gift wrap.

  • Perishable inventory

    Daily inventory sync with cold-chain capacity constraints.

  • Drop-day performance

    Theme architecture handles 20× traffic spikes without latency.

  • Recurring orders

    A holiday subscription flow for repeat gifters.

Desktop and mobile · the same build

04 / STRATEGY

Set expectations before checkout, not after a complaint.

Four decisions shaped the build.

  1. 01

    Put the rules in the cart

    The cart carries the perishability logic rather than a policy page nobody reads.

  2. 02

    State package protection plainly

    Package protection is offered as an opt-out, with liability stated plainly.

  3. 03

    Say how orders ship

    An explicit note that orders ship in the sequence received, and a prompt to email for date-specific delivery.

  4. 04

    Catch the big baskets

    A bulk-order intercept routes high-value enquiries to the team instead of letting them check out at retail rates.

05 / SCREENS

The storefront in motion.

The whole homepage on desktop and on a phone, scrolling top to bottom side by side. Hover to hold it still.

06 / RESULTS

What changed for Dana's Bakery.

2.1×

Conversion

after the product page rebuild

+34%

AOV year over year

from gifting upsells

12

Drops in a year

with zero downtime

20×

Traffic spikes

handled on drop days

In the client's words

Every drop day was a stress event before. Now they're just a Tuesday. The team built us infrastructure we can actually grow on.
Dana PollackFounder · Dana's Bakery

The numbers behind it

2.1×
Conversion
+34%
AOV YoY
12
Drops a year

07 / PROCESS

How the engagement ran.

The same four stages as every engagement, with the specific work done for Dana's Bakery at each one. The steps play through in order.

  1. Stage 1

    Audit and scope

    We review the current theme, apps and analytics, then write a fixed-scope SOW with named deliverables and a date.

    What we did for Dana's Bakery

    • Mapped what goes wrong when perishables ship
    • Split the catalogue by gift, treat and dietary purchase
    • Scoped drops, gifting and bulk orders

  2. Stage 2

    Design and build

    Work happens in a dev store on a Git-backed workflow. You get a preview link from week one, not a reveal at the end.

    What we did for Dana's Bakery

    • Built ZIP-gated shipping validation
    • Built the drop flow: countdown, sold-out gates, waitlist
    • Put gifting and package protection in the cart

  3. Stage 3

    QA and launch

    Cross-browser and device QA, redirect map, analytics verification, then a launch window agreed with you rather than dropped on you.

    What we did for Dana's Bakery

    • Synced inventory daily against cold-chain capacity
    • Tuned the theme for 20× drop-day traffic
    • Routed bulk baskets to the team with an intercept

  4. Stage 4

    Hypercare

    Fourteen to sixty days of included post-launch support while real traffic finds the edge cases.

    What we did for Dana's Bakery

    • Moved to an ongoing retainer
    • Ran 12 drops in a year with zero downtime
    • AOV up 34% year over year

08 / THE STOREFRONT

Scroll the whole page.

The full Dana's Bakery homepage as shoppers see it. Scroll inside the frame to move through it from the offer strip to the footer.

Commerce platform

  • Shopify Plus
  • Launchpad
  • Shopify Functions
  • Online Store 2.0

Engineering

  • Custom ZIP validator

Growth and operations

  • Klaviyo
  • ShipBob
Dana's Bakery homepage, full page