About
Herd & Grace is a premium protein home delivery service that grew organically out of a parent company in Los Angeles called Think Culinary. They provide upscale meat from around the world to Michelin-rated restaurants, five-star steak houses, and other restaurants in California and the entire Southwest region. Due to the pandemic, Think Culinary had to shift their focus online and decided to formalize their offshoot into its own brand. Herd & Grace was the result: an upscale restaurant experience brought home.
Opened cardboard shipping box with an assortment of packaged Herd & Grace meats
Unlike other home delivery services, Herd & Grace is not an everyday experience. The finest steaks are for anniversaries, celebrations, birthdays, and special events. Their vision is to deliver the finest meats to your home, and provide a top-notch culinary experience every time.
“The thing that made it a very nice fit was that we wanted to use membership features that were already the features that Recharge was offering for the most part. And so there wasn't a whole lot of insane magic that needed to happen to kind of conform his model to [what Recharge offered].”
Wes Buckwalter
CEO, SeaMonster Studios
Challenge
Herd & Grace needed a membership tool that was more reliable and customizable than what they had been using. They had a variety of features they wanted to offer such as special discounts based on being a member, the ability to go through the checkout as a member, and customization options to offer membership at checkout with discounts.
They also wanted to offer limited access deals through a members-only area and have the ability to catch members who fall off and try to bring them back. Initially, Herd & Grace was not a Shopify Plus merchant, but to achieve their desired functionalities, they had to become one.
Screenshot of the Herd & Grace website featuring information about how to join the H&G Club
Solution
Herd & Grace worked with SeaMonster Studios for their membership project, where they used a combination of React, Shopify API, Recharge API, and Recharge SDK to build out a customer portal to support their memberships program. It was built using Recharge’s core Loyalty product for the use case of Paid Memberships.
The team was able to build a membership portal that offers a quiz-like user interface and a bundle feature, combining pre-built bundles and one custom bundle that offered their bundled products at a discounted rate to members.
Results
Herd & Grace now offers a subscription service with the option to choose from preset boxes or customize exactly what to include in the box. They have three levels of pricing: bronze, gold, and platinum, depending on the cuts of steak. They also offer one-time boxes for special occasions and seasonal boxes throughout the year. All of this is supplemented by Herd & Grace’s membership model, where they provide a VIP experience for members like special pricing, members-only areas, and free shipping.
Recharge was the chosen provider due to its reliable and customizable features and the ability to incorporate the membership features that Herd & Grace needed. The team worked with SeaMonster Studios to offer the white-glove experience and custom boxes that Herd & Grace desired.
Memberships have proven to be an excellent strategy with their average repurchase rate for members at 81%, compared to 27% for non-members and LTV 4x greater than non-members. Lastly, while non-members tend to purchase with 45 days between transactions, that timeframe for members is shortened to just 26 days.
The company has since seen great results with a smooth launch at the beginning of the year, thanks to their subscription and membership options paired with custom bundling.
“SeaMonster did a really great job of figuring out how to…actually execute that and bring out the most potential between Recharge and Shopify. So that was a really excellent experience."
Jason Latshaw
CEO, Herd & Grace
