Feast & Fettle
Feast & Fettle has been a steady shooting star since launching in 2016.
When we started working with them in 2017, Feast & Fettle were using an out-of-the-box ecommerce platform that was limiting their long-term growth potential.
Over five years of continuous collaboration, we worked with Feast & Fettle to maximize results with the low-code platform before transitioning them to a powerful, fully custom web app designed and built in close collaboration with their in-house team.
The Challenge
Feast & Fettle co-founders Maggie Mulvena and Nikki Oliveira, and CEO Carlos Ventura Jr. came to us in their second year of operation with the kind of challenge most entrepreneurs dream about: They were scaling so fast, their simple website built on a low-code ecommerce platform was holding them back.
They needed a strategic partner to handle the product development workflows and help them make smart decisions about the technical elements undergirding their business.
In the short term, our goal was to MacGyver their existing digital product in service of:
- Improving their customer experience
- Juicing up the back-end operations
Once we’d pushed their original system to its limit, Feast & Fettle asked us to create a fully customized solution that could help them scale without limits.
Insights
Gourmet food demands white-glove service
Feast & Fettle delivers quality, craft, and care to a high-end clientele. Their discerning approach and commitment to delivering superior service needed to be matched in the customer UX, back-of-house tools, and every other facet of their digital product.
Luckily, they found in us an equally meticulous and intentional product design partner.
This overlap in our values meant we could deliver design and engineering outcomes that bring Feast & Fettle’s exacting standards into every facet of their digital product.
Approach
The goal of our initial scope of work was to operationalize a sturdy 1.0 system optimizing their existing tools and streamlining the user experience for core tasks like signing up and placing an order. It also delivered dramatic improvements in functionality for the kitchen staff and other back-of-house personnel.
After finishing this initial set of system-wide updates, we worked in two-week sprints on a long-term engagement focusing on iterative upgrades to the 1.0 system.
When their business surged during the pandemic, we were able to keep pace, adapt as their priorities changed, and deliver the solutions they needed to thrive under pressure– without sacrificing quality.
Services Provided
Design
Engineering (Elixir, Phoenix, React)
Technology Strategy
Project Team
Design: Matt McInerney
Architecture: Scott Taylor
Engineers: Samina Khan, Lydia Koller, Jeremy Dewar
Product Manager: Caleb Oller
Solution
Through our sustained partnership, Township simplified the complex workflows of Feast & Fettle that enable the customizable, upmarket experience for more than 5,000 customers across New England.
Substitutions? Please!
Working dynamically with the Feast & Fettle team, we streamlined a fairly complex service offering into a very approachable experience for customers and staff alike. Meal customization is a perfect example.
Feast & Fettle prides itself on offering meals that are “meticulously crafted” for each household. When customers place their order, they can customize details about each meal, add additional items to their menus, etc. — all in a simple, satisfying online experience.
On the business side, each add-on or customization is an opportunity for additional revenue from existing customers. Making it easy to add/customize meals and orders, then ensuring these requests are executed by back-of-house personnel, meant better margins on each order and lower customer acquisition costs over time.
To make these bottom-line boosting customizations happen, we developed systems and tools that handle the operational and logistical complexity of these changes and substitutions. Order data is piped into a series of exports and dashboards that power Feast & Fettle’s back-of-house operations. We built features like subscription billing, route optimization, and inventory management to soup up this functionality over the course of our work together.
Results
4,996% 3-Year Growth
In August 2022, Feast & Fettle was in the top 2% in Inc.’s list of the 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America by revenue. In the press release announcing this milestone, Feast & Fettle CEO (and project partner) Carlos Ventura attributed part of their success to the custom solution we built for them.
“We were incredibly lucky to have already built the infrastructure for scale before the pandemic hit... Our team was able to successfully manage demand without ever sacrificing on product quality.”
-Carlos Ventura, Feast & Fettle CEO
Serving up deceptively simple solutions
Like a perfect French omelet, the tech solution we built for Feast & Fettle was crafted with precision and technical finesse.
Because the business was growing at breakneck speed, we served as their product team until they were ready to establish an in-house team. By working with care and consideration on the cores systems that power and sustain their product, we created sustainable solutions and long-term value for Feast & Fettle’s user experience, brand, and business.
Making an impact
As a business, Township values working with clients who are creating useful products and services that make people’s lives demonstrably better. To us, there’s no better example of this than Feast & Fettle. Through their success, they’ve consistently invested in growing locally to meet demand. They’ve expanded their facilities in East Providence and are building a second, state-of-the-art commercial kitchen in Connecticut, creating jobs in these communities.