Smart businesses know that the ability to adapt to changing environments is critical to success. Whether it’s a product change, strategy pivot or dramatic shift in consumer demand or supply, there are always new hurdles and opportunities that present themselves. There is a plethora of examples of businesses shifting to meet new markets. Youtube began as a video dating site. Starbucks originally only sold espresso equipment and coffee beans. Nintendo produced playing cards and toys, among many other things, well before launching into video games. But how can you pivot in an effective way without missing a beat?

This case study will examine the ability of our partner, Rastellis.com, to overcome the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic by changing how the business operated. Rastelli’s, a direct-to-consumer meat and seafood delivery service, was able to quickly pivot and in doing so saw hockey stick growth. Demand for direct to consumer food delivery skyrocketed and drove revenue growth for Rastelli’s to over 6,700%. However, they would not have reached these accomplishments if they hadn’t made a few wise decisions.

Though the Corona pandemic is an extreme situation, the case study highlights how any business can find success during drastic change in consumer demand. Here are our three strategies:

1. Listen to Consumer Demand As the coronavirus pandemic began to spread around the world and stay-at-home orders were put in place, customer demand drastically changed. Before COVID-19, Rastelli’s offered high quality meat subscriptions on a weekly or monthly basis. After COVID-19, people were simply looking for a safe and reliable way to get food directly to their door. The subscription model would no longer work for two reasons: 1) the unknown of future household behavior and 2) the particular meats in our subscription boxes (i.e. filets & shrimp box) were no longer what our customers wanted. People wanted simpler, “staple” type meats in a way that was safe to them and their family.

By listening to our existing costumers and thinking strategically and intelligently about what the market wanted, we knew we had to shift away from the subscription model.

2. Pivot Business Strategy to Meet New Demand Our solution was to create an a la carte menu of individual product SKUs that consumers could customize to their particular tastes and needs for one time purchasing. This would grant our customers more freedom in choosing what they want and give them flexibility in order time and amount. The next problem was what products did we want to offer them.

Due to disruption in the logistics and distribution channels, product availability was a concern. Products that were harder to produce were removed and staple goods, such as chicken breasts, ground beef, shrimp, and salmon filets, were featured heavily. We were able to seamlessly do this because of Rastelli’s huge SKU set of a large global business. Changing products was important for another reason: Consumers were less interested in higher end meat products and wanted simpler goods they could store in their freezer for extended periods of time.

Keeping up with the sheer quantity of orders became challenging. As we shifted to staple goods, we had to ensure that our packing and shipping process was able to handle the problem. All Rastelli’s products are perishable, so time to delivery was a huge concern.

One fear moving away from the subscription, where we could control the price point, to an a la carte would decrease average order value. We would also lose the auto-ordering of the subscription model. However, the average order value went up as consumers purchased more of what they really wanted. Before the pandemic, the average order value was around $109, but afterwards the average value was at $175.

3. Be Consistent and Transparent with Consumers about Business Changes There are many mediums where we needed to communicate our business changes with our customers. The homepage was the obvious place to start. We updated our headlines and page copy to reflect our new staple products. We also added a banner with a caveat describing our fulfillment challenges during COVID-19. We altered the ad copy and images on all social media and search ads to emphasize stocking up on meat and seafood. We were effective in conveying our new message on all these platforms, but the place we saw the best engagement and response was on email.

Email is by far the best way we can speak directly to our customers. It often feels more personal to get an email from a brand than seeing a random ad on the internet. We could be transparent and reassuring, while also communicating that our product is the best meat to get to your door. We tailored our emails to include timely content such as “Stock Up on Staples” or “How We’re Staying Safe to Keep You Fed.”

As sales grew, so did our email list. By May 11th our email subscriber list had ballooned over 171% from just the beginning of March. We also saw that people were engaging with our emails at a higher rate than ever before. In an industry where the standard Open Rate is 15%, we were getting consistently between 20-40%. The same trend was apparent in our Click to Open Rate which grew to over 20% for many of our emails. This growth allowed us to get our message out to a wide range of people at different points in their customer lifecycle including increasing repeat purchasers and referrals.