Industries — who we serve

Coffee & Beverage

Coffee and beverage brands sell a ritual, not just a product. Winning online means nailing subscriptions, freshness and shipping logistics, and a brand people want to reorder every week. We build Shopify stores and retention programs for roasters, bottlers, and specialty-food makers — work that earned First Pier a national Clutch award for Food & Beverage ecommerce.

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The challenges we solve

Selling considered products online isn’t like selling impulse buys. These are the headwinds the category throws at you — and a generic Shopify build doesn’t address any of them.

Subscriptions & reorders

The best beverage revenue is recurring. Subscription UX and retention flows turn first sips into standing orders.

Freshness & shipping logistics

Perishable, heavy, and time-sensitive shipments make fulfillment and shipping strategy central to the experience.

Standing out on a crowded shelf

Specialty coffee and beverage is packed. Brand, story, and content are what earn the click and the loyalty.

Sampling & the first purchase

Taste sells. Bundles, samplers, and gifting lower the barrier to that important first order.

Wholesale + D2C in one store

Cafés, retail, and direct customers each need different pricing and flows without fragmenting your catalog.

How we grow your brand

Three levers that actually move the needle

01 · Convert

Convert the researcher

We turn dense product knowledge into buying confidence — PDPs that answer the real questions, comparison and finder tools, and CRO tested against your actual traffic, not best-practice guesswork.

02 · Acquire

Acquire efficiently

Paid search and paid social built around your margins and seasonality, not vanity ROAS — so growth is profitable, not just big.

03 · Retain

Grow lifetime value

Email, SMS, loyalty, and post-purchase experiences that turn a first-time buyer into a repeat customer and a referral source.

The First Pier method — how every engagement runs

Strategize

Tie every build to a growth outcome.

Integrate

Connect the tools and data that run the store.

Measure

Prove it in revenue, retention, and ROAS.

Iterate

Ship, learn, refine in fast sprints.

Proof

Results we’ve delivered

Shipping Strategy for Tandem Coffee

PPC & SEM for Ragged Coast Chocolates

40%

Lift in Q4 Sales

Average ROAS

46%

In New Customer Acquisition

Collateral Design for Two Fat Cats Bakery

Services

What we bring to your store

Shopify & Shopify Plus development

Stores built for technical, variant-heavy catalogs — fast and ready to scale.

Conversion rate optimization

Testing and buying-guide UX that converts high-consideration traffic.

Paid search & paid social

Google Ads and Meta built around your margins and seasonality.

Klaviyo email & SMS

Flows and campaigns that carry customers across seasons.

Retention & loyalty

Programs that reward repeat and referral-driven customers.

Migration to Shopify

Move off a legacy platform without losing SEO or sales.

Why First Pier

Why brands choose First Pier

Senior team, no handoffs

You work directly with the people doing the work — senior Shopify specialists, not an account manager relaying to an offshore queue.

Shopify specialists

We build, optimize, and scale on Shopify and Shopify Plus every day — from technical catalogs to conversion and retention.

Maine-built, growth-obsessed

Headquartered in Portland, Maine, we partner with brands across the U.S. and measure our work in revenue, retention, and ROAS.

In their words

What clients say

They were really good at communicating.

Tandem Coffee

Coffee & beverage · Shopify

“We looked forward to talking and laughing with them.”

Ragged Coast Chocolates

16% online · 39% in-store sales increase

RECOGNIZED BY CLUTCH

Award-winning ecommerce work

First Pier is recognized by Clutch across Shopify, ecommerce development, design, and performance marketing — nationally and here in Maine.

Top Shopify Company · U.S.

Top E-Commerce Developers · U.S.

Clutch 1000 · 2025

Top Squarespace Company · U.S.

Top Conversion Rate Auditing · U.S.

Top Design Company · Maine

Top Digital Marketing · Portland

Global Award · Spring 2026

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you work with coffee, beverage, or specialty-food brands specifically?

Yes — this is award-winning territory for us. First Pier was named a national Clutch Top Food & Beverage Ecommerce Developer, and we drove a 9x peak ROAS on paid for specialty roaster Ragged Coast Chocolate.

How do you handle subscriptions and repeat orders?

Subscription and reorder UX is central to how we build for this category — since coffee and beverage brands earn most of their value from customers who come back weekly or monthly, not from one-off purchases.

Our products are perishable and sensitive to shipping conditions — can you help?

Yes. We build the fulfillment logic, packaging rules, and shipping strategy that account for freshness windows, so perishable goods arrive on time and in the condition customers expect.

We sell both wholesale and direct-to-consumer — can one store handle both?

Yes. We build pricing and checkout flows that let cafés, retail accounts, and direct customers each get the right experience without fragmenting your catalog into separate systems.

How do you help people try our product for the first time?

We build sampling, bundle, and gifting offers that lower the barrier to that first order — since taste sells, but only once someone's actually tried it.

Book your free growth audit

Tell us where you want to grow. A senior First Pier strategist will review your store and send back a prioritized, no-obligation growth plan.

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