Industries — who we serve

CPG & Food

First Pier helps CPG, grocery, and specialty food brands grow on Shopify — turning first orders into subscriptions, protecting thin margins, and getting perishable products to customers fresh.

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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.

Perishability and fulfillment complexity

Food and beverage products spoil, melt, and break in transit, so every order is a race against shelf life and shipping conditions. We build the fulfillment logic, packaging rules, and 3PL integrations that get perishable goods to the customer fresh and on time.

Turning first orders into repeat subscriptions

Grocery and specialty food is a repeat-purchase category, but most stores treat every order like a one-time sale. We design subscription and replenishment programs that lift lifetime value and turn pantry staples into predictable recurring revenue.

Protecting thin margins as acquisition costs rise

Food margins are tight and paid media keeps getting more expensive, so growth that ignores unit economics quietly loses money. We pair efficient acquisition with CRO and retention so every hard-won customer pays back and then some.

Discovery and education for specialty food

Shoppers cannot taste your product through a screen, so a specialty spice, cheese, or hot sauce has to be sold on story, sourcing, and use. We build the product pages, content, and paid programs that help new customers discover your brand and understand why it is worth trying.

Seasonality and gifting demand swings

Food brands live and die by holidays, gifting windows, and seasonal peaks that can make or break a quarter. We plan merchandising, paid media, and email and SMS around your calendar so you scale into demand and keep customers engaged in the quiet months.

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.

Results we’ve delivered

A bottle of blueberries next to a bag of blueberries

Subscription Strategy for Wyman's

Recharge subscriptions for Wyman's wild blueberry products, raising customer lifetime value 400% and return-customer rate 300%.

Two cell phones sitting next to each other on a table

PPC & SEM for Ragged Coast Chocolates

PPC and SEM for Ragged Coast Chocolates delivering 9x average ROAS, a 40% Q4 sales lift, and 46% growth in new customers.

Performance Marketing for Gneiss Spice

Meta and search campaigns that drove 57% order growth at 6x blended ROAS for Gneiss Spice, with 90% of new customers arriving through Meta.

A bottle of beer next to a cutting board with a knife

Branding for Evan's Rockin' Hot Sauce

A rebrand and Shopify rebuild for Maine hot sauce maker Evan's Rockin', followed by revenue growth of between 85% and 100%.

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 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.

What clients say

“Their technical knowledge and expertise were impressive.”

Jasper Wyman & Son

From $0 to multimillion-dollar D2C sales

“First Pier finds the important parts of my brand's identity and translates them perfectly.”

Evan's Rockin' Hot Sauce

85–100% revenue improvement

They were really good at communicating.

Tandem Coffee

Coffee & beverage · Shopify

We really appreciated the holistic approach to the rebrand.

Sissle & Daughters

Brand + Shopify rebrand

Award-winning ecommerce work

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you work with food and beverage brands specifically?

Yes. Food and beverage is one of our core verticals — we've grown blueberry, spice, coffee, chocolate, cheese, and hot sauce brands on Shopify, and the category's headwinds (perishability, thin margins, repeat-purchase economics) are ones we solve every day.

How do you handle perishable products and shipping?

Perishable goods need fulfillment logic built around shelf life, packaging, and shipping conditions. We design the order rules and 3PL integrations that get food and beverage products to customers fresh and on time.

Can you help us build a subscription program?

Absolutely. Grocery and specialty food is a repeat-purchase category, and subscriptions are where lifetime value compounds. We built the subscription program for Wyman's that lifted customer lifetime value 400% and tripled return-customer rate.

How do you grow profitably when margins are thin?

Food margins are tight and paid media keeps getting more expensive, so we pair efficient acquisition with CRO and retention. Our PPC and SEM work for Ragged Coast Chocolates drove a 9x average ROAS and a 46% lift in new-customer acquisition.

Where are you located, and does it matter?

We're in Portland, Maine, surrounded by one of the country's strongest specialty food and beverage communities. We work with brands across the U.S., but our roots mean we understand this customer natively.