Delivering Fresh Experience Commerce Experiences

Cathy Morris
05/14/2021

Mishima Reserve supplies their high-end, American-bred Wagyu beef to some of the most prestigious restaurants in America, but they wanted to create an online store so home chefs would also be able to purchase small quantities of their products to cook and enjoy at home.

We partnered with Seattle-based Sugar Mountain, Mishima Reserve’s parent company, and the UX/design team at Fell Swoop to create an online store that would bring the Mishima Reserve brand to life with a truly one-of-a-kind commerce experience.

the mishima reserve website screenshot

In the Delivering Fresh Commerce Experience with Magento & Amazon Pay webinar, Greg Bear, founder and president of Bear Group, and Walker Lockhart, EVP of Commerce & Digital Marketing at Sugar Mountain, share insights into the Mishima Reserve commerce experience—the content strategy, underlying technology, and custom features built on the Magento Commerce platform.

Owning the brand story and bringing commerce experiences to life

Walker Lockhart and the Mishima Reserve team came to the table with a vision of the experience they wanted customers to have on their website.

"Imagine the customer walking through this really beautiful experience and then getting to the products," said Walker. “The content is aspirational, but we also use that to inspire the customer to take action and purchase products.” 

This took the form of curated dining experiences like “Game-Day Lineup” and “Ultimate BBQ” to showcase their Wagyu beef for the home chef. At every step of the website experience, customers encounter images of fully-prepared meals, detailed preparation instructions, education about Wagyu beef, and tips for throwing a party their guests will never forget. 

iMac and macbook displaying pages from the Mishima Reserve website

“We use all of those aspects to create these experiences to help the customer put themselves in the position of hosting one of these experiences then bundle them together so they can purchase it,” said Walker. 

Immersing the customer in this way allows them to feel what it’s like to host the ultimate experience while giving them the tools and inspiration to take the next step and make a purchase.

This is one of the key reasons why it’s so important to invest in a commerce site for your business. “As a marketer, you have the opportunity to tell your brand story on your own domain the way you can’t on marketplace channels,” said Greg Bear. “Wrapping it in bold UX that's then also wrapped in content is a unique approach that brings the brand to life.”

Reducing barriers in the checkout process

The Mishima Reserve team wanted to make sure that the brand experience continued into the checkout process, putting the customer in control of when—and how—they want to receive their purchase so it is fresh and ready for their at-home experience. But it also needs to be easy to use.

“Perishable shipping brings a whole new set of constraints and problems to solve,” said Walker. His team worked with Bear Group to build a custom delivery date picker that helps ensure on-time delivery of the fresh, gourmet foods right to the customer’s door when they’re home to receive it. 

a calendar with potential delivery date and prices showing delivery date

The Delivery Date Picker is a calendar with a custom Magento extension built by Bear Group to give customers the greatest degree of control over their delivery. “What we see is that customers intuitively understand this [date selector],” said Walker. “They can choose how they want the product delivered to them.” 

In the final step of the checkout process, Mishima Reserve knew it was important—especially as a new-to-market brand—to give their customers the option of using Amazon Pay. “When we initially launched, we saw 50% or higher [of customers] using Amazon Pay checkout,” said Walker. “They chose Amazon Pay for a few reasons: their address book is already built in but they also have the security and guarantee that Amazon Pay presents.” 

The power of having a solid foundation

Why did we choose Magento for Mishima Reserve’s website? “It's highly customizable and we have full access to the core code,” Greg explained. “If you're going to build an experiential site, having that code access is critical.”

It’s also a cloud-based technology. “They didn't want to be managing hardware,” said Greg. “So the ability to have a hosted partner that stands by itself in the cloud made [Magento] especially appealing.” (Read more in The Benefits of Magento Commerce Cloud.)

In addition, Sugar Mountain is a family of brands and Magento allows them to build multiple stores inside a single infrastructure, saving significant time and money. Since launching Mishima Reserve’s website in late 2018, Walker and his team have worked with us to move their Beecher’s Cheese store into Magento. “We're now running two websites with these features,” said Walker. “It's been a really great experience.” 

a screenshot of the mishima reserve website on a macbook

After the initial build, Sugar Mountain joined Bear Group’s Run State support program for ongoing maintenance and development support—allowing Walker and his team to stay on top of improvements.

“Because we're on this platform, we're focused on what's the next best thing to do for our customers that's also going to drive business for us,” said Walker. “The backbone and systems are all in place, so now we're just improving the experience from here.”