Fresh Chile Co is the DTC brand that's quietly making waves
Based in New Mexico, Fresh Chile Co grows, bottles and distributes Hatch Chile sauce to hundreds of thousands of people per year.
Customer service is our #1 priority" is a common claim, but Fresh Chile lives it. Their 30,000+ member Facebook group shares recipes, and their blog offers cooking tips. They continuously engage customers through calls and emails, valuing feedback as their business backbone.
We met with Chris Lang, CMO and Partner at Fresh Chile Co, in San Diego to talk about the brand and why a paid loyalty membership was the right next step for them.
From grassroots beginnings to 50% YoY growth
Despite it’s grassroots beginnings in 2018 from a farm in New Mexico, today with 50% YoY growth, Fresh Chile sells tens of millions of dollars in Hatch chile across the USA.
With over 50% of Fresh Chile’s customers purchasing from mobile, accessing store credit natively in the checkout was a high priority. There were also 2 other main considerations.
The first consideration was that they needed a flexible membership platform built for easy redemption and seamlessly integrated into the customer portal. “We wanted to reward customers with store credit as soon as they purchased a membership”. Chris says. There were few vendors that could handle in-checkout redemption, but none that could handle as well as Rivo with automatic discount combinations and stacking at checkout.
The second consideration was a robust customer segmentation in Shopify, and the ability to handle membership renewals and payment processing at different time periods. The capabilities delivered by Rivo’s membership platform was easily able to solve smooth customer tagging, while segmenting them in different customer groups.
We explored half a dozen loyalty providers and found that most we’re all hat, no cattle. They made big promises, but also that came with an even bigger price tag. Choosing Rivo meant we had a long term partner that was committed to working with us to see the value, without the enormous price tag.
Fresh membership infrastructure at checkout
Every customer that’s apart of of Fresh Chile gets 20% off every single order – along with 6 other benefits like 5% back in store credit on every purchase. Additionally, when they sign up they get $10 in Fresh Chile Cash and on their annual renewal they get another $20 in Fresh Chile Cash.
Checkout integration like discount combinations, automate the whole process behind the scenes. Discounts just automatically apply at checkout. A customer just needs to be signed into their account – everything else is automated at checkout. There’s a seamless flow of increase in AOV coming from the program. Integration into Shopify Plus using Checkout Extensibility made it simple for the Fresh Chile team to plug in Rivo apps using Shopify’s checkout extensions. That made everything work out of the box.
With the analytics and deep integration to Shopify reports, the Fresh Chile team is able to manage customer experience more closely and understanding member buying behaviour. Ontop of that, the deep integration with Sendlane, and “Rivo’s integration with Gorgias has been key to the launch of our program. Seeing all the membership context in one place has made it easy for our customer support team to offer priority support to Fresh Chile Members.” says Amogene – Customer Service Manager at Fresh Chile Co.
“The membership program directly contributed to our revenue growth. Both from a repeat purchase rate perspective and a company ARR perspective. Members spend more 156% more, and the program has been very impactful in driving average order value.” Chris says. Looking forward next year, Fresh Chile plans grow the membership program to 6 figures in annual recurring revenue and continue to make it a core part of their online offering.
Hot Results from Fresh Chile
Fresh Chile Co turned to Rivo to quickly implement a membership program. The results were almost instant. In weeks after their launch on BFCM 2024 Fresh Chile Co saw results:
“Rivo’s team is super hands on,” Chris says. “The onboarding experience was seamless. They worked with our marketing team to kick things off and made sure everything was extremely effective for launch week on BFCM.
