The challenge

The platform they were using was limited. It was difficult to expand offerings or gain customers. They needed a more flexible e-commerce solution that allowed their customers to manage schedules, billing and delivery options as well as choose meals and set ingredient preferences. The tech also had to perform on a business management and production side. 

Solution

We built a completely custom web application. This contains two portals: one for customers and one for Lean Lifestyle admins. 

The admin portal features an array of management tools  –  from handling the customer base to meal ingredients to scheduling side orders to marketing and SEO tasks – with 20 different weekly reports required for the three-a-week deliveries.

The customer portal’s primary function is for customers to choose which meals they schedule. These meals are automatically generated based on ingredient preferences – with some randomness thrown in to avoid receiving the same meal consecutively. Users can select a different meal at any time.

Development

Lean Lifestyle needed more dynamic meal and report building as well as a platform that would allow them to add features over time.

Vincit built a new custom application with e-commerce capabilities on a Laravel framework, with PHP, a MariaDB database and Authorize.net payment processor on the backend. For the frontend, we used jQuery, Sass, Webpack, and an internal front end tool called Drift.

Design

Design work was minimal. We adapted the customer portal from their existing tool and added new features to it. Our priority was to ensure users could effortlessly navigate and search for meals and meal types by category.

For the admin dashboard we focused on functionality.

Increased Efficiency

With the new platform, Lean Lifestyle can scale their business and add new product offerings in a way the old one was simply unable to do. This includes new meals, new pricing options, new marketing capabilities, etc.

In 2023, our client wanted to break free from a longstanding limitation: one user can get one meal per scheduled meal period (e.g. Dinner).

We added a new A la Carte feature for a parent to purchase additional meals for their children. The Specialty Meal Surcharge allows Lean Lifestyle to scale up their meal offerings without a full-scale price increase.

Another new feature, Macro Nutrition, automatically calculates calories, total carbs, proteins and fats of a given meal. This is especially popular with the Crossfit community. 

The customizations have increased customer loyalty and subscribers. Their subscribers grew by 65 percent since 2019. The initial custom build also came in under budget and one month under deadline, saving our client time and money.