Custom E-Commerce Platform for a Food Brand
Designing and building a Shopify store that automated a loyalty program, enabled weekly meal plans, and made every bowl fully customizable.
Designing and building a Shopify store that automated a loyalty program, enabled weekly meal plans, and made every bowl fully customizable.
Saladista is a salad delivery brand in Saigon serving fresh, customizable bowls. The business had outgrown its setup in several ways:
The owner was manually managing a membership discount program, tracking who had purchased credit, which tier they were in, and applying discounts by hand.
She wanted to launch a weekly meal plan service where customers pick specific bowls for specific days, but Shopify has no native bundle product that supports this.
Every bowl on the menu needed multi-tier customization: required selections (base, protein), free optional toppings, and paid add-ons. Standard Shopify product options couldn't handle this complexity.
The store needed to serve both English and Vietnamese-speaking customers throughout the entire experience.
The alternative (multiple paid apps stacked on top of each other) would add ongoing cost and complexity. Instead, we built it custom.
Every bowl needed a layered customization experience. Some selections are required, some are free and optional, some are paid. Shopify's native variant system only supports simple option sets.
I built a custom product template using Shopify metafields to define customization tiers for each bowl. Customers step through a guided flow: pick a base, choose a protein, add free toppings, and optionally add premium add-ons, with clear pricing at each step.
This gives customers a "build your own" experience that feels like a dedicated app, but it's built into the theme itself. No third-party app fees, and the client can manage options directly.
The client wanted to offer a weekly meal plan where customers choose specific bowls for specific days, order in advance, and get a discount. Shopify doesn't have a native "bundle" product type that supports day-by-day selection.
I designed and built a custom meal plan product experience. Customers select their bowls for the upcoming week, see the full plan summary, and check out as a single order. This was built from scratch rather than using a paid bundle app, saving the client ongoing subscription costs.
This feature opened a new revenue stream for the business and gave loyal customers a simpler way to order regularly.
Saladista already had loyal customers in a prepaid credit program (buy credit upfront, get a discount on every order). But the entire system was managed manually: tracking purchases, calculating tier levels, applying discounts, removing expired credit. This was unsustainable as the customer base grew.
I designed and built an automated three-tier credit system. The entire lifecycle is automated using Shopify Flow: when a customer purchases credit, Flow detects the amount and assigns the correct tier discount. The discount is applied automatically at checkout. No codes needed. When credit runs out, Flow removes the discount automatically. Existing customers were migrated into the new system without disruption.
I also designed the visual identity for the credit tiers: green gradient cards showing tier name, discount percentage, and balance. These appear on a custom account page (Shopify's default account page didn't support this) and on the Membership page as a clear visual of the tier structure.
This transformed a manual, error-prone process into a fully automated system. The client no longer tracks anything by hand. Customers see their balance and tier clearly, and the upgrade path is visually obvious, which encourages higher credit purchases.
I worked directly with the client to understand her business, capture her branding, and translate it into a cohesive custom theme. Using AI-assisted development, I moved quickly from concept to working code, building the custom Liquid templates, metafield architecture, and Flow automations in a compressed timeline.
The bilingual setup (English and Vietnamese) was integrated throughout, ensuring the full experience works for both customer bases.
Reducing ongoing costs and giving full control over every feature.
Flexible enough for the client to update customization options without developer help.
Reliable, maintainable, and zero manual intervention for the membership system.
Because the default Shopify account couldn't display credit information the way customers needed.
The site is live and serving customers in Saigon. The membership program transitioned smoothly from manual to automated, existing customers retained their credits, and the client now has two new tools for growing her business: the meal plan service and a self-sustaining loyalty system.
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