Piquant Post sells freshly-ground, handcrafted global spice blends. The company’s professional chefs curate spice blends and develop themed recipes each month, typically a specific country or region. A unique monthly spice subscription delivers customers 4 global spice blends with 4 printed recipe cards to use the spices. In addition to the spice subscription, Piquant Post offers a-la-carte spices thanks to flexible online payment options provided by PayWhirl.
Flexible online payment options for subscriptions and a-la-carte sales
Justin Ashton, founder and CEO of Piquant Post, discovered PayWhirl in 2020. He was managing an e-commerce platform migration and website rebuild though Shopify. Piquant Post was also targeting growth through a-la-carte sales in addition to the company’s robust subscription business.
“We left another subscription-focused platform that was tailored to subscription commerce because it offered weak on one-time e-commerce sales features. Since we wanted to grow our non-subscription sales, we needed access to the best non-subscription e-commerce platform. PayWhirl was the only flexible online payment solution that allowed us to design payments exactly how we wanted.”
Justin Ashton, founder and CEO, Piquant Post
How important are flexible online payments?
The Piquant Post team developed a customized set of monthly subscriptions on PayWhirl which provide the backbone of spice revenue. Thanks to PayWhirl’s flexible online payment solutions, the company now sells its full collection of spice blends a-la-carte. This makes it easy for people to explore cuisine, try new recipes and flavors from around the world, and meal plan. Everything is available online whether they subscribe to curated dishes or do it themselves by browsing recipes and buying spices.
“PayWhirl does a great job of listening to customer’s recommendations on how to improve and continually adds features. Our partnership allows us to retain customers, grow our revenue and improve user experience.”
Justin Ashton, founder and CEO, Piquant Post
How does PayWhirl compare to competitors?
Prior to using PayWhirl, Piquant Post had used PayPal, Cratejoy, Stripe and Cratejoy. Of those, only Cratejob had a great set of features for subscriptions.
“Each of the other platforms we’ve used limited our ability to create the hybrid e-commerce site we have now. PayWhirl is by far and away the most flexible online payment provider on the market.
Justin Ashton, founder and CEO, Piquant Post
Advice from Piquant Post’s Owner
First, define your user experience: define what products people want and whether a recurring payment model works for your business. Then, define what you want your customer’s checkout and recurring payment management experience to be. Even if you want to start simple, it pays to have a vision for how you want your flexible online payment system to evolve. Piquant Post adds features as it grows, investing in custom development over time.
We launched with a subscription business model, so we were focused on recurring payments from day one. But even if you are adding recurring payments to a traditional e-commerce model, look into having customers to prepay. Offering enhanced customer value for prepaid subscriptions allowed us to bootstrap our way from launch to growth using our customers’ purchases as working capital, taking zero outside investor money.”
Justin Ashton, founder and CEO, Piquant Post
If you have questions about flexible online payment solutions and our highly customizable app, please reach out through the live chat on https://app.paywhirl.com – we’re here to help!
