Re- Foods brings sustainable, healthy food direct to consumers
Look around your grocery store and you’ll see food from around the world. The global food system connects consumers with a wide variety of food at lower prices. But modern consumers are increasingly interested in knowing where their food comes from. Some people want to know that their food is fair trade and grown using sustainable farming practices. Other people look for healthy food that uses all-natural ingredients and minimal processing.
Re- Foods is a food and beverage startup in Singapore aimed at reaching conscious consumers who want to fuel their bodies with food that is good for them and good for the world around us. The company is backed by Olam, one of the largest names in sustainable agriculture.
“Olam is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of food and agricultural products — such as cocoa, coffee, nuts, cotton, and grains — to businesses worldwide,” says Sriram Nagarajan, vice president and head of eCommerce at Olam Information Services. “As a major supplier, we feel a responsibility to farmers, communities, and the planet.”
Olam sees Re- Foods as the perfect way to bring its commitment to sustainable food directly to consumers. In fact, it is a key growth initiative for the company. As the first B2C venture under the Olam umbrella, Re- Foods stakeholders needed to take a new approach to its e-commerce website with a strong focus on personalization and outstanding customer experiences.
Working closely with Adobe Customer Solutions, Re- Foods launched a best-in-class experience in just six months with managed services implementations of Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Commerce running on Microsoft Azure. Re- Foods is the first Adobe Commerce site in the region on Microsoft Azure.
Image source: Re- Foods.
A positive impact for consumers
The new Re- Foods website is one of a kind. Rather than putting sales or even products first, Re- Foods focuses on the stories behind the products and where they come from. Who is the farmer? How is working with Re- Foods impacting them and their community? What decisions is Re- Foods making that positively impact the environment?
Even the website itself features a “Sustainable Mode” that uses a dark color scheme to reduce energy consumption no matter what device the website is viewed on. Bold colors and eye-catching parallax animations invite consumers to read about the positive impact that every Re- Foods product has on the world.
Olam has worked in collaboration with Adobe on a number of B2B solutions, delivering strong customer experiences and user insight. Running Adobe Commerce and Adobe Experience Manager as managed services on Microsoft Azure was an easy decision for Olam. “We appreciate the transparency that Microsoft Azure provides around energy utilization,” says Sriram Nagarajan. “It’s a feature that not many companies offer, but perfectly fits with our commitment to sustainability.”
Working with Experience Manager, Re- Foods designed a mobile-first, fully responsive website tailor-made for its millennial target consumers. Experience Manager delivers a high-performing site that loads within two seconds. Content writers take advantage of reusable content fragments and experience fragments in Experience Manager Sites to create and publish content quickly and easily. Animation on the site renders smoothly, whether consumer access the site from the tablet, smartphone, or computer.
Adobe Commerce powers the e-commerce backend, using integrations with the payment gateway and shipping gateway to create a smooth sales journey for customers. Using the Adobe Commerce Integration Framework (CIF) and with help from Adobe Customer Solutions, Re- Foods accelerated implementation and got its e-commerce site fully operational in six months.
Sriram Nagarajan says, “The Adobe Customer Solutions team provided strong support by helping us understand the customer journey and learn the best practices to create experience-driven commerce for consumers.”
Using data to improve experiences
Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target set the stage to add deeper personalization for individual consumers. After first launching the website, Re- Foods paid close attention to the real-time metrics from Analytics that provide insight into how consumers are experiencing the website. This has led to further improvements in the site.
For example, the website was originally designed to have the cart, shipping, and payment information splitting into multiple pages. But after spotting high drop rates, with up to 60 percent of customers abandoning their shopping carts, the Re- Foods team quickly redesigned the cart and checkout journey by reducing the number of pages and steps to place an order.
“We saw conversion rates rise immediately, with drop rates falling below 30 percent,” says Muthaian Prakash K, senior manager — eCommerce at Olam Information Services. “This shows the value of data in improving user experiences and conversions.”
Re- Foods is also carefully studying the impact of its storytelling approach on the website. Stories get consumers invested in the Re- Foods brand and build loyalty. By understand which stories best connect with customers, the company can create more engaging content.
“As a start-up, agility is critical to our success,” says Muthaian Prakash K. “Adobe applications help us understand consumers and drive a seamless experience to help them create positive impacts on their health, farmer communities, and the planet.”
Read more about Olam’s use of Adobe Commerce.