RhoadsRoast Brews Up Shipping with ShippingEasy

By Rob Zaleski
Apr 17, 2018

RhoadsRoast has been in the business of serving up fine Turkish-roasted coffee for over 15 years. Located in New Jersey, they ship coffee to all 50 states, as well as internationally to Russia, Israel, Trinidad, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and France through an Amazon and an eBay store. With a focus on quality roasting processes and great customer service, optimizing their shipping took a back seat at first. Then they partnered with ShippingEasy.

“We were so focused on customer service, having the best Turkish roasters, producing top notch products, and marketing the business, we had no idea how the right shipping platform could really improve business.”
—Andrea Rhoads, owner, RhoadsRoast

Brewing up shipping efficiency

One of the most difficult things about running an eCommerce company can be dealing with shipping. Comparing rates, deciding on shipping carriers and methods, obtaining packing materials—the list goes on. These things can eat a lot of time from your day and take up valuable productivity bandwidth.

Andrea has been able to overcome these challenges and ship coffee to customers with ease. Using ShippingEasy, she says “I don’t have to think about shipping. This allows me to focus on the other important aspects of running a growing business and expanding, which we plan to do in the next six months by opening a shop for pour overs.”

She doesn’t have to think about shipping because she can save all her carrier and package settings in the app, making it so she doesn’t have to manually enter that information each time. Her saved selections automatically know which carrier to use and reduce the process from multiple clicks down to one.

Ship coffee, save money

Time isn’t the only thing Andrea has saved. When you ship coffee, your weights can vary from just a couple pounds to nearly 100 pounds. RhoadsRoast saves money by shipping using Flat Rate packaging to keep costs low.

Flat Rate is inexpensive when you’re shipping to father away zones and allows you to ship up to 70 pounds for a fixed postage rate. Many coffee distributors also take advantage of ShippingEasy’s proprietary Priority Mail Cubic rates, which offer cubic discounts for shipments between 2 and 20 pounds – a sweet spot for roasters indeed!

Another added efficiency tactic Andrea employs is combo printing labels and packing slips. Using a sheet of paper that is half label/half paper, she doesn’t have to worry about matching them up to ensure the proper contents are packed. ShippingEasy’s software accommodates this type of printing easily.

Creating a java buzz

Of course, RhoadsRoast would like to ship coffee at a higher volume to their customers. To do that, Andrea needs to be able to promote new blends and seasonal specials to her customer base. ShippingEasy’s Customer Marketing add-on allows her to do that, as well as maintain her customer information and create hands-free, automated email campaigns.

With drag-and-drop email templates, or the ability to create an email from scratch, she can whip up a campaign in a snap. Through this platform, she segments her customer list based on purchase history, order frequency, specific SKUs purchased, location, order value, and more to create relevant, timely, and high-converting campaigns. These features give Andrea the ability to connect with her customers and boost RhoadsRoast’s sales.

For example, Andrea recently sent two campaigns. One was informative in nature, rather than promotional. The other was a newsletter email to her subscribers. Both of these email campaigns netted Andrea over $1600 EACH in new sales direct from email clicks! The informative email generated $1,100 in the first 72 hours after being sent, with a time investment of less than an hour to create the content.

Efficiency, cutting costs, and increasing business—brew all those together and you have a delightful cup of success. We look forward to seeing what is in store next for Andrea and RhoadsRoast.