Cost U Less
Emergency e-commerce after a hurricane — built into a permanent platform.
Cost U Less operates warehouse-style stores serving island communities across the South Pacific and Caribbean. When a hurricane destroyed one of those stores, the community lost its primary source for groceries and essentials — overnight. They needed a way to order while the store was rebuilt. The brief was specific: stand it up fast, make it work for people who depend on it, and don't compromise on the customer experience.
- Role
- E-commerce Manager, The North West Company
- Year
- 2020
- Industry
- Grocery & Essentials Retail
- Site
- Visit →
Highlights
- 01Rapid Freshop deployment under emergency timelines
- 02Ferry shipping schedules wired into checkout
- 03Local circulars with click-to-order
- 04Mobile picking app for in-store fulfillment
- 05Integration with ERP and POS systems
- 06Scaled from emergency response to permanent platform
The Challenge
Stand up commerce while the store is rebuilt.
A hurricane took out the physical store. The community that depended on it for food and household goods needed access right away — not in three months, not after a redesign cycle. We had a finite window before customers had to find other, often more expensive, often farther-away options.
Compounding the constraint: this is an island community. "Shipping" isn't UPS Ground. It's ferry schedules, regional weather, and timing that has to match the realities of inter-island logistics.
The Approach
Buy what we can, build what we must.
We partnered with Freshop — a grocery-specific commerce platform — to skip the months of bespoke build a custom solution would have required. Freshop gave us catalog, cart, and checkout out of the box. We layered in what was specific to Cost U Less: ferry shipping schedules so customers could see real arrival dates at checkout, local circular integration so weekly promos translated directly into shoppable carts, and ERP/POS integration so the digital store reflected real inventory.
A mobile picking app gave in-store associates the workflow to fulfill online orders alongside walk-in shopping without doubling their workload.
The Outcome
Emergency response that outlived the emergency.
The platform shipped fast enough to serve the community while the store was rebuilt. Once the physical store reopened, the digital store didn't go away — it became part of how Cost U Less serves island customers, expanded to additional locations, and now sits as a real channel in the business. What started as a crisis response became infrastructure.
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