Shipment exports, multi-shipment orders and service-area rules for a US meal-kit subscription

The problem

Every week, each fulfilment centre needs an accurate file of what to pack and where to send it. The original export ran as a single job, which gets slower and riskier as order volume grows.

The business was changing too. One order could now ship as several boxes, prepared meals weren’t available in every zip code, and the team wanted to test new box options and win back customers who were about to cancel.

What we built

We rebuilt the export as batches of 1,000 shipments, producing one validated file per fulfilment centre, emailed when ready, with tracking numbers and carriers included. Orders moved to a shipment-based model, so one order can become several boxes, and tracking details go to the delivery-tracking service with automatic retries.

For customers, we built a service-area check that offers meal kits to anyone whose zip code can’t get prepared meals, a pilot that assigns customers to new box options, new offers in the cancellation flow, and a seasonal holiday box.

Our part

Our engineers were contract developers on the agency team that built and ran the platform. Over five months we wrote nearly a quarter of all its commits. The platform and its earlier fulfilment integrations were built by the agency’s team before us.

Built with

• Ruby on Rails
• PostgreSQL
• Sidekiq Pro
• React
• TypeScript
• Heroku