Case study ↓
Brewing Innovation: Cometeer’s Journey to Personalized Coffee Subscriptions
Cometeer makes coffee worth paying attention to. They flash-freeze their capsules to lock in the flavor and aroma of specialty beans at peak quality, then ship them to their subscribers, who can choose between curated selections and coffees they've picked themselves.
As Cometeer's subscriber base grew, so did the brand’s ambitions for its customer experience. They wanted the tools to handle more sophisticated personalization logic, deliver an unmatched digital experience, and engage the customer more deeply at key moments in the journey.
Nebulab worked with Cometeer to reimagine their entire digital platform. From developing an intelligent subscription algorithm to building a custom account portal, every solution was designed to scale with Cometeer’s rapid growth while maintaining the premium experience their customers demand.
“At Cometeer, we’re on a mission to make exceptional coffee accessible to everyone. Building a technology platform that could scale with our vision was crucial for our next phase of growth.”
Fabian SeelbachCEO @ Cometeer
The Coffee Box that Builds Itself
Cometeer's original recommendation system relied on manual box configuration. But as the product catalog expanded, operations teams spent significant time deciding which coffees went into which boxes, and every customer still got roughly the same selection—regardless of their past purchases or coffee ratings.
To reduce operational drag while improving the customer experience, we built Skewer, an assignment system that automatically matches each subscriber's order history, ratings, and preferences to the right coffees. Operators simply set Skewer’s parameters and the system handles the rest, accounting for each customer’s preferences and past behavior to generate each customer’s box and personalize product descriptions in real time.
The result: Cometeer’s operations team got their time back, and customers got better product recommendations that felt like they had been handpicked specifically for them.
A Unified Portal for Web and Mobile
Historically, Cometeer's account management had been split between Shopify's and Recharge's native interfaces. This led to a subpar UX and limited the ability for Cometeer to ship custom functionality, such as allowing customers to rate the coffees they had received.
Nebulab built a custom account portal in Ruby on Rails, integrating both Shopify and Recharge into a single, fast-loading experience. Customers now have direct control over coffee ratings, orders, and subscriptions in a single, beautiful, fully branded experience, and Cometeer's team can ship new features without limitations.
Furthermore, when Cometeer decided to go mobile, the customer portal's architecture allowed them to reuse the existing codebase to launch a beautiful iOS app that feels native without the technical overhead of a greenfield project.
The Right Offer, for the Right Person, at the Right Time
Cometeer approached us with an extremely intentional approach to building loyalty, gently and thoughtfully guiding customers as they took the next step in discovering the brand. Unfortunately, most off-the-shelf solutions take a points-for-dollars approach, where customers are simply incentivized to spend with the brand.
The solution was Segmented Discounts, a simple but extremely powerful loyalty architecture. With Segmented Discounts, Cometeer simply uses Looker to define its customer segments, leveraging all the information available in its data warehouse. Operators can then configure time-limited offers for specific segments, set redemption rules, and track take rates.
Segmented Discounts allow Cometeer to take a much more granular approach to loyalty. For example, customers who have never purchased decaf can get a time-limited, free decaf box for their next order—all without Cometeer having to file an engineering ticket. This leads to a loyalty program that engages customers more effectively than a cashback scheme, unlocking true incremental revenue for the brand.
“Nebulab’s technical expertise and understanding of e-commerce helped us build a robust, scalable platform that enhances both our operational efficiency and customer experience. Their ability to tackle complex challenges while keeping the solution elegant has been invaluable.”
Sean DennyHead of Engineering @ Cometeer
