Beating Hangovers with Custom Cadence Subscription Plans
bhupendra@york.ie
How Stay Ai enabled Vita Coco to launch a groundbreaking subscription innovation to fight hangovers.
Vita Coco has long been a darling of the food and beverage industry, thanks to high-quality products and an adoring fanbase that has exploded in size since they got their start in 2003. Their product line revolutionized the way consumers drink coconut water, from their elegantly simple and electrolyte-packed Coconut Water to Vita Coco Energy, which puts a healthy spin on pick-me-ups. Propelled to mainstream recognition by a successful IPO launch in 2021, Vita Coco is now one of the biggest names in F&B.
The Idea: A Revolutionary Plan to Own Hangover Relief
Vita Coco’s Coconut Water is packed with electrolytes and nutrients that make it an ideal way to stay hydrated. The brand quickly realized it had the potential to solve and own an all-too-common pain point for countless consumers: hangovers.
We’ve all been there—we wake up in the morning feeling drained with a pounding headache after having a few drinks too many the night before. The slog to the grocery store to pick up some electrolyte-filled beverages feels like crossing the Sahara three times over. Vita Coco’s Coconut Water helps people hydrate to 1) mitigate a hangover and 2) feel better during a hangover, but that meant either having to remember to stock up ahead of time or go to the grocery store after the hangover was already wreaking havoc. Enter: the Hangover Subscription. Vita Coco developed a unique idea to ship subscribers a case of their favorite Vita Coco right to their doorstep 10 days before every major drinking holiday, including New Year’s Eve, Super Bowl Sunday, St. Patrick’s Day, The Fourth, and more.
The Problem: Rigid Subscription Plans on Recharge
Now all Vita Coco needed was a provider that could set custom ship dates around these holidays. You’d think this would be no problem, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, current subscription providers are built on such functionally flawed and outdated tech that they can’t process subscription orders that aren’t on a totally set time frame, like every 2 weeks, 4 weeks, or 6 weeks.
These set schedules wouldn’t cut it for the Hangover Subscription because these holidays don’t follow a set cadence. The Super Bowl and St. Patrick’s Day have 5 weeks between them, while Halloween and Thanksgiving Eve have only 3 weeks between them, and so on.
Vita Coco needed a platform that would allow them to select their own shipment dates. Their old, antiquated subscription provider, Recharge, didn’t have the functionality to do so – not to mention, no clear and consistent point of contact, flawed UX, and countless ignored support tickets. Enter Stay Ai.
The Solution: A Custom Subscription Plan and Quick Migration with Stay Ai
When Vita Coco introduced the idea of creating a subscription date that focused on shipping on specific dates rather than a set schedule, the Stay Ai team knew they could craft the perfect solution.
Stay Ai is built out in a scalable way that allows brands to design subscription plans and cadences uniquely suited to their needs. While other subscription providers don’t have the functionality to allow for this level of deep shipping customization, it’s built right into the Stay Ai system.
Stay Ai handled a white glove migration and seamlessly brought Vita Coco’s large list of subscribers over from Recharge in less than a week. Working hand-in-hand with Vita Coco to ensure they fulfilled all of their needs, the team built out custom ship schedules from scratch and implemented complex logic structures at no extra cost. The platform’s robust capabilities allowed Vita Coco to quickly and easily select their shipping dates starting in January: right in time to provide their customers hangover relief for major drinking holidays. Hangovers have finally met their match.