Customer story   

Brewery Taps GetSwift For End-to-End eCommerce and Delivery Tech

Brewery
eCommerce + Delivery Tech

December 2020­­
What a year it’s been if you sell alcohol in South Africa. In response to the pandemic, the country imposed two separate alcohol bans, leaving companies like Mad Giant Brewing Company without revenue for months. People weren’t coming into the brewery, nor were they at the bars that Mad Giant supplied to.

But the brewery, founded by brewmaster Eben Uys in a small town in 2014 only to quickly move to Johannesburg and then win an award for Best Beer in Africa in 2018, does not move at a slow pace. By August, it came to GetSwift to launch a full end-to-end Digital Ordering and Delivery Routing platform to send its beers direct to customers in their homes.

Uys spoke to us about the challenges of this year and how the company has gotten business back to near normal by year’s end despite all the bumps.

Why Home Delivery?

Well before 2020, South Africans were already getting more interested in home alcohol delivery, Uys said, which follows the massive growth in online alcohol sales in the US from 2013 to 2019.

Once the lockdown hit, it was another to seize the opportunity of home delivery.

But Uys wanted to know, What model would he use?

“We started toying with the idea of doing growlers but that’s messy and not the ideal condition to serve beer in,” Uys said.

Mad Giant went with an environmentally-friendly, plastic-free packaging, sold by the crate (of 12 bottles) option. Customers can order every week or wait to order when they’re ready. The easy online store lets customers mix and match their beers, click purchase, and that order later is automatically added to an optimized delivery route for Mad Giant’s drivers.

How To Add an Online Store and Home Delivery?

When picking a software, GetSwift wasn’t the first name that came to Uys’s mind, mentioning Shopify.

But it was the full, integrated suite of features, and the details of GetSwift’s system that made it the only real option.

“GetSwift helps us manage all the complexities of this – order placement, inventory, pricing, billing, route management, and being able to respond with marketing.”

“GetSwift helps us manage all the complexities of this – order placement, inventory, pricing, billing, route management, and being able to respond with marketing.”
He added: “What’s especially important for us is the bottle deposit credit system for customers. All of the other systems, including Shopify, are not that well integrated.”

In other words, with an eye on the environment and customer needs, he needed to be able to credit customers for returning their bottles–and those little details only come with GetSwift.

Early Success and What’s Left to Conquer

In early November, Mad Giant launched their GetSwift-designed eCommerce store. Marketing is moving along strong, with the most success coming from Mad Giant posts from Instagram and other social media accounts urging customers to order. Uys can also deploy the roster of GetSwift marketing tools to increase order sizes and keep customers coming back, from regular emails, to cart reminders to coupons.

One challenge has been getting customers into the rhythm of ordering weekly, since they can order whenever they’re ready rather than a set subscription. But, it’s only been less than two months since home delivery launched.

The Growth

Thanks to good restaurant and bar business, customers back in the brewery, and now, home delivery, Mad Giant is almost back to normal, revenue wise.

In just five weeks after the online launch, delivery is capturing almost 10 percent of their overall business.

“Delivery is still a small part of our business but we want to grow it to become 40 percent of the business.”

And he and his team are well positioned to do just that, he said, with a little help from GetSwift.

“It would be very difficult to grow and scale this business if you don’t have a system like GetSwift.”

At a Glance

Mad Giant brews award-winning beers in Johannesburg, available at their taproom & at bars across South Africa.
Branching out to home delivery, they tapped our Digital Ordering + Delivery Tech platform in November 2020.
Early success due to: Direct marketing from Instagram, Fresh bottle delivery (not growlers), and Platform that enables Billing, Payments, Driver App, Routing Bottle Returns, all synced. 
In about one month, home delivery becomes 6% of overall business, and growing.

At a Glance

Mad Giant brews award-winning beers in Johannesburg, available at their taproom & at bars across South Africa.
Branching out to home delivery, they tapped our Digital Ordering + Delivery Tech platform in November 2020.
Early success due to: Direct marketing from Instagram, Fresh bottle delivery (not growlers), and Platform that enables Billing, Payments, Driver App, Routing Bottle Returns, all synced. 
In about one month, home delivery becomes 6% of overall business, and growing.
December 2020­­
What a year it’s been if you sell alcohol in South Africa. In response to the pandemic, the country imposed two separate alcohol bans, leaving companies like Mad Giant Brewing Company without revenue for months. People weren’t coming into the brewery, nor were they at the bars that Mad Giant supplied to.

But the brewery, founded by brewmaster Eben Uys in a small town in 2014 only to quickly move to Johannesburg and then win an award for Best Beer in Africa in 2018, does not move at a slow pace. By August, it came to GetSwift to launch a full end-to-end Digital Ordering and Delivery Routing platform to send its beers direct to customers in their homes.

Uys spoke to us about the challenges of this year and how the company has gotten business back to near normal by year’s end despite all the bumps.

Why Home Delivery?

Well before 2020, South Africans were already getting more interested in home alcohol delivery, Uys said, which follows the massive growth in online alcohol sales in the US from 2013 to 2019.

Once the lockdown hit, it was time to seize the opportunity of home delivery. But Uys wanted to know, what model would he use?

“We started toying with the idea of doing growlers but that’s messy and not the ideal condition to serve beer in,” Uys said.

Mad Giant went with an environmentally-friendly, plastic-free packaging, sold by the crate (of 12 bottles) option. Customers can order every week or wait to order when they’re ready. The easy online store lets customers mix and match their beers, click purchase, and that order later is automatically added to an optimized delivery route for Mad Giant’s drivers.

How To Add an Online Store and Home Delivery?

When picking a software, GetSwift wasn’t the first name that came to Uys’s mind, mentioning Shopify.

But it was the full, integrated suite of features, and the details of GetSwift’s system that made it the only real option.

“GetSwift helps us manage all the complexities of this – order placement, inventory, pricing, billing, route management, and being able to respond with marketing.”

“GetSwift helps us manage all the complexities of this – order placement, inventory, pricing, billing, route management, and being able to respond with marketing.”
He added: “What’s especially important for us is the bottle deposit credit system for customers. All of the other systems, including Shopify, are not that well integrated.”

In other words, with an eye on the environment and customer needs, he needed to be able to credit customers for returning their bottles–and those little details only come with GetSwift.

Early Success and What’s Left To Conquer

In early November, Mad Giant launched their GetSwift-designed eCommerce store. Marketing is moving along strong, with the most success coming from Mad Giant posts from Instagram and other social media accounts urging customers to order. Uys can also deploy the roster of GetSwift marketing tools to increase order sizes and keep customers coming back, from regular emails, to cart reminders to coupons.

One challenge has been getting customers into the rhythm of ordering weekly, since they can order whenever they’re ready rather than a set subscription. But, it’s only been less than two months since home delivery launched.

The Growth

Thanks to good restaurant and bar business, customers back in the brewery, and now, home delivery, Mad Giant is almost back to normal, revenue wise.

In just five weeks after the online launch, delivery is capturing almost 10 percent of their overall business.

“Delivery is still a small part of our business but we want to grow it to become 40 percent of the business.”

And he and his team are well positioned to do just that, he said, with a little help from GetSwift.

“It would be very difficult to grow and scale this business if you don’t have a system like GetSwift.”

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