Website redesign and e-commerce migration for a West African-inspired artisan sauce brand, moving from Shopify's theme system to a custom-built storefront.

Industry: Food & Beverage / DTC Platform: Lovable & Shopify Scope: Website redesign, e-commerce development, product detail pages, content strategy, AI visual assets

KRU Food Kitchen + Market is an Atlanta-based brand that produces small-batch plant-based hot sauces rooted in West African culinary traditions. Founded by Wendell Worjroh, the brand positions itself around taste and heritage over heat, targeting health-conscious consumers, home cooks and the West African diaspora.

The existing Shopify store was limiting what the brand could do visually and editorially. Product pages used a generic template. The site couldn't tell the brand story the way Wendell needed it to, and recipes, blog posts and brand history felt bolted on rather than part of the shopping experience. The site needed to feel like a food brand you want to spend time with, not a checkout page with a logo on top.

We rebuilt the site from scratch on Lovable, with full control over layout, content structure and product presentation.

Platform migration. We moved the site off Shopify's theme system onto Lovable for component-level control over every page. Shopify remains the checkout and order backend. The migration meant re-hosting all product images, re-linking checkout URLs and rebuilding the page structure without losing product and review data.

Product pages built to convert. Large product photography leads each page. An accordion handles ingredients, nutritional facts and allergens without cluttering the view. Heat level indicators give shoppers a visual scale across the five variants, and sibling navigation lets them compare sauces without going back to the collection.

Ingredient and nutritional data audit. We cross-referenced ingredient lists across the Shopify site, Amazon listings and the actual bottle labels.

Brand story inside the shopping flow. The home and product pages carry the origin story (the Kru people of Liberia, Wendell's family heritage, the trip that inspired the brand). Story sections, value cards and editorial photography sit between product content and purchase CTAs.

Content architecture. Recipes link sauces to use cases, the blog covers food culture, events and brand updates, and an FAQ answers the 15 most common questions about ingredients, shipping, allergens and diets.

Reviews. Yotpo reviews carried over from Shopify, with a documented import path for older reviews that keeps their original dates.

Warm cream and black as the base. Olive, mustard and red come from the peppers and spices.

Full site redesign with product catalog, brand pages, blog, recipes and contact

Five product detail pages with per-product nutritional facts, corrected ingredient lists, heat scale indicators and allergen badges

Image migration from Shopify CDN to new hosting, with a broken reference audit and cleanup

Shopify cart and payment processing kept behind the new frontend

Mobile-first responsive layout across all pages

FAQ, shipping and dietary content structured for both users and the AI chatbot knowledge base

Yotpo review widget carrying over existing customer reviews

Product pages show label-accurate data for all five sauces instead of one generic ingredient list

Brand storytelling is part of the shopping path, not buried in an About page

The site reads as a food brand with a point of view, not a template store with hot sauce in it

Content architecture supports new recipes, posts and products without structural changes

The migration preserved review data, checkout flows and the Amazon cross-listing without disruption

Shoppers understand what makes KRU different before they reach the buy button.