A perishable-goods shop replatforms without losing gift cards, loyalty or a holiday

The Challenge

Perishable shipping, holiday peaks and a platform due for replacement

Swiss Meat & Sausage is a family-owned processor and smokehouse selling online and from its shop. Perishable orders carry shipping rules that ordinary retail doesn't, and most of the year's volume lands in a few holiday weeks.

The commerce platform needed an upgrade and constant security patching, which is a heavy burden for a small team.

Gift cards and loyalty points were the sticking point: customers use them at the counter and online, so any replacement had to carry existing balances and keep them in step with the retail system — without bolting on extra apps.

The Strategy

Choose the platform that already speaks to the back office

PeakBeyond compared upgrading in place against moving to a platform whose retail integration supports gift cards and loyalty natively, and recommended the move — it removed the patching burden and solved the gift card and loyalty problem without custom work.

The migration plan put the awkward parts first: balances, kits and case units for wholesale customers, and perishable shipping groups, all tested end to end before the cutover date was set.

After launch we treated reconciliation as part of the project rather than an afterthought — capture timing, discounts and expired authorizations all had to line up across the storefront, the payment processor and the retail system.

The Solution

A migration built around the things that couldn't break

PeakBeyond did the migration and the build, then stayed for the reconciliation and the training.

PeakBeyond worked with Swiss Meat & Sausage Co.'s internal team and specialized technology partners to:

• Compared upgrading in place with replatforming and recommended the platform whose retail integration handles gift cards and loyalty natively
• Migrated products, customers, gift cards, loyalty balances and orders, and built the store: theme, wholesale and private-label pages, recipes, perishable shipping groups and alerts, digital wallets and email templates
• Scoped and tested the back-office integration — order imports, gift cards, loyalty conversion, kits and case units for wholesale — then ran the cutover
• Fixed payment reconciliation: capture at shipment so processor totals match the back office, card vaulting so expired authorizations can be charged again, and discount and distribution balancing
• Set up promotions that behave the same in store and online — tax-free days, double-rewards events and seasonal bundles as back-office kit items
• Rebuilt the product upload and order connection when the back office moved to a new server, and trained staff to manage products, images and ingredients themselves

The Results

Live with balances intact, and promotions that finally match

The new store went live in June 2026 with gift cards, customers and loyalty balances carried over, so customers kept what they had earned.

Payment totals now reconcile across the storefront, processor and retail system, and the product upload has run properly on the new back-office server since June 2025.

Promotions run the same at the counter and online, and the staff manage products, images and ingredients themselves instead of waiting on a developer.

A small family business now runs peak season on a platform it can operate without a patching calendar.