Modernizing Subscription Operations with Shopify Plus and Recharge

Coava Coffee Roasters is a specialty coffee roaster based in Portland, Oregon, known for transparent sourcing, direct farm partnerships, and rotating high-quality single-origin coffees. The company operates a growing direct-to-consumer subscription business across three taste-note tiers - Classic, Seasonal, and Unique - with multiple bag sizes and flexible 2- and 4-week billing cycles. As its subscriber base grew, Coava needed to modernize its subscription infrastructure, reduce manual operational work, and provide customers with greater control over their subscriptions.

Coava's subscription business was running on a legacy Recharge Starter integration implemented in 2017 on Shopify Plus. As the business grew, the legacy setup created increasing operational complexity across subscription management, coffee rotation, order processing, fulfillment, and customer support. Several critical workflows relied on spreadsheets and manual intervention, while customers had limited self-service capabilities. Coava needed a modern subscription ecosystem that could connect its commerce and fulfillment platforms, automate repetitive processes, improve operational efficiency, and create a more seamless customer experience.

Sigma Solve modernized Coava's subscription ecosystem by upgrading its legacy Recharge implementation to Recharge Plus and building custom integrations across Shopify Plus, ShipStation, LoyaltyLion, Rebuy, and Vercel. The solution connected subscription management, coffee rotation, fulfillment, loyalty, and customer engagement into a more unified workflow.

1. Recharge Plus & Shopify Upgrade

Sigma Solve upgraded Coava from Recharge Starter to Recharge Plus and configured its subscription products across three coffee tiers, multiple bag sizes, and 2-week and 4-week billing cycles. The upgraded customer portal enabled subscribers to:

2. Custom Coffee Rotation Management

Sigma Solve developed a centralized Coffee Rotation Management Dashboard to replace spreadsheet-based rotation management. The dashboard enables Coava's team to:

3. Automated Order & Fulfillment Workflow

Sigma Solve connected Recharge, Shopify, and ShipStation to automate coffee SKU propagation throughout the order lifecycle. A custom Recharge webhook automatically injects the appropriate coffee SKU when a subscription is charged. Shopify then carries the correct line items into the order, while ShipStation uses the information to generate packing slips with the required coffee codes. This eliminated the need for manual handwriting during fulfillment.

4. Enhanced Customer Experience

The new subscription experience introduced several customer-facing capabilities, including:

5. Subscriber Migration

To support the transition from the legacy subscription structure, Sigma Solve developed and tested a custom migration script. The migration was first validated with 10–15 accounts in staging before being executed in production. Approximately 1,800 legacy subscribers were successfully migrated, with zero technical issues reported.

Sigma Solve transformed Coava’s legacy subscription setup into a more connected and scalable ecosystem, streamlining subscription management, coffee rotation, order processing, fulfillment, and customer engagement. By replacing manual workflows with automated processes and introducing customer self-service capabilities, the solution reduced operational effort while improving visibility and control across the subscription journey. The successful migration of their subscribers further laid the foundation for Coava’s continued subscription operations.