Date no Kura | Case study: a restaurant's Shopify beef tongue EC built from zero

Finding a new path through online sales

Building a system to deliver "otoro beef tongue — just 200g per whole cow" online from scratch. Our involvement goes beyond site development, covering advertising strategy and marketing as a whole.

For consulting-style engagements, please submit a request via the estimate form and we will discuss the details in a follow-up meeting.

Securing profit from EC first, then funding the site build

With a limited initial budget, we started by listing products and running advertising on marketplaces like Amazon.

Why launch with the marketplace first

A dedicated site offers higher margins once it is up and running, but it requires both upfront development costs and traffic acquisition costs at the same time. Taking on both right at launch puts significant pressure on cash flow.

Marketplaces already have the traffic infrastructure in place, so products can reach buyers quickly with advertising. Compared to web advertising, CPA tends to be lower and ROAS higher — making it an efficient structure for building trust in the product and securing sales and profit.

Despite strong brand recognition as a restaurant, EC track record was zero. Building a proven sales record on the marketplace first created the foundation for the next phase.

Reinvesting profit into the next phase

Profit secured on the marketplace funded the Shopify site build. Rather than seeking external investment, channeling business-generated profit into the next phase is an effective strategy for scaling while managing risk.

Building a dedicated site fast on a limited budget

Early launch through theme customization

We built the dedicated site by partially customizing a Shopify paid theme. Building from scratch requires designing and implementing every page from zero — which can take months before launch.

Using a paid theme as the foundation dramatically shortened the development timeline and kept upfront costs low while enabling an early launch.

Shopify's ecosystem includes a wide range of official and third-party apps for email, points, reviews, and more. Starting from a theme keeps integration with these apps smooth while providing a flexible foundation for adding features incrementally.

Growing the site with phased investment

The initial build was scoped to the minimum necessary features. We designed a reinvestment cycle so that profits from EC would fund site improvements and new features over time — a structure that keeps initial costs low while allowing the site to grow alongside the business.

Designing traffic acquisition for the dedicated site

We presented options across both web advertising and owned media, then started with the owned media strategy.

Web advertising — immediate results and ROAS management

Google and Meta ads begin driving traffic the day after setup and allow real-time ROAS (return on ad spend) management. Beef tongue gifts have clear seasonal demand — summer gifts and year-end gifts — making concentrated campaign bursts well suited to the medium.

However, beef tongue and gift categories are competitive, which drives up bid prices and can make CPA expensive depending on budget.

Owned media — a long-term traffic asset

Ads are "flow-type" traffic — stop the campaign and traffic nearly stops. Article content, once ranked by search engines, becomes a "stock-type" asset that keeps attracting visitors over the long term.

With CPA modeling pointing to owned media, we built content around high-intent keywords like "Sendai beef tongue mail order," "otoro beef tongue gift," and "year-end gift beef tongue recommendations."

With ongoing improvements guided by Google Search Console, rankings rose steadily after the launch, and target keywords now hold single-digit positions.

Accelerating overall EC sales with YouTube advertising

Once overall EC sales were growing, we commissioned a YouTube creator to produce video ads and rapidly scaled customer acquisition.

Video content showing how to grill and plate beef tongue — content that triggers appetite — works well with YouTube advertising and naturally flows viewers from product interest to purchase. The video campaign also drove traffic to marketplace listings already live at the time.

By creating a dedicated purchase incentive on the owned site, we designed a flow that differentiates the dedicated site from the marketplace.

Building LTV and customer loyalty

For a restaurant entering EC, designing repeat purchase is directly tied to revenue stability.

It is generally accepted that the cost of reaching existing customers is 1/5 to 1/10 that of acquiring new ones. Customers who have already purchased once trust the product and convert back at higher rates. The key to LTV is in how you design the follow-up after that first purchase.

Step emails — carefully designing the post-purchase experience

Using Shopify's official Flow and Messaging apps, we automated a three-stage step email sequence triggered by the purchase date.

No paid apps required — keeping ongoing costs minimal while maintaining touchpoints with customers post-purchase.

• Stage 1: An email sent right after shipping with tips on how to thaw and grill otoro beef tongue
• Stage 2: A follow-up email timed for around when customers finish eating
• Stage 3: An email introducing other products like the offal hot pot set and beef tongue hamburger patty

Otoro beef tongue is a product many customers are buying for the first time. Without knowing how to thaw and grill it properly, the full flavor may not come through.

The first post-shipping email — delivering "how to thaw and grill it right" — is more than a follow-up; it is a design choice to protect the quality of the product experience.

Klaviyo repurchase flow — reaching customers before they drift

While the step emails above handle early follow-up triggered by product dispatch, the Klaviyo repurchase flow targets customers who have not returned after a set period.

Beef tongue has strong gift demand, and seasonal events like summer and year-end gifts influence purchase cycles. We define the "churn date" — the point at which a customer has moved past their next likely purchase window and is at risk of drifting to another brand — based on product category and purchase cycle, then configure automatic emails to go out at that moment.

An effective way to build LTV without ad spend.