Lillie’s Q
Bringing the best of Southern barbeque to online shoppers
What Sets Lillie's Q Apart?
With so many barbeque sauce brands on the market, what sets Lillie’s Q apart? The founder, Charlie McKenna, is a 2x World BBQ Champion and knows more than a thing or two about grilling a piece of meat, running a restaurant (or 3!), and creating a world-class brand.
Aside from racking up trophies and creating popular dining experiences, Lillie’s Q offers a line of delicious and all-natural sauces, rubs, chips, and barbeque online.
The Challenge
Creating a full plate e-commerce service
The in-person dining experience at the Chicago and Florida restaurant locations was top-notch. But Lillie’s Q needed to bring the same premier customer experience to their online e-commerce store.
Lillie’s Q has its roots in Southern barbeque, but the brand wasn’t highlighting that story on the website or giving customers a way to learn about, explore and shop Southern cuisine.
The website’s design and flow were also ready for a refresh to better reflect their unique, chef-crafted line of products. The goal was to raise the site’s look, feel, and content to the level that their amazing gourmet sauces, rubs, and chips deserved.
Lillie’s Q was ready to take it up a notch on their Shopify Plus site and offer customers the easiest, most delightful online shopping experience possible.
Enter Chelsea & Rachel Co.
The Solution
Showcasing the Southern BBQ tradition
and sharing the “Smotherly Love”
As a Southern boy raised in South Carolina, Chef Charlie’s mission is to center the Lillie’s Q brand around celebrating authentic Southern barbeque. To differentiate the brand and give customers a proper education, we created a series of pages dedicated to Southern barbeque. This virtual road trip highlights the flavors and ingredients of each of the five regions of the South.
Each page puts the region front and center with the meats, sauces, rubs, and cooking tips that make it unique. Curious about the Memphis barbeque? Readers can learn all about the right ingredients to prepare Memphis-style pork dishes.
We made learning and shopping a seamless experience – each ingredient links to the product page, so customers can quickly grab everything they need to get cooking for that region’s style. We also featured the top restaurants in each region for readers wanting to get a taste of the South in person.
Design
A white linen tablecloth approach for all
Traditionally, barbeque might be thought of as an old man’s sport – a bunch of old-timers killing time around the grill. But Lillie’s Q knows that that idea is a bit outdated. Everyone is getting in on the BBQ action these days – gals and guys, young and old, people from all walks of life. So the Lillie’s Q site needed a neutral tone to attract both female and male barbeque enthusiasts alike.
We took a cue from Chef Charlie’s background in fine dining on the design front. How many BBQ pitmasters can say they graduated from the Culinary Institute of America? To maintain the elegance and accessibility of the Lillie’s Q brand, we used a white linen tablecloth approach for the site’s look and feel.
Black and white, neutral colors, sleek lines, and dynamic animations create a user experience that inspires grillers of all levels to find the best sauces, rubs, and barbeque.
The new site not only looks elegant and inviting but the navigation and flow make shopping a breeze for loyal followers… as well as newcomers looking to discover something new.
Recipes
A custom strategy
What good is a jar of sauce if you don’t know how to use it? We wanted to maximize the educational spirit of Lillie’s Q in every part of the site. So we refreshed their entire catalog, and for each recipe, we developed a quick and easy click-to-product hyperlink. Readers can now find the best recipes to make and shop directly from the recipe, and stock up on the exact ingredients they need to get grilling.
We built out the new recipes section with Google, complete with optimized recipe cards with rich schema data – so that recipes are featured in “position zero” in search results, with beautiful images and user ratings for increased conversion. The recipes are also designed to be instantly shareable on social media.
Expanding the Lillie’s Q audience
To expand retail sales for the brand, we cloned the new site and reworked it for their growing wholesale audience. In addition, we will soon launch a new site for customers in their increasing Australian market.
The Subscription Strategy
We built out individual and bundle subscription products. LQ did not previously have a subscription program, so to meet the needs of the repeat avid LQ fan, we implemented a subscription on products to allow customers to always have LQ on repeat on their doorstep.
Our approach gave all products available of the brand to be available on subscription. The top LQ consumers expressed that they wanted more access to sampling and exploring, so we created subscription bundles to offer variety sets. The subscription portal also allows for swapping around subscription products to keep them fresh and try new items whenever they like.
