eFarmz — Re-platforming a food box business under COVID load

# eFarmz — Re-platforming a food box business under COVID load

#ecommerce#migration#architecture#php

Migrated a growing food e-commerce off PrestaShop onto a custom platform with real-time ERP sync and a fully customizable-product purchase path — just in time for unprecedented order peaks.

client: eFarmzrole: Frontend, UI/UX & custom e-shopwhen: 2020

eFarmz delivers organic food boxes and groceries. Their original PrestaShop store had stopped keeping up with the business — and then COVID hit, and order volumes went vertical.

The challenge

The legacy platform couldn't handle the growth: stock and orders needed to stay in sync with operations in real time, the storefront had to survive sudden, massive traffic surges without losing a single order — and customers had to be able to compose and customise their own boxes through a purchase path that stayed simple under all of it.

What we built

A complete re-platform at Cherry Pulp, delivered by a team of around ten engineers:

• Migration from PrestaShop to a custom-built e-commerce platform
• A custom e-shop with a complete purchase path built around customizable products — boxes customers compose themselves
• Real-time ERP integration so stock and orders synchronised continuously
• Infrastructure tuned to absorb traffic spikes during peak periods

My role

I built the interface, UI and UX hand-in-hand with the designer, and the custom e-shop end to end — the complete purchase path, including the customizable products — alongside technical direction and frontend architecture across the rebuild.

The interesting part

The customizable products — boxes customers compose themselves — were the hardest UI problem. A purchase path that lets someone freely assemble their own box has far more states and edge cases than a standard add-to-cart flow, and it had to feel simple under COVID-peak load while the ERP integration was syncing stock changes in real time. Keeping the interface coherent and order data accurate while both the UI and the backend were under simultaneous pressure was the central tension of the rebuild.

Outcome

The new platform carried eFarmz through the unprecedented order peaks of the COVID crisis with real-time ERP sync intact, and the work contributed to an E-commerce of the Year award plus public recognition at the BeCommerce and Feweb awards.