Discovery so far
What we've learned so far
This is an open discussion document. It combines desk research, Grade's own category and channel research, and the learnings from a productive initial conversation with the UCC marketing team. It's from here that the Grade team would develop a sensible set of inputs required prior to a workshop, so the team arrives better prepared to add maximum value.
E-commerce: category norms hold
Toby's Estate's online growth sits inside a subscription category. Subscribers order roughly three times more than one-off buyers (Recharge's 2026 platform report), and the standard playbook, taste-quiz or brew-method matching at signup, flexible cadence, roast-date transparency, is well established at brands like Trade Coffee and Blue Bottle. The marketing case for any specific organic channel is a different story. Our research on specific channels, Instagram, SEO, and email, found there's very little reliable, coffee-specific evidence available. Every case study that looked real, Caribou Coffee, Chameleon Cold-Brew, traced back to a vendor's own marketing about its own paying customer. Email and lifecycle marketing has the stronger logical case: replenishment timing keyed to a subscription's own consumption cycle is a sound mechanism. This points to a real opportunity to link BigCommerce and HubSpot together, creating personalised customer communications based on the life cycle and replenishment cycle, overlaid with tactical promotional support. Goal 1's growth logic is real. It can be strongly argued from category fundamentals.
Wholesale: we know the number, not yet the reason
Internally, we're working from a striking figure: 7 out of 10 wholesale accounts churn annually. Grade's own desk research into Toby's Estate's B2B sentiment, drawn from employee reviews, trade forums, and industry press, found no formal churn study or customer survey exists publicly. However, we have synthesised a number of scattered signals (not verified), and five plausible drivers came out of it, ranked by likelihood and broken down in Part 2 below: from post-acquisition strategic drift since UCC's 2022 acquisition, through account manager turnover and a general perception of quality inconsistency at scale, to one specific, named operational problem. A SEEK employee review describes a credit-approval bottleneck in Sydney holding up deliveries, a real and tangible pain point for a time-sensitive cafe.
Desk research alone isn't going to uncover actual churn rates, cohort data, or reason-for-leaving data, and no win-loss interviews or exit surveys appear to exist publicly either. So the 70% figure is real, but the reason codes behind it are not yet known. Closing that gap is what Part 2 and the wholesale relationship sketch below are for.
A first sketch of the wholesale relationship, not yet tested
Alongside the research above, and based on an initial conversation with UCC, the Grade team has summarised an initial hierarchy for how a wholesale cafe account relationship deepens: Aware, Onboarded, Like, Invested, Love, plus a set of hypotheses for why accounts leave at any stage along it. It's a first draft, based very much on the initial conversation with Dean and Ella, but one that aligns strongly with Grade's own experience. Full detail sits in Part 2 below.
Where this points
Three goals, one plan to work from
Toby's Estate is the hero brand in UCC's five-business-unit portfolio, present across Asia, including Singapore, the Middle East, New York and London. Three clear goals sit behind this work: take the e-commerce business from $2M to $4M, reduce churn across the $30M wholesale business, 1,200 cafe accounts strong, and accurately map the systems landscape underneath both.
Half a day, two parts
Growth and the wholesale relationship
Growth: acquisition and retention
Facilitated by Grade. UCC attendees TBC.
Toby's Estate's e-commerce business can grow from both ends, and this is the lever behind Goal 1. Subscriptions and loyalty give existing customers a reason to buy again; the right organic channel brings new customers in the door in the first place.
Our initial thinking
Growth here reads as an acquisition opportunity as much as a retention one. Our work would include analysis on the kinds of channels that would drive acquisition success, and site conversion, from an e-commerce perspective, is also a significant lever. On retention, the recent move into subscriptions is the right instinct, and our research indicates the subscription rate should probably be three or four times what it is today, since subscription is the primary category purchase construct. A loyalty layer, Yotpo is the option on the table, is a natural next step, and the Grade team has built and run loyalty platforms of exactly this kind before. The Grade team is well placed to help qualify the choice of platform, but also to help with programme design and implementation if required.
Our approach would be to run a short discovery phase covering a small set of pre-workshop requirements, then come together as a team to codify collective thinking and develop a twelve-month roadmap of activity. We're genuinely excited about this opportunity, and see a number of quick wins that could be implemented as part of it.
The wholesale relationship model
Facilitated by Grade. UCC attendees TBC.
UCC already has thinking on how a wholesale cafe account should move, from first contact through to genuine advocacy. This session turns that thinking into a shared framework the wider sales team can work from, and looks directly at why accounts leave, the open question behind Goal 2's number.
Our initial thinking
We've sketched an initial hierarchy, Aware, Onboarded, Like, Invested, Love, tracking how much is known about an account as the relationship deepens. Leaving can happen at any stage and for different reasons: a shaky start, a quiet switch to a competitor, or simply a cafe closing its doors, which isn't a loyalty problem at all. We know the scale of the problem already, 7 out of 10 accounts churning annually. We don't yet know the reason codes behind it: Grade's desk research and our discussion with Dean and Ella gets us past a blank page but stops short of anything verified.
We believe there's real value in testing this model together, in quantifying the reasons why accounts are leaving, and developing a test-and-learn approach that shifts these numbers over time. We'd see a number of pilots, such as gaining greater sales intelligence from the front line, and also empowering reps ahead of a pre-sales or account management visit. There are many opportunities here to put the current suite of tools to work and make a real difference on the churn factor.
Love: advocates, refers other cafes, resists competitors. The reference account.
Invested: branding adopted, staff trained, real switching cost starts to exist.
Like: regular and satisfied, but replaceable. "Safe, trusted" lands the account here.
Onboarded: signed, first orders placed, the relationship is still thin.
Aware: knows Toby's Estate as an option, sales team's first point of contact.
ucc-coffee-wholesale-loyalty-hierarchy.html. The Leave hypotheses and Test & Learn pilots from that working diagram are folded into the lists below, split by source.Why accounts leave: Dean's sketch (hypotheses, not yet confirmed)
- Undercut on price by a competitor
- A local roaster's stronger story and service
- Order errors, late delivery, stock-outs
- The rep the cafe knew moves on, relationship resets
- Ownership change brings a new supplier preference
- No proactive contact, the account goes quiet
- Terms stop working as the cafe grows or shrinks
- Cafe closure, not a loyalty failure at all
Why accounts leave: Grade's research (public desk research, not yet confirmed)
- Post-acquisition strategic drift, focus shifting to international retail and PR since UCC's 2022 acquisition
- Account manager turnover, compensation ratings declining, loyalty in wholesale coffee often sits with the person
- A named operational friction point: a Sydney credit-approval bottleneck holding up deliveries
- Trade perception of quality inconsistency at scale
- A broader unresponsive internal culture, possibly extending to wholesale accounts
The key purpose of the workshop is to bring the team together to test these working hypotheses against data gathered beforehand, and to codify the result into a programme of activity, as suggested above.
Possible pilots (initial thinking, not definitive)
These are initial thoughts on the type of pilot that might be developed to shape a more substantial wholesale loyalty strategy, not a finished plan. Like the systems project, this work would run alongside the workshop rather than inside it.
- Ordering-pattern analysis for early churn signals
- AI pre-visit briefing built from account history
- Exit-reason capture, the one pilot that actually tests the reason codes
- A small at-risk account cohort, hands-on push, measured
- 8Seats cafe messaging tool, sponsored for a small group
- Voice-memo capture of what reps learn on every visit
A separate, parallel workstream
Part 3Mapping the systems landscape
Led by Grade (Technical Director, Adam Robertson)
This is Goal 3, and it runs alongside the workshop rather than inside it. UCC's systems grew piecemeal, one added to solve one problem, then the next, not designed as a whole. Mapping what exists, how data flows between it, and why each piece is there turns that tangle into a platform strategy the whole business can plan against. It doesn't need a workshop slot, and it doesn't need to wait on an introduction to UCC's finance or IT leadership before it can start.
Our initial thinking
The landscape as we understand it today: two core ERP systems (ExoNet and JD Edwards) with a reporting layer (Power BI and another tool) sitting on top, plus a newly implemented HubSpot instance. The first useful output isn't a migration plan, it's a clear, visual map of what exists and how it connects. From there, we'd want to explore whether newer AI-driven connectivity means some of these systems can be linked more simply, rather than replaced outright.
Why Grade
We've built this exact shape of problem before
Three projects, in order of how closely they match UCC's situation.
Closest match, wholesale food service
Countrywide: InSeason
Same structure as UCC: a wholesale distributor, a large network of independent operators, a print-to-digital loyalty transition. UCC's wholesale problem is this problem, at an earlier stage.
Closest structural match, distributor to independents
Metcash: MyIGA
Metcash wholesales to independent IGA owners the same way UCC wholesales to independent cafes. Grade already understands this relationship shape.
Loyalty platform build, hospitality
Seagrass: Dining Rewards Club
"It's been amazing, to be honest. The team has not only been lovely to work with but very clear, experienced, and knowledgeable in the area."Maria Fernandez, Group Digital Marketing Manager, Seagrass Hospitality Group
Direct proof Grade can build and qualify a loyalty platform, relevant to the Yotpo decision inside Toby's Estate's own e-commerce business.
Who you'd be working with
Meet the Grade team
More on the full team at grade.net.au. The people most directly involved in this piece of work:
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Founder and CEO
Matt Bachle
Matt founded Grade and leads the studio, and would be closely involved across both the workshop and the wholesale relationship work.
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Commercial Director (Fractional)
Simon Morgan
Simon leads Grade's commercial strategy, and would be a lead contact for UCC throughout the engagement.
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General Manager
Justine Marino
Justine runs Grade's operations, and would help make sure the roadmap coming out of the workshop is realistic to deliver.
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Strategy Director
Abbey Batchelor
Abbey leads Grade's strategic and marketing thinking, and would bring that lens to shaping the workshop's outputs into a working plan.
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Senior Product Manager
Chris Coward
Chris manages product and project delivery at Grade, and would help keep the workshop and its outputs practical and on track.
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Technical Director
Adam Robertson
Adam leads Grade's technical and platform work, and would run the systems mapping project directly.
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Interaction Design Director
Dan Pacey
Dan leads design thinking at Grade, and would bring that perspective to the site conversion and loyalty programme work under Goal 1.
Activity Outcomes
Goals of the proposed activity:
- A written roadmap covering e-commerce growth
- A written roadmap covering the wholesale relationship model
- A first-pass systems map
These plans provide a baseline framework for future activity, whether conducted by Grade or not.