In early 2014, a long time friend and client, Nikki Friedman, came up with an idea for a subscription service that would send the world’s best bacon through your postbox. Bacon of the Month Club became an irreverent brand borne from chef Neil Jewell’s love of charcuterie and Wonderland Collective’s love of brands.
By late 2014, Nikki, along with her aunt Susan, opened the Pop-up Bacon Bar next door to Le Quartier Francais in Franschhoek with over 500 origami pigs adorning one window with flying pigs hanging from the roof and bacon brownies on the menu.
In 2016, Bacon of the Month Club expanded into the UK market with a new website, dog-proof packaging that could fit through a postbox and a money-saving, next-day delivery option through the Royal Mail.
Bacon was sourced locally from world-class butchers, packaged on site and sent directly to consumers without the need for middlemen. I was directly responsible for the online acquisition model behind the business, creating Google ads that featured when people searched for artisanal bacon as well as on foodie websites where prospective customers would be lurking.
At its peak in 2017, Bacon of the Month Club had over 6000 happy customers. It faced some hefty challenges:
The pricing of the bacon was prohibitively expensive.
Subscriptions were bought with a heavy seasonal slant - only on Father’s Day, Christmas, or for birthdays. Repeat subscriptions were rare probably because of (1).
Unfortunately, Bacon of the Month Club couldn’t scale the number of customers to reduce the price of the bacon and closed its doors in 2017.
