The French Gourmet

The challenge

The French Gourmet has been a San Diego culinary institution since 1979, with a French restaurant, bakery and catering business at 960 Turquoise St. When it first partnered with us in 2020, its website was outdated, not mobile-friendly and off-brand, online ordering was limited, and its email campaigns were not targeted.

By early 2025, the legacy e-commerce system was holding back online growth:

• No mobile responsiveness, even though 60% of users visited on mobile, load times over 5 seconds and a 45% bounce rate
• No support for schema markup or dynamic meta tags, and weak rankings for high-intent searches
• No real-time inventory, which led to overselling and complaints
• Catering inquiries only by phone, missing online leads for weddings and corporate events

Its email marketing also needed to reach a diverse audience, from individual diners to corporate clients, around key holidays.

What we did

Website redesign and e-commerce (2020)

We redesigned the site as a modern, responsive website that reflects the brand, added online ordering, optimized it for search and launched targeted email campaigns personalized to customers’ interests.

Migration to WooCommerce (2025)

Over eight weeks, we moved the store to WooCommerce:

• Weeks 1 to 2: we analyzed analytics, customer feedback and local competitors, and set goals for orders, bounce rate and rankings
• Weeks 3 to 4: we transferred 50+ products and customer records with no data loss, created custom fields for specialty cakes and tested checkout flows on staging
• Weeks 5 to 6: we rewrote product descriptions and alt text and published two blog posts on wedding cakes and San Diego catering trends
• Weeks 7 to 8: we launched, promoted the new site by email and on Instagram and LinkedIn, and submitted the sitemap to Google Search Console

The new store includes real-time inventory sync, a custom catering inquiry form with staff email notifications, clear Bakery, Catering and Restaurant categories, a sticky OpenTable reservation button, and a one-page checkout with guest purchase. It is mobile-first on WP Engine hosting with a 2.8-second load time. For SEO, we researched keywords such as French bakery San Diego in SEMrush, optimized meta titles and descriptions for all 20+ cake products, added LocalBusiness and Product schema, and refreshed the Google Business Profile with new photos while encouraging reviews.

Email marketing (2025)

We segmented the customer database by purchase history, preferences and engagement, then planned campaigns around Galette des Rois, Restaurant Week, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Midweek sends on Tuesdays and Thursdays performed best, so we scheduled around them. Every email linked to the WooCommerce store, and we used A/B tests on subject lines, multi-touch series and resends to non-openers. The last-minute Valentine’s Day email alone generated nearly $1,000 in revenue.