Walk into almost any restaurant kitchen and you'll find McCormick products in sizes you won't see on a grocery shelf: gallon jugs of Frank's RedHot, five-pound containers of Lawry's Seasoned Salt, and bulk bottles of Cholula. These foodservice products, the bulk sizes McCormick makes for restaurants, cafeterias, and professional kitchens, live under McCormick for Chefs, the company's branded foodservice line.
On September 1st, we launched McCormick for Chefs on Shopify as the newest brand in the multi-brand ecosystem we built for McCormick. The site serves a different buyer than McCormick's consumer brands, so alongside the migration, we built custom purchase logic that gives professional buyers a clear path to order and helps everyone else find the right place to buy.
McCormick for Chefs was a custom site previously run on Sitecore, a content management system separate from the rest of McCormick's sites. The original plan was a straight lift-and-shift, meaning a migration that moves the existing site over as-is. Because McCormick's Shopify ecosystem already had a repeatable setup for adding new brands, we treated McCormick for Chefs as one more brand in the family.
That setup starts with brand intake: colors, fonts, and other identity elements. From there, we create a new brand within the existing infrastructure. For McCormick for Chefs, that meant launching with the same module library, navigation patterns, and backend as McCormick's consumer brands, styled to fit the foodservice brand.
Most of McCormick's foodservice portfolio sits under McCormick for Chefs, including McCormick Culinary, Cattlemen's, Cholula, Frank's RedHot, French's, Lawry's, Old Bay, Thai Kitchen, and Zatarain's. We set each brand up as a collection within the site, so buyers can browse a single brand's lineup or explore the full catalog, and McCormick's team can manage every brand's foodservice products in one place.
With this many brands and package sizes, the catalog took more planning than a typical brand launch. We worked through the full product list with McCormick's team to make sure every item was accounted for and the navigation stayed clear for a busy chef looking for one specific product.
Foodservice buyers shop in different ways. Some want to order directly, and many already buy through distributors. Products on McCormick for Chefs offer both paths: add-to-cart directly or find an online distributor.
Direct add-to-cart ordering on McCormick for Chefs is gated for a wholesale audience. We built custom logic on Shopify that asks buyers to complete a sign-up form before they can add foodservice products to their cart, and McCormick's team reviews and approves each request manually.
The gate is necessary to get each shopper to the right product. A home cook looking for everything bagel seasoning should land on the consumer-sized jar rather than a 21-ounce foodservice container. The gate keeps bulk sizes in front of the professionals they're made for, and directs consumer shoppers back to the McCormick brands available across the rest of the site.
The sign-up form connects to HubSpot, giving McCormick's team a record of every professional buyer who requests access and a source of leads for outreach to chefs and operators. The site's mailing list sign-up also connects to HubSpot.
For buyers who purchase through distributors, we built a custom distributor finder on each product. Buyers select a package size and their state, and the site returns the online distributors and retailers that carry that product in that size.
We first looked at third-party store locator apps, but most are designed around in-store retail, and McCormick for Chefs needed to point buyers to online distributors. A custom build gave us the flexibility to match how McCormick's distributors sell.
Moving McCormick for Chefs to Shopify also meant moving its content. We migrated 60+ pages from Sitecore and helped build out the content for each one, with McCormick's team making final edits before launch.
Many CPG brands sell to two very different audiences: consumers buying one jar at a time and professional buyers ordering in bulk. Running those audiences on separate platforms usually means separate systems to maintain and separate content to keep in sync. McCormick for Chefs shows another approach: bring the foodservice line into the same Shopify ecosystem as the consumer brands, then add custom logic where the professional buyer's path to purchase differs.
For McCormick's team, that means one platform and one design system for every brand, consumer and foodservice alike.
Selling to both consumers and professional buyers? Get in touch to talk through how Shopify can support every channel your brand sells through, or explore more of our work with McCormick.
Considering a move to Shopify? Download our Shopify Migration Playbook for CPG Brands for a practical look at how brands plan, scope, and launch a migration, from mapping data and integrations to choosing the right tech stack.
