Brew Crew is an award-winning specialty coffee roaster based in the UK, known for high-quality single-origin roasts and a strong community identity. The brand came to Split Development with a complex development history and a clear need: a reliable, scalable e-commerce platform that could handle both their commercial operations and their social impact initiatives.
What followed was a multi-phase engagement: custom headless architecture to solve a specific content management limitation, followed by a deliberate return to Shopify once the platform had evolved to natively support what had required a custom build. Split Development continues to work with Brew Crew as a long-term development partner.
Why the original Shopify setup wasn’t enough
At the time the project began, Shopify had not yet introduced Metaobjects — the platform’s structured content API for creating custom entity types. Brew Crew needed the ability to create, manage, and display custom content entities across multiple pages and contexts from a single admin interface. Standard Shopify product and page structures couldn’t support this.
The requirement was essentially a headless CMS pattern: one place to manage a content type, many places to render it. Without Metaobjects, this couldn’t be done natively in Shopify.
The custom stack: ReactJS + Next.js + Node.js
To solve the content management problem, Split Development built a custom headless storefront: a React-based front-end connected to a Node.js backend, with Next.js handling routing and server-side rendering. The Shopify store remained as the commerce layer, but the front-end and content logic ran on the custom stack.
This gave Brew Crew what they needed — a single admin panel where content entities could be created and managed, with output flowing correctly to the right pages, subpages, and products across the site.
Why the decision was made
The return to Shopify was driven by a combination of factors: platform evolution and operational considerations. By the time the migration was evaluated, Shopify had introduced Metaobjects — meaning the core problem that required the custom stack could now be solved natively. Maintaining a custom headless architecture carries ongoing infrastructure and development costs; moving back to Shopify eliminated that overhead while retaining full functionality.
What was built on Shopify post-migration
The return wasn’t a step backwards — it was a rebuild with the benefit of everything learned during the custom phase. Custom functionality was reimplemented within Shopify’s improved architecture, and the site retained the content management capabilities that had originally required a separate stack.
Charitable Commerce Mechanics
Brew Crew has a strong social identity, and Split Development built the technical infrastructure to support their charitable initiatives. The specific mechanics — how donations are triggered, where funds are directed, and how the experience is presented to customers — were implemented as custom Shopify functionality integrated into the purchase flow.
These features reflect the broader engagement model: Split Development isn’t just a build partner for Brew Crew, but an ongoing collaborator helping test and refine approaches to growth, including the social commerce layer that differentiates the brand.
Long-Term Development Partnership
The Brew Crew engagement is ongoing. Split Development continues to work with the brand on testing growth hypotheses, iterating on functionality, and supporting the site’s technical evolution. This kind of long-term partnership is distinct from a project engagement — it requires deep familiarity with the codebase, the business model, and the brand’s direction.
Pages & Functionality Delivered
Custom ReactJS Storefront
E-commerce Migration
NextJS
NodeJS
shopify development
e-commerce
Food & Beverage
Specialty Coffee
Think about related concept or project?
Let`s create it together!
Here you can view our portfolio and see how we have helped our clients achieve their goals. Check out our projects of varying complexity, from creating landing pages to developing large-scale web applications.
