How Lola’s Cupcakes Cut Costs 50% and Scored 1M POS Sales with Shopify

Background

Lola’s Cupcakes began in 2006 when Victoria Jossel and Romy Lewis turned their love of baking into a small Bath shop. They opened additional locations and, in 2011, became one of the first bakeries to sell cupcakes online. Despite growing demand, their custom-built website and point-of-sale tools drained tens of thousands each month and slowed daily operations.

Challenges

Running separate systems for online sales and in-store checkouts created IT complexity. Loyalty rewards couldn’t sync between channels, reporting took hours of manual work, and the team struggled to manage spikes in traffic during Valentine’s Day and special events. They needed a unified solution to reduce costs, improve performance, and capture customer data in real time.

Solution

In 2019, Lola’s Cupcakes migrated both its online store and retail registers to Shopify and Shopify POS. The rollout was swift—one store went live within days, and the rest followed in weeks. By integratingsmile.iofor loyalty, every purchase, whether made online or in-store, automatically created or updated customer wallets. The shop’s marketing tools like Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor received real-time data feeds, turning every sale into a potential email subscriber.

To meet food-label regulations, they installed Apicbase from the Shopify App Store. It generates ingredient and calorie labels in seconds, so staff can print compliant stickers on demand. Central inventory management meant stock levels across 40 locations synced instantly, cutting forecasting errors and wasted resources.

Results

By consolidating hosting and development on Shopify, they reduced monthly operating costs by over 50%. In under a year, customers made more than one million purchases via Shopify POS. The Lola’s Love Club loyalty program added over 10,000 new members. With unified reporting dashboards, the team spends minutes analyzing sales instead of piecing spreadsheets together.

Future Outlook

Lola’s Cupcakes plans to launch subscription boxes for regular fans and expand internationally through franchises using Shopify Markets. They continue exploring Shopify’s ecosystem for features like multi-currency pricing and advanced analytics to support growth.