IV.
Case Study
Anointed is a husband-and-wife kitchen. Chef Ti brings more than a decade of professional-kitchen experience to every jar. His wife, nutritionist Andrea Dinh, guides what goes in it — organic avocado oil instead of seed oils, whole warming spices, ingredients that earn their place.
The brand had already built a following the hard way — pouring at OC wellness fairs, selling through local kiosks, one conversation at a time. What they needed next was a way for that story to travel further than the folding tables it started on.
The obvious answer was Shopify. Fast to spin up, familiar to buyers, and quietly expensive forever — a monthly platform fee, transaction fees, app fees, and a design system that makes every store look like every other store.
We proposed the opposite: a custom-designed storefront that talks to Stripe directly. No platform middle-layer, no monthly rent, no template ceiling on how the products could feel on the page. Every dollar we saved them on subscription math went back into the build — better photography, better product pages, better story.
The homepage opens on the jars as objects — one heat level per row, each with its own personality. Genesis (Vietnamese, medium). Gracias Señor (Mexican, hot). Full Blessing (Thai, extra hot). Teriyaki for no heat. The Trinity as the variety pack.
Beyond the product grid: a full What's in Anointed ingredient story, a How we enjoy it chef's guide, and an About page that gives Ti and Andrea room to be themselves — not a template's version of "founder story." The cart runs on Stripe, checkout runs on Stripe, orders drop into their kitchen without a platform middleman taking a slice.
Most agencies deliver a store and disappear. We stayed at the table for photography, product decisions, and the day-to-day judgment calls of getting a real small business online. That's what a custom studio can do that a template can't.
No Shopify subscription, no Wix commerce tier, no app-store tax. Buyers check out with cards, wallets, or Apple/Google Pay — all direct to Ti and Andrea's Stripe account.
We shot the jars, the ingredient flatlays, and the trinity lineup ourselves. Every image on the site is theirs to own, at print resolution, forever.
Pricing, packaging copy, shipping rules, local-pickup logic — we worked through the merchant decisions alongside them, not just the code.
Each product gets ingredient callouts, chef's notes, and pairing ideas — closer to a food magazine than a "buy now" tile. The kind of depth Shopify makes hard.
The full storefront, the checkout, the whole story of small-batch chili oil made by people who mean it. Have a look.