Grannie Annie: A Bilingual B2B Shopify Store, Built in 4 Weeks

Client

Grannie Annie

MODEL

B2B-Only Shopify

Timeline

4 Weeks

Location

Montreal, QC

Executive Summary

Ecommerce Development Pros designed and built a bilingual (EN/FR), B2B-only custom Shopify store in four weeks, from first meeting to launch.

The build delivers a complete wholesale workflow — registration, manual approval, and online ordering — with passwordless login, customer accounts and order history, gated B2B pricing, and custom shipping logic based on province and case quantity.

Retail shoppers are guided to the brand’s Amazon store, keeping the on-site experience focused on story and wholesale. The finished site posts near-perfect Core Web Vitals and a 100 score for website accessibility.

4 Wks.

First Meeting to Launch

0.5s

First Contentful Paint

0.9s

Largest Contentful Paint

100

Accessibility Score

The finished Grannie Annie storefront — bilingual, B2B-ready: GrannieAnnie.ca

About Grannie Annie

Grannie Annie is a Montreal-based, father-and-daughter brand bringing authentic Caribbean pepper sauce — rooted in a family recipe from Antigua — to Canadian kitchens. The brand needed a store that could serve two very different audiences at once: everyday consumers, who buy through the brand’s Amazon store, and wholesale buyers, who needed a proper online ordering channel of their own.

The Challenge: Two Audiences, One Store

Most stores serve a single type of buyer. Grannie Annie had to serve two, with completely different needs. Consumers were already handled through Amazon. The gap was on the wholesale side: retail buyers had no way to order online, see wholesale pricing, or manage their own accounts — and the brand had no system to approve and manage those buyers.

The wholesale registration page — the entry point to the B2B ordering flow

What needed solving:

• A genuine B2B ordering system. Wholesale buyers needed to register, be approved, and order online — none of which existed yet.
• Gated pricing and catalog. Wholesale pricing and products had to stay hidden from the public and appear only after login.
• A manageable approval process. A non-technical team needed to review and approve applicants without developer help.
• Full bilingual delivery. Every part of the experience had to work in both English and French for the Canadian market.
• Shipping that reflects reality. Freight costs vary by province and by how many cases are ordered — flat rates would not do.
• A consumer path that stays simple. Retail shoppers needed a clean route to Amazon without cluttering the wholesale experience.
• A fast, hard launch window. The store had to go from first meeting to live in about four weeks.

Why Shopify

Shopify was the natural platform choice. Its native B2B and customer-account tools meant the wholesale workflow — registration, approval, gated pricing, accounts, and order history — could be built on solid, well-supported foundations rather than fragile custom code. Its bilingual capabilities suited the Canadian market, and its performance and accessibility ceiling made near-perfect Core Web Vitals achievable. Just as importantly, the day-to-day store would stay manageable for a small, non-technical team.

Our Approach: A Focused B2B Build

From the first scoping conversation, the direction was clear: build a lean B2B ordering system with a simple consumer front door. Every decision came back to two questions — is it effortless for a wholesale buyer, and is it manageable for the team running it? The work was structured around five workstreams delivered in parallel to hit the four-week window.

1. B2B Registration, Approval & Online Ordering

We built the full wholesale lifecycle on Shopify. Prospective buyers apply through a dedicated registration form. The Grannie Annie team reviews each application and approves or rejects it, with applicants automatically notified by email of the decision. Approved buyers can then log in and order online — with wholesale pricing and the full catalog unlocked only after authentication.

The admin approval view — applications reviewed and approved without touching code

2. Passwordless Login & Customer Accounts

Wholesale buyers sign in with their email and a one-time code — no passwords to create, forget, or reset. Once in, each buyer has an account with their profile and full order history, so reordering is fast and self-service. It removes friction for exactly the repeat-ordering behaviour a wholesale business depends on.

Passwordless login and the customer account area with profile and past orders

3. Gated Wholesale Pricing & Catalog

Wholesale pricing and products are invisible to the public. Only authenticated, approved B2B customers see wholesale prices and the full ordering catalog — protecting the brand’s pricing while keeping the public storefront focused on story and brand.

A wholesale product page with B2B pricing visible only after login

4. Custom Shipping Logic by Province & Case Quantity

Shipping pepper sauce by the case across Canada isn’t a flat-rate problem. We configured custom shipping logic that calculates rates based on the destination province and the number of cases ordered, so freight reflects how product actually moves — accurate for the buyer and sustainable for the brand.

Custom shipping rates configured by province and number of cases ordered

5. Bilingual Experience & Simple Consumer Path

The entire store — navigation, content, and products — was delivered in English and French for Canadian buyers on both sides of the language line. For consumers, the site keeps things simple: retail shoppers are guided to the brand’s Amazon store to buy, while an events section highlights where Grannie Annie is exhibiting next — turning the site into a live touchpoint for a brand that grows through in-person discovery.

The bilingual EN/FR experience and the upcoming events section

Results

Performance: Near-Perfect Core Web Vitals

Performance and accessibility were treated as first-class requirements from day one — and the finished store shows it. On Google’s Core Web Vitals, the framework for measuring real-world page experience, Grannie Annie posts results most stores never reach:

0.5s

First Contentful Paint

0.9s

Largest Contentful Paint

0

Cumulative Layout Shift

100

Accessibility

For context: Google considers an LCP at or under 2.5 seconds “good.” Grannie Annie loads its main content in 0.9 seconds — well inside the threshold — with zero layout shift, meaning nothing jumps around as the page loads. A 100 accessibility score means the store is usable by the widest possible range of visitors, which is both the right thing to do and a positive SEO signal.

Google PageSpeed results — FCP 0.5s, LCP 0.9s, CLS 0, accessibility 100

AI & Agentic Readiness

Buyers are increasingly using AI assistants to find and order products. Grannie Annie scores 3/3 on Google PageSpeed Insights’ new agentic browsing metric — a measure of how cleanly AI agents can read and navigate a site. As agentic commerce grows, a store that AI agents can traverse without friction is an advantage most brands don’t yet have.

Operational Impact

• Wholesale ordering is now fully online, replacing manual back-and-forth with a self-service system buyers can use any time.
• The team approves and manages buyers directly, reviewing applications and managing orders in Shopify’s admin without developer involvement.
• Repeat ordering is frictionless, thanks to passwordless login and saved order history.
• The store is bilingual by default, serving the full Canadian market without a separate site.

Before vs. After: At a Glance

Before: Manual & Fragmented	After: Grannie Annie on Shopify
No online wholesale ordering — manual, offline process	Full B2B ordering: register → approve → order online
No way to gate wholesale pricing from the public	Wholesale pricing & catalog visible only after login
Buyer approval handled ad hoc	Structured approval in Shopify admin with email notifications
No wholesale accounts or order history	Customer accounts with profiles and past-order reordering
Passwords add friction to repeat ordering	Passwordless email one-time-code login
Flat or manual shipping estimates	Custom shipping by province and case quantity
English-only reach	Fully bilingual EN/FR experience
No consumer path defined on-site	Retail shoppers cleanly routed to Amazon

How We Delivered in Four Weeks

A four-week timeline for a complete bilingual B2B build is aggressive. Delivering it required three things working together:

• Process. A structured build methodology covering B2B setup, accounts, gated pricing, shipping logic, translation, and QA — run in parallel rather than sequentially.
• Team. Dedicated Shopify specialists, not a generalist agency splitting attention across platforms.
• Tooling. AI-assisted development handled the repetitive build and QA work at a speed manual effort couldn’t match.

The four-week delivery wasn’t a compromise. The store that launched was fully built, tested, bilingual, and optimized — not a minimum viable product needing immediate follow-up.

Is This Relevant to Your Business?

The Grannie Annie project is a strong reference point for any of the following:

• Brands that sell to both consumers and wholesale buyers and need one store to serve both cleanly
• Manufacturers or distributors who need online B2B ordering with registration, approval, and gated pricing
• Canadian businesses that need a genuinely bilingual (EN/FR) store, not a bolt-on translation
• Any brand that needs custom shipping logic based on geography and order volume
• Founders who need a capable store launched fast — in weeks, not months — without cutting corners on speed or accessibility

If you’re selling to wholesale buyers without a real online ordering system — or juggling two audiences in a store built for one — it’s a conversation worth having. It’s the kind of Shopify web design and development work we do every day.