Reorder timing
Food and drink have the shortest buying clock in D2C. A 12-pack of a daily drink is gone in under two weeks. A bag of coffee lasts a household two to three. A generic 30-day reminder arrives after the customer has already bought something else.
We store a servings value for every product in the Klaviyo catalog and compute an expected run-out date from the quantity ordered. The first reminder goes a few days before that date, the second by SMS if the customer opted in. A customer who bought two boxes gets reminded at twice the interval.
Klaviyo's own industry figures show why flows matter more here than in most categories. For food and beverage, flows convert at a 2.46% placed order rate against 0.26% for campaigns. The reorder flow is usually the single largest of them. For the build, see our replenishment flow guide.
Subscriptions that keep
Subscriptions fail in food for one reason more than any other: the customer has too much. The pantry fills up, they cannot skip easily, and they cancel.
- Offer the subscription at the first reorder, not the first order. By then they know they like it.
- Send a pre-charge email with options: skip, swap a flavor, add an item or change frequency. A customer who can delay usually stays.
- Route cancellations by reason. "Too much" gets a lower frequency. "Bored of the flavor" gets a swap. "Too expensive" gets a larger pack at a lower cost per serving.
Flavor data and cross-sell
What someone ordered tells you what to show them next. A customer who reorders one flavor three times wants that flavor in stock and front of every email. A customer who bought a variety pack is still choosing, so their next email shows the top two flavors from their pack's reviews.
We write flavor and diet preferences to the Klaviyo profile from orders and quiz answers, and keep allergy-related products out of recommendation blocks for anyone who told you about an allergy.
Meta ads for food and drink
People buy food with their eyes and their trust. The concepts we test most:
- The first bite or sip, filmed with a real reaction, not a stock pour.
- Texture and ingredients, close up, with the short list of what is in it.
- The routine: morning coffee, the 3pm snack, the post-workout drink.
- A low-risk first order: a sampler or variety pack that leads into a full-size reorder.
We judge Meta on cost per new customer against how many of those customers reorder within 60 days, not on platform ROAS alone.
Shipping and seasonality
- Order-by dates in every holiday campaign, set from your carrier's published cutoffs.
- Heat-sensitive products held out of campaigns to hot regions in warm weeks, or shipped with a note on packaging.
- Gift boxes built for the holidays, with gift orders tagged so the recipient gets a first-taste flow instead of a reorder reminder.
What we measure
Second-order rate by product and pack size, days to second order, subscription share of revenue and churn by month, email and SMS share of revenue, and Meta cost per new customer against 60-day value. Agencies with food and beverage clients can have us deliver this under their brand: see white-label for agencies. For other categories, see all industries.