Boneappetitedk — eCommerce Webshop for Dog-Food Subscription

How it started

When I first got this project I honestly didn't know much about nutrition domain and neither had idea of developing a custom ecommerce. Unlike normal ecommerce where you have a product and a price tag attached to it or a subscription model for a simple pre-defined product, this was different and more custom. The client was a Copenhagen-based dog-food company that needed a webshop. They wanted a subscription model where customers could get recurring deliveries of custom portion of dog food based on their dog's specific dietary needs.

I had posted a blog about what approach i take to build this project, the platform choices, the stack i used to build it, in Building a Subscription Ecommerce Webshop from Scratch

The calorie calculator

The heart of the webshop is a short guided wizard that turns a few information about a dog into a tailored meal plan. Owners enter their dog's breed and age, pick its current body condition, and set an activity level. The app calculates daily calorie needs for that dog, then recommends recipes and portion sizes to match for the dog needs.

Subscriptions and billing

This was the part I had to learn the most for. I'd built webshops before with WooCommerce and Shopify where it's basically just products and a checkout — subscriptions are a completely different thing. I spent a good amount of time reading through Chargebee's subscription management docs and Stripe's own documentation to properly understand the model.

Once I had a solid understanding, Stripe's subscription API turned out to be really easy. It handles the recurring billing cycles, plan changes, failed payments, and invoicing in a way that integrated cleanly with the .NET Core backend.

A final note

This project pushed me into areas I hadn't worked in before: subscription billing, domain-specific calculators, and building a full custom eCommerce solution without leaning on an existing platform. It was one of the challenging projects I've done but also one of the most satisfying to ship.

Project Demo

And that's a wrap for this one. Hope you enjoyed the read 💖