Case Study: Death Wish Coffee achieves Super Bowl-scale reliability and $250K in two hours with Shopify Plus (Shopify)

Why Death Wish Coffee integrated its ERP system with Shopify Plus to scale for the Super Bowl

Death Wish Coffee, founded in 2010 and known for selling the “strongest coffee in the world,” faced a critical scalability challenge when its custom website collapsed under publicity-driven demand: a Good Morning America spike left 10,000 orders unfulfilled, customers outraged, and the company briefly unable to sell on major platforms. With a free Super Bowl commercial on the line, the team knew they had to prevent a repeat and prepare for massive traffic surges.

They replatformed to Shopify Plus and integrated their ERP to consolidate inventory across multiple warehouses and channels, enabling real-time reporting and automated fulfillment. The site handled 150,000 simultaneous Super Bowl viewers, generating about $250,000 in two hours and supporting 200% year-over-year growth, a new subscription business and wholesale relationships—while giving the team the data and scalability to focus on superior customer service.

Death Wish Coffee

Mike Brown

Founder