Case Study: Universal Yums achieves seven-figure subscription growth with WooCommerce

How a Subscription-based Snack Business became an Overnight Success

Universal Yums, launched in 2014 by Monique Bernstein and Eli Zauner, is a subscription snack service that sends a themed box of hand-picked, taste-tested snacks from a different country each month. Starting with a $2,000 investment and limited resources, the founders faced the dual challenges of building a robust recurring-billing ecommerce platform, standing out in a crowded subscription market, and preparing to scale — including surviving sudden traffic surges from viral Reddit posts.

They solved this by rigorously curating and testing products, adding informative country booklets for a distinctive customer experience, and building a customizable WooCommerce-powered site with subscriptions while handling much of the development themselves. With WP Engine hosting, smart DIY trade-offs, and gradual hiring and relocation to a warehouse, Universal Yums scaled rapidly — hitting seven-figure revenue, surviving site-crushing demand, and carving a unique niche through attention to small but meaningful details.

Universal Yums