Fire Department Coffee Boosts Ecommerce Speed by 85% with Nostra AI

About

Fire Department Coffee, founded in 2016 by Navy veteran and firefighter Luke Schneider, began with a mission to provide better coffee to firefighters and first responders. What started as a small operation roasting coffee for local fire stations has grown into a nationwide success, now present in nearly 10,000 retail locations including major retailers like Walmart US and Canada, Albertsons, and Kroger. The company's commitment to quality extends beyond their products – they maintain a strong focus on giving back to the community, with proceeds supporting burn camps and other initiatives.

The Challenge

Fire Department Coffee faced a unique challenge in the e-commerce space: effectively selling a product that relies heavily on sensory experience through a digital medium. As a coffee company, they needed to compensate for customers' inability to smell or taste their products by providing rich, visual experiences on their website. This visual-heavy approach, while necessary for sales, created significant technical challenges with website performance and load times.

The company's reliance on high-quality product imagery and visual storytelling meant their website was becoming increasingly image-heavy, leading to slower page loads and potentially impacting their customer experience. This was particularly concerning during peak sales periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when website performance is crucial for capturing sales.

The Solution

Fire Department Coffee partnered with Nostra AI to implement a comprehensive optimization solution that would address their specific needs without compromising their visual-first approach to selling coffee online. The implementation process was seamless, with dedicated support from Nostra AI's customer success team providing ongoing guidance and optimization strategies.

The solution focused on advanced image optimization while maintaining visual quality, sophisticated caching strategies to enhance overall site performance, and intelligent bot handling to improve SEO performance. Regular performance monitoring and optimization recommendations from the Nostra team helped Fire Department Coffee maintain peak performance even as they continued to add new products and visual content to their site.

The Results

The partnership between Fire Department Coffee and Nostra AI has delivered impressive results across key performance metrics:

• Reduced Time To First Byte (TTFB) by 85%, significantly improving initial page load experience
• Decreased overall website page load times by 20%, enhancing user experience
• Achieved a remarkable 97% improvement in website conversion rate

Marie Stravinskas, Community Manager at Fire Department Coffee, noted the dramatic improvement: "It is night and day... With Nostra just having all of these images, it's been fantastic to just severely reduce that load time." The company's Chief Creative Officer, Brad Flaherty, added, "We want to make sure that our customers are having the best experience and searching through our website, and if it's taking two seconds to load that's too long... From what I understand, Nostra really helped do that."

The partnership has proven particularly valuable during peak sales periods, with the Nostra AI team providing proactive support and optimization recommendations. The implementation has allowed Fire Department Coffee to maintain their visually rich website while ensuring fast, efficient performance for their customers, supporting their continued expansion across both e-commerce and retail channels.