How ButcherBox built the best loyalty program of the year

Since launching in 2015, ButcherBox has grown into a powerhouse of DTC ecommerce, earning over $550 million in annual revenue and serving more than 415,000 active subscribers. But while the business scaled, the loyalty infrastructure didn’t. Their in-house system struggled to keep pace: rigid, disconnected, and unable to reflect the diversity of customer behaviors within a fast-growing subscription base.

The turning point came when the team took a hard look at their 300,000+ loyalty members and asked a simple question: Why are we treating them all the same? That led to a full redesign: four years of segmentation work, customer research, and behavioral mapping, all aimed at building a loyalty program that could do more than reward transactions. It had to reflect who their customers are and what they actually value.

By late 2024, ButcherBox made the switch to Voucherify to operationalize that strategy. They needed a system that could adapt, personalize, and experiment with incentives, without adding complexity.

It paid off fast. Within months of relaunching Sizzle Society, ButcherBox took home Best Loyalty Program of the Year at the 2025 Modern Retail Awards.

• Supporting 400k+ members while keeping the loyalty system fast and reliable.
• Moving from transactional rewards to values-based loyalty.
• Enabling gamification and highly tailored rewards, driven by both transactional and behavioral triggers.
• Running loyalty as an experiment loop, not a fixed campaign.

ButcherBox’s loyalty overhaul

ButcherBox’s original loyalty program had a relevance problem. With over 400,000 members, it offered the same 2% cashback and standard perks to everyone. It worked, but didn’t reflect the brand’s focus on sustainability, sourcing transparency, or meaningful customer relationships.

The team realized they were rewarding transactions, not building loyalty. So they rethought the program from the ground up. The goal: design loyalty around who customers are, not just what they spend.

That led to Sizzle Society, a program driven by values and behavior. ButcherBox began by segmenting its subscriber base into behavioral cohorts. The challenge was translating those insights into clear, motivating benefits without overcomplicating the experience. Even entry-level members needed meaningful rewards, but without clutter or confusion.

The new structure introduced three tiers, Sous Chef, Head Chef, Executive Chef, based on order frequency, not spend. This rewarded consistency and encouraged repeat purchases without inflating discounts.

Tier benefits include:

• Sous Chef: credits, curated deals, virtual cooking classes.
• Executive Chef: protein swaps, anniversary gifts, priority support, Q&As with the CEO and farmers.

The perks align with what different customers value: some want access, others care about sourcing or convenience.

In March 2025, ButcherBox relaunched the program with Voucherify. Members earn two points per dollar spent. At 1,000 points ($10), Voucherify automatically issues a reward, discount or gift card, leaving redemption timing to the customer.

Voucherify handles all logic behind the scenes: issuing and expiring points, tracking tier progress, enforcing rules. One key feature is auto-redemption, no requests needed, just instant reward delivery.

ButcherBox is also expanding beyond purchases. With Voucherify’s custom events API, customers will soon earn points for actions like SMS opt-ins, billing updates, and class participation, tracked in real time, without changing the core infrastructure.

The migration challenge

ButcherBox’s loyalty program wasn’t small. With more than 400,000 active members and hundreds of thousands of orders processed monthly, migrating this system required not just technical precision but also close coordination between both teams. Beyond the system complexity, the business needed to ensure a smooth, bump-free transition for customers as any downtime or missteps could risk hard-earned customer trust.

The migration strategy kicked off in December 2024 with a clear, phased roadmap. Voucherify played a key role from the outset, guiding ButcherBox through foundational steps such as internal team training, mapping loyalty-related events, and replicating program logic in a sandbox environment. Throughout this phase, Voucherify provided tech consultations and hands-on assistance to ensure the program’s earning rules, tier progression, and redemption mechanics were accurately modelled and ready for testing.

One of the most critical phases of the migration was handling historical data. ButcherBox needed to transfer more than a million records spanning several years of customer transactions. Voucherify provided structured guidance on the data import process, recommending a two-step approach to minimize risk and maintain data integrity.

First, ButcherBox imported historical order data using Voucherify’s secure, authenticated APIs, ensuring encrypted data transfer and consistent order history before any points were migrated. Once validated, the teams coordinated the migration of loyalty points and tier statuses using Voucherify’s CSV import tools, with data sent through secure channels. Voucherify supplied pre-validated templates, enforced strict format checks, and reviewed all files to prevent errors and ensure a safe, accurate migration.

Throughout the migration, Voucherify remained deeply involved, reviewing campaign configurations, assisting with edge cases, and ensuring every technical detail was covered. Voucherify’s support extended into the testing phase, where ButcherBox ran comprehensive user acceptance testing across all environments, including frontend, backend, and operational workflows.

Once the program passed all validation checkpoints, ButcherBox finalized the migration and launched the new loyalty system in March 2025, completing the transition in just under four months, with zero customer disruption.