One Commerce Platform for Spirits, Tickets, Memberships and Gift Cards at an Award-Winning Canadian Distillery

• Six ways to sell in one cart and one checkout: bottles, event tickets, memberships, loyalty points, gift cards, and wholesale
• Annual whisky membership billed automatically as a subscription, with member pricing at checkout
• Loyalty points and gift cards built into the same store and checkout
• Built-in ticketing for tours, tastings, classes, and workshops, with seated and general-admission events
• QR code ticket check-in at the door
• Wholesale pricing and provincial tax rules handled by the same platform
• Bottle-level serial numbers that unlock a digital certificate for each whisky bottle
• More than 25 WooCommerce plugins replaced by one MedusaJS platform, with historical customers and orders migrated, plus visual editing with drag-and-drop page sections
• Ongoing improvements driven by real user data and reviewed by senior engineers

306 Technologies designed and built a custom commerce platform for Black Fox on MedusaJS, with a Next.js storefront and Sanity CMS for content. Instead of bolting plugins onto a store, all six ways Black Fox sells are built into the commerce engine itself: products, event tickets, subscriptions, loyalty points, gift cards, and wholesale pricing, along with bottle serials.

Because they share one engine, they also share one customer account, one cart, one checkout, one order history, and one admin. A customer can buy a bottle of whisky, a ticket to a tasting, and an annual membership in a single order, and staff see all of it in one place.

Sanity sits on top for content. Products and events created in Medusa appear automatically in Sanity, so the team can build pages around live inventory without copying data between systems. The result is one platform for everything Black Fox sells, managed by the Black Fox team, and maintained by 306 Technologies.

Most online stores are built to sell one kind of thing. Black Fox sells physical products, dated events, recurring memberships, stored value, and trade orders, and each of those works differently. Tickets have dates and capacity, memberships bill on a schedule, gift cards hold a balance, and wholesale customers see different prices.

On WooCommerce, covering all of that means stacking plugins that were never designed to work together. On Medusa, we built each one into the commerce engine, so they all share the same products, customers, cart, payments, and reporting.

For customers, that means one account and one checkout, whether they are buying a bottle of gin, booking a tasting, joining the whisky membership, or all three at once. For staff, it means one admin, one order history, and one view of every customer. It is how customers actually shop: 1 in 3 orders now combines bottles with an event ticket.

Tours, tastings, classes, and workshops are now sold through the same storefront and checkout as bottles of gin. We built a custom ticketing system on Medusa that supports both seated events with per-seat selection and general-admission experiences with a set guest capacity.

Inventory is handled natively, so events cannot be overbooked. Bookings close automatically shortly before an event starts, and recurring experiences extend their own dates on a schedule. Staff manage everything from a Ticketing section in the admin, including rescheduling and partial refunds.

At the door, staff scan a QR code from the customer's ticket to verify and check them in.

Black Fox's annual whisky membership runs as a true subscription on the same platform as everything else. Customers sign up online, the membership bills automatically each year, and members receive pricing on whisky automatically at checkout.

Loyalty points and gift cards are built into the same store. Customers earn points on their orders and redeem them at checkout, and gift cards are sold and redeemed through the same cart as bottles, tickets, and memberships.

The same platform handles the less visible parts of selling alcohol in Canada. Wholesale customers get their own pricing, and provincial tax rules and guidelines are applied by the platform, so the team does not have to manage them by hand.

We also built a bottle certificate system. Each whisky bottle carries a unique serial number. Customers enter that number on the website and receive a digital certificate for their specific bottle, with details on how their whisky was made.

It turns a bottle of whisky into a story the customer can keep, and gives Black Fox a direct connection to customers who bought through retail partners.

All of this is managed by a team without developers. With a visual editor built on Sanity, the Black Fox team sees a live preview of the site, clicks on what they want to change, and edits it in place. Pages are built from reusable sections that pull live products, events, and cocktail recipes straight from the store.

Launching a new landing page, promoting an upcoming tasting, or featuring a new whisky release takes minutes, not a support ticket.