Today, Brodo processes 10,000 orders a month, ships nationally and runs on a subscription model that practically manages itself. A decade ago, it was one chef, one window and single cups of broth for whoever happened to walk by.

In 2014, James Beard award-winning chef Marco Canora started selling hot cups of bone broth out of the back door of Hearth, his restaurant in New York’s East Village. He'd recently swapped his own heavy coffee habit for broth after years of working as a chef caught up with his health. The results were good enough that he figured other people might want to try it. It was then that Brodo was born.

Marco was right. Within a few short years, Brodo had expanded to five shops across Manhattan, building on the idea that a broth bar could work like a Starbucks. It almost did — except for two months every summer when nobody wanted hot broth, plus a pandemic that made brick-and-mortar extraordinarily difficult. So, the company did something that looked, from the outside, like a retreat: They closed four locations and kept just the original East Village window.

In actuality, Brodo was laying the groundwork to build a nationwide business.

The subscription pivot

Brodo rebuilt around a direct-to-consumer subscription model, shipping broth nationally through Brodo.com. The website now processes around 10,000 orders per month, and subscriptions are the core of the business.

"Having Brodo.com and being able to ship broth nationally, the market just opens up dramatically," says Marco.

He also notes that keeping his original physical window still serves the business well.

"Having that face-to-face interaction is incredibly valuable for an online business. I just wouldn't recommend having five of them."

There’s a lesson there for any brand thinking about recurring revenue. The subscription ecommerce market hit an estimated $206 billion in 2026 and is growing at more than 14% annually. Subscription businesses in the S&P 500 grew revenue 11% faster than the index itself over the past two years, with a 25% increase in unique subscribers. The opportunity is large. But the operational challenge of running a subscription brand successfully is where most stall out.

What actually makes subscriptions work for Brodo

Subscription models are straightforward in theory: a customer signs up, product ships on a schedule and recurring revenue rolls in. In practice, the gap between a subscription program and a subscription program that retains customers is almost entirely about flexibility and control for both the brand and the customer.

Brodo's WooCommerce site gives customers the ability to choose between delivery every two or four weeks, with discounts for more frequent subscriptions. Customers can also easily log in and pause delivery, skip a shipment, select specific shipping dates, or swap out the flavors in their box. That self-service layer is powered by WooCommerce Subscriptions, which moved what had previously been a manual, bespoke process into a system the team manages from a single dashboard.

That flexibility isn't a nice-to-have. It's what keeps subscribers from canceling outright when life gets in the way. A customer who can skip a delivery instead of canceling stays in the system, and the data shows the difference is significant. Cross-platform DTC benchmarks show annual billing reduces monthly churn by 60–80%, drawing from Recharge, ChartMogul and ProfitWell data. Giving customers control over their cadence reinforces the same dynamic.

The infrastructure behind 10,000 orders a month

Behind Brodo's storefront is a stack built on WooCommerce. The site was redesigned with a mobile-first approach, using Gutenberg blocks for the entire build. ShipStation handles fulfillment logistics, Metorik provides reporting and WooCommerce Subscriptions manages the full subscription lifecycle, including billing, renewals and self-service account management. And the company can manage all these systems without needing a separate platform.

When subscription management, order processing and reporting all run from the same centralized platform, the operational overhead stays manageable even as order volume scales. That matters for a team Brodo's size. It also took a load off customer support. Before WooCommerce Subscriptions, every pause, skip, or flavor swap was a manual request their support team managed. Now subscribers handle it themselves.

From five shops to a national subscription brand

Brodo’s story is a case study in knowing where your infrastructure needs flexibility. Five shops meant five leases, seasonal vulnerability and limited geographic reach. One window plus a subscription-powered online store means national distribution, predictable recurring revenue and a direct line to customer behavior data that informs every product decision.

Read the full Brodo story, including a conversation with Marco and CEO Andrew Garner about how the company has evolved over the past decade.