How Onward's Order Upgrade Returned $87K in Value for Maev

The Challenge

Protecting a Perishable Product Across an Unforgiving Supply Chain

Maev is a raw dog food brand founded by Katie Spies, who started the company after her own dog's health scare sent her looking for food made from real, human-grade ingredients she could trust. What began as a better bowl for one dog has grown into one of the fastest-growing names in the category, with whole-ingredient raw food, supplements, and treats formulated by PhD veterinary nutritionists and backed by more than 10,000 customer reviews. 

That product profile turns delivery into the brand's highest-risk operation. A box that sits on a porch in the afternoon sun, or waits in an unrefrigerated truck while a shipment is delayed, arrives thawed and unusable. A thawed delivery is a spoiled order, and a customer who now questions whether they can trust the brand with their dog's food.

Maev’s support claims bear this out. ~75% of claims come from damaged products, with packages stuck in transit a distant second at ~10%. For a perishable product moving through a delivery network that was never built around temperature or time guarantees, that pattern is predictable rather than exceptional. 

The Solution

Order Protection Built for High-Risk Shipments

Onward provided a fully configured order upgrade at checkout, set up around how Maev actually ships.

Order protection at checkout. Customers add Onward Checkout+ to their order at a 56% attach rate. Because more than half of orders opt in, the program funds itself across the order base rather than sitting as a cost on the brand.

Coverage that extends to subscriptions. Maev runs a recurring delivery model, and protection carries over to those subscription orders automatically. The highest-frequency shipments, the ones most exposed to repeated carrier risk, stay covered without extra setup.

Self-serve claims resolution. When a frozen order arrives thawed, damaged, or stalled in transit, the customer resolves it directly through Onward instead of opening a support ticket. Every one of Maev's 398 claims has been resolved, and the CX team doesn't have to be involved in routine shipping failures.

Delivering a Perishable Product at Scale

Why Frozen Shipping Carries Risk No Carrier Can Fully Remove

Shipping a heavy, frozen product is one of the harder problems in direct-to-consumer logistics. To keep delivery affordable, Maev works with a mix of carriers, including low-cost last-mile providers like LaserShip and Tusk Logistics alongside FedEx, a sensible way to move dense, frozen boxes at scale. The catch is that no DTC carrier network is built around the demands of frozen food, so a delay or rough handoff that stays invisible for most brands shows up as a thawed or damaged order. That is why damage drives the bulk of Maev's claims. It reflects the nature of the product.

Onward's order protection changes the equation. The replacement cost of a failed delivery moves to a program that customers fund at checkout, so Maev can run the shipping strategy that fits its product without absorbing the failures that come with moving frozen food at scale.

The Results

$87K in Value, Every Claim Resolved

The numbers reflect a program doing exactly what a perishable brand needs. Across more than 15,000 protected orders, Onward returned $87,000 in value to Maev and its customers, $66,600 of it in covered claims, the replacement cost Maev would otherwise have carried, plus $20,000 in additional credits.

The 56.32% attach rate, meaning the share of customers who added the order upgrade at checkout, reflects how the model performs when it is framed as customer value rather than a protection fee. The 2.5% claims rate stayed manageable even with a fragile, temperature-sensitive product moving through low-cost carriers, and every one of the 398 claims resolved.

Takeaways for DTC Brands

Maev's program offers a useful reference for any brand shipping a perishable, fragile, or temperature-sensitive product. Three things stand out.

Cheap shipping is only cheap if you cover the failures. Low-cost carriers can be the right call for a heavy or frozen product, but their weaker service levels guarantee a higher rate of damage and delay. Without a way to absorb that cost, the spoilage from a single bad batch can erase the savings the carrier was chosen for. Order protection lets the savings hold by carrying the failure rate that comes with them.

Perishable products change what resolution has to mean. For most brands, a slow claims process is an annoyance. For a frozen product, a slow resolution is a lost customer. A self-serve flow that resolves every claim without routing through the brand's support team is what keeps that customer from walking.

Customer-funded protection pays for itself. With more than half of orders adding the upgrade at checkout, the program funds itself across the order base rather than drawing from margin. Combined with no SaaS fees to activate, that turns post-purchase protection from a line-item cost into a margin safeguard.