BOCA RATON, Fla. – Inside an unassuming building in Boca Raton, e-commerce company Hatchery is busier than ever. The locally-owned business that scours the country for the best hand-crafted spreads, sauces and jams is filling orders as fast as they come in.
“This is the biggest day of the year for us,” explained Hatchery Community Manager Jackie Segedin. “We worked all summer long really leading up to this moment because this is the day everyone shops."
Even before the designated online shopping holiday, the web-only artisanal marketplace saw a boost in sales.
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"Thursday and Black Friday have become kind of these go to holidays for e-commerce," said HatcheryEditorial Manager Brittney Winters. "People kind of knew to go us and we've seen jumps in numbers already just starting last week. This time last year was the biggest time for us ever and this time around we're already going so much above and beyond and it's not even December yet."
Business for online only Hatchery is expected to quadruple by the end of December, which could mean longer days ahead for the small team working behind the scenes.
"We're all hands on deck for the week. just wrapping orders, processing, writing thank you notes," Winters explained. "We're in our office where we basically do everything, from our product selection, to the execution of recipes, to actually shipping out all of our orders."
"We come in early and we stay until we get all of our orders," added Segedin. "Even if that means we have to go to FedEx or UPS after hours to really get those out there."
While holiday sales are up and the company is growing, there's still a little uncertainty at Hatchery over whether red velvet pancake mix be the top seller two Decembers in a row.
"It's a weird novelty thing," said Winters. "People just went crazy with it because you can do so much with a pancake mix which we didn't even know. We made whoopee pies, waffles, brownies everything. It was just a hit."