Caluda's King Cake

For more than 35 years, Caluda's has been one of New Orleans' most beloved king cake bakeries — a father-and-son operation baking out of a 10,000-square-foot bakery in Harahan and shipping nationwide. Chef John Caluda, a Culinary Institute of America graduate and former Royal Orleans pastry chef, started selling king cakes in 1990; today he and his son Josh ship their traditional and specialty cakes to customers across the country.

But king cake is a fiercely seasonal business. The vast majority of demand arrives in a compressed window between Twelfth Night and Mardi Gras — most of it on mobile, much of it from out-of-state customers who grew up on Caluda's and now want it delivered to their door. Every extra second of load time and every point of checkout friction costs orders precisely when traffic and revenue peak.

That's exactly where their old store fell short. Caluda's was running on Magento, and it couldn't take the pressure — heavy, slow to load, and unreliable, it kept going down in high season when traffic spiked and every hour offline meant lost orders. They needed a brand-new store that could carry the load: modern, fast, easy to buy from, and dependable when it mattered most — built and launched quickly, before the season arrived.