GTFO It's Vegan went from 2-day delivery minimums and rising shipping costs to nationwide overnight delivery, a 45% reduction in shipping expenses, and 50% growth in shipping volume — all within the first year of partnering with ShipFare. Here's how.
Last updated: April 2026
Who Is GTFO It's Vegan?
GTFO It's Vegan is a DTC marketplace for vegan food products — think of it as the curated destination for plant-based brands that want to reach consumers directly. They stock products from hundreds of vegan brand partners, many of which are perishable: frozen meals, dairy alternatives, fresh prepared foods, and temperature-sensitive snacks.
The business model creates a unique shipping challenge. Unlike a single-SKU DTC brand where every box is roughly the same, GTFO fulfills orders with wildly different temperature requirements, package sizes, and weight profiles — sometimes in the same order. A customer might buy a frozen vegan pizza alongside shelf-stable protein bars and a refrigerated cashew cheese. Each product has different packaging needs, and getting the shipping wrong on any one of them means a spoiled product and a refund.
The Shipping Challenge
GTFO came to ShipFare facing five specific problems that were constraining their growth:
Inaccurate Checkout Rates
Their checkout showed estimated shipping costs that frequently didn't match the actual carrier charges. Customers would see one price at checkout and GTFO would absorb the difference when the real rate came in higher. On a marketplace with thin margins, even a $2–$3 discrepancy per order adds up fast across thousands of shipments.
Limited Geographic Reach
GTFO could reliably ship perishable products to customers within a 2-day ground radius of their fulfillment center. Beyond that, spoilage rates climbed and they were effectively locked out of large customer markets on the opposite coast. Overnight shipping existed as an option, but the cost was prohibitive at their existing carrier rates.
Rising Shipping Costs
Perishable shipping is already expensive — insulated packaging, gel packs or dry ice, express service levels — and GTFO's costs were climbing year over year without corresponding improvements in delivery speed or reliability. Shipping was becoming a larger percentage of COGS, squeezing the margins that funded marketing and brand partner acquisition.
No Spoilage Protection
Like most perishable brands, GTFO discovered that standard carrier insurance from FedEx and UPS excludes perishable goods from spoilage claims. Every lost or spoiled shipment was a full write-off — product cost, shipping cost, and the replacement order.
International Friction
GTFO's customer base included demand from Canada and the UK, but cross-border perishable shipping introduced customs compliance, food safety certifications, and carrier-specific requirements that their team didn't have bandwidth to navigate.
What ShipFare Delivered
Real-Time Rates at Checkout
We integrated live carrier rates directly into GTFO's checkout. Instead of estimated costs that missed the mark, customers now see the actual rate from the optimal carrier for their specific order — weight, dimensions, destination, and service level all calculated in real time. No more absorbing rate discrepancies. What the customer pays is what the shipment costs.
Nationwide Overnight Shipping
By accessing negotiated rates across multiple carriers and routing each order to the best option for that specific destination, we made overnight delivery economically viable for GTFO across the entire continental US. Orders that previously took 2–3 days (with corresponding spoilage risk) now arrive the next morning. The transformation from "2-day minimum" to "overnight everywhere" fundamentally changed GTFO's competitive position.
45% Shipping Cost Reduction
This is the number that matters most. Despite upgrading most shipments to faster service levels, GTFO's total shipping spend dropped 45%. The savings came from three sources: negotiated multi-carrier rates that beat their existing single-carrier pricing, intelligent routing that selected the cheapest compliant option for each shipment, and reduced spoilage-related reships.
Perishable Insurance
Every qualifying shipment now carries perishable-specific insurance that covers what standard carrier coverage doesn't: temperature deviations, delay-caused spoilage, and misrouted packages. Claims are filed automatically from tracking data — GTFO's team doesn't touch them.
Overnight Delivery = Better Customer Experience
Faster delivery had a compounding effect beyond just reducing spoilage. Customers who receive their vegan frozen meals the next morning are significantly more likely to reorder than customers who wait 2–3 days and worry about whether the ice packs held. The shift to overnight delivery reduced customer service inquiries about order status and virtually eliminated "my order arrived warm" complaints.
International Expansion
We handled the customs documentation, food safety compliance, and carrier coordination required to open Canada and the UK as shipping destinations. This included navigating CFIA requirements for vegan food products, which have their own labeling and import rules distinct from animal-based perishables.
Results by the Numbers
GTFO It's Vegan × ShipFare — Key Metrics
- Shipping cost reduction45%
- Shipping volume growth50%
- Delivery speed transformation2+ days → overnight
- Geographic coverageRegional → nationwide + intl
- Customer inquiries about shippingSignificantly reduced
The 50% shipping volume growth is worth unpacking. Part of it was organic business growth, but a meaningful portion came from opening up geographic markets that were previously unserviceable. When you can deliver frozen vegan food overnight to any address in the continental US — at costs 45% lower than before — you unlock customer segments that weren't economically reachable.
What Came Next
With their shipping infrastructure stabilized, GTFO was able to pursue a strategy that would have been impossible with their old setup: offering 3PL services to their brand partners.
Many of the vegan brands selling through GTFO's marketplace are small operations without sophisticated shipping capabilities. By extending their ShipFare-powered logistics to these partners, GTFO created a new revenue stream — fulfillment as a service — while helping their brand partners ship more reliably and cheaply than they could independently. It's a textbook example of how fixing your own operations creates opportunities you didn't plan for.
Lessons for Perishable DTC Brands
1. Faster shipping can cost less, not more
The assumption that overnight = expensive isn't always true. When you factor in spoilage costs, reships, and customer churn from slow delivery, upgrading to overnight can actually lower your total cost per successful delivery. GTFO's 45% cost reduction came while upgrading to faster service levels — not by downgrading.
2. Checkout accuracy is margin protection
If your checkout shows estimated rates instead of live carrier rates, you're either overcharging customers (losing conversions) or undercharging them (absorbing the difference). Neither is sustainable. Real-time rates at checkout eliminate this leak entirely.
3. Multi-carrier routing unlocks savings that negotiation alone can't
GTFO didn't just get better rates from one carrier — they got the best rate from the best carrier for each individual shipment. The savings from intelligent routing across multiple carriers consistently outperform single-carrier volume discounts for perishable brands, because no single carrier is cheapest and fastest for every zone.
4. Infrastructure creates optionality
GTFO's expansion into 3PL services wasn't in the original plan. It emerged because they had shipping infrastructure capable of handling complexity at scale. When your logistics are held together with duct tape, you can't take on new opportunities. When they're automated and reliable, new doors open.