GiftBench
The online store and back office built for gift basket, floral and specialty food shops: storefront, multi-gift checkout, delivery scheduling, phone orders, customer records and an AI shopping assistant, set up and run for you by Mad Monkey Creative.
- Product
- GiftBench
- Industry
- Gift basket, floral & specialty food retail
- Type
- Owned MMC product · launch store: Northstar Fruit & Gift Baskets
About the project
A gift shop isn’t an ordinary online store. One customer sends five baskets to five people, each with its own card message and its own “must arrive by” date. The product is perishable, so a basket can’t sit in a truck over a weekend. Corporate buyers want accounts and invoices. And a big share of orders still come in over the phone.
General-purpose store builders handle that with a pile of add-on apps that don’t talk to each other. GiftBench was built from the start around how a gift shop actually works: the order, the packing bench, the delivery calendar and the phone, all in one system.
Mad Monkey Creative designed, built and owns GiftBench, and runs it as a managed service. Its launch store is Northstar Fruit & Gift Baskets, a Chicago-area gift basket company, where every feature is used on real orders before it goes to anyone else.
Project goals
- Let one customer send many gifts in one checkout, each with its own recipient, card and delivery date
- Schedule shipping around perishables: order cutoffs, no weekend transit, holds for future dates
- Put web, phone and corporate orders in one place, so nothing lives on a sticky note
- Give the owner a console with big, simple buttons, not a developer dashboard
- Answer shoppers’ questions around the clock with a branded assistant that knows the catalog
- Run as a managed service: the shop sells baskets, we handle the technology
What’s inside
Storefront & checkout
- Branded, mobile-first storefront
- Multi-gift checkout: many recipients in one order
- Card message and arrive-by date per gift
- Live delivery quote per gift, with faster or later options
- Customer accounts, order history and invoice PDFs
Shop console
- “Today” screen: orders to build, calls to return, deliveries
- Assembly lists for the packing bench
- Take a phone order in a few taps
- Promotions, per-customer codes and seasonal price lists
- Staff roles, kiosk device sign-in and two-factor login
Phone, text & email
- Caller card pops up with the customer’s history when the phone rings
- AI phone assistant scripts and catalog knowledge
- Order-placed, shipped and delivered emails with tracking
- Text-message order updates
- Follow-up check-in asking customers to rate their gift
Customers & corporate
- Built-in CRM: every customer, recipient and call in one record
- Corporate accounts with their own buyers and order history
- Corporate inquiry form that creates the account
- Recipient and occasion reminders for repeat gifting
- AI shopping assistant on the site, in the shop’s own voice
Screenshots
GiftBench running for Northstar — click any thumbnail to open the full image.
Plans
Every plan includes setup on your own domain, hosting, backups, updates and support.
Store
- Storefront and multi-gift checkout
- Delivery scheduling and shipping rates
- Shop console and order emails
Connected
- Everything in Store
- CRM, corporate accounts and invoices
- Phone caller card, texting and AI shopping assistant
Setup
- Catalog and photo load
- Branding, domain and payments
- Phone setup and staff training
How it’s built
- Modern commerce engine with custom modules for gift orders, delivery scheduling and corporate accounts
- Fast, mobile-first storefront designed to be found in search
- Built-in customer and recipient records, call history and follow-up tasks
- Secure card payments and live shipping rates at checkout
- Business phone and texting connected to every customer record
- Privately hosted AI for the shopping assistant — shop data never trains a public model
- Fully managed hosting with encryption, monitoring and backups
See GiftBench running
Shop the launch store, read the one-page overview, or tell us about your shop.