Headless WooCommerce case study · Eco-friendly tableware · United Kingdom

BIOEAT swapped its WooCommerce theme for a Vue.js storefront — and kept every product, price and checkout step exactly where it was.

A UK compostable-tableware brand selling to households, caterers and wholesale buyers moved to a WOOHL-managed storefront in 5 hours. The WooCommerce back end never moved.

Client
BIOEAT — bioeat.co.uk
Sector
Sustainable tableware, D2C + wholesale
Catalogue
21 products across 4 categories
Migration
5 hours
Verified result

Google PageSpeed — mobile.

Lab data, Moto G-class device on Slow 4G. Re-run either number yourself.

Before · previous theme

WordPress theme

Original storefront

62
Mobile score 62 before
Desktop: 75
+31points
After · live on WOOHL

WOOHL storefront

Managed Vue.js front end

93
Mobile score 93 after
Desktop: 96 Verify on Google now
0.6 s

Largest Contentful Paint (was 2.9 s)

0

Cumulative Layout Shift

0 ms

Total Blocking Time

0

Products re-entered

Scores are Google PageSpeed Insights lab results captured on 10 August 2026. Live scores fluctuate with network conditions and third-party scripts — the link above returns whatever Google measures today, unedited.

The story

The challenge

BIOEAT sells a product with an unusually well-informed audience: buyers who read composting timelines, compare material claims, and check whether a supplier's promises hold up. The catalogue is image-heavy by necessity — you have to see that a sugarcane plate holds a full hot meal — and the site carries a second job beyond retail: a wholesale funnel for caterers and venues ordering by the pallet.

That combination punishes a slow front end twice. Product photography on a conventional WooCommerce theme means large images and heavy page weight on mobile, where most browsing happens. And a trade buyer who bounces before the wholesale page loads isn't a lost £30 basket — it's a lost recurring account.

The result

The storefront now loads in a fraction of the time on mobile, with Core Web Vitals in Google's green band — the same signals Google uses for page experience. Product imagery arrives as compressed WebP sized for the device instead of full-resolution files scaled down in the browser, which is where most of the weight disappeared.

Just as importantly for a small team: there is no new system to run. No server to patch, no build pipeline to babysit, no Node app to keep alive at 2am. That stays with us.

What we did

WOOHL replaced only the storefront. WordPress and WooCommerce stayed exactly where they were, moved to a secure subdomain, continuing to run products, orders, coupons, tax and shipping. The customer-facing layer became a managed Vue.js storefront, deployed and hosted by us:

  • Server-rendered product, category and content pages for SEO and fast first paint
  • Automatic image pipeline — WebP conversion, responsive sizing and 2× density variants generated on demand from the same WordPress media library
  • Category, search, bundle and wholesale journeys rebuilt as native Vue routes
  • Cart handed to native WooCommerce checkout, so payments, tax and order emails behave exactly as before
In their words
“I'd looked at a rebuild before and walked away — too expensive, and too risky with all our products and orders sitting in there. This was the opposite. The storefront changed, WooCommerce stayed exactly where it was, and I still add products the same way I always did. It just doesn't hang on a phone any more.”
— BIOEAT, bioeat.co.uk

Under the hood

Storefront
Managed Vue.js front end on bioeat.co.uk, hosted and deployed by WOOHL
Back end
WordPress + WooCommerce on secure.bioeat.co.uk — unchanged
Checkout
Native WooCommerce checkout; cards, PayPal and Apple Pay all intact
Images
On-demand WebP + responsive srcset from the existing media library
Catalogue
21 products · plates, bowls, cutlery, party bundles · sale pricing and wholesale tiers preserved
Included
Hosting, CDN, SSL, deployment, updates and monitoring
No trade-offs

What stayed exactly the same.

The admin

Same WordPress dashboard, same workflow for adding products and fulfilling orders.

Checkout & payments

Native WooCommerce checkout — Visa, Mastercard, Amex, PayPal and Apple Pay untouched.

Pricing logic

Sale prices, bundle pricing and wholesale tiers all continue to run from WooCommerce.

Plugins

The existing WooCommerce plugin stack keeps working — nothing rebuilt from scratch.

Product data

Categories, images, descriptions and stock stayed in place. Zero re-entry.

The exit

The WordPress theme is still installed. Switching back is a decision, not a project.

Could your store be the next one?

Run the free speed audit — Google's official test on your store, with the full report emailed to you. No card, no call.

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