First-week-only checkout

August 31, 2026

A shopper who wanted to choose meals for the next three weeks ran the whole purchase flow three times — and started three subscriptions, with three charges. At a thousand orders a week nobody can audit incoming orders for duplicates like that. A new setting limits the pre-checkout menu to the first week.

What it is

With the setting on, only the first delivery week is selectable on the menu page a customer sees before they subscribe. Later weeks stay on the page as read-only previews — they are the merchandising, and hiding them would sell the menu short — with a neutral banner saying the week can be chosen after checkout.

After checkout the customer picks those weeks from their account, where the storefront portal and the customer account extension already handle weeks that have not been charged yet.

Why it matters

Duplicate subscriptions are expensive in both directions: the customer is charged more than once and the merchant finds out through a support ticket or a chargeback, usually after the food has been made.

Two flows are deliberately exempt. Choosing a future week inside the subscription edit flow is the feature, and one-time purchases are a supported product shape where a single checkout pays for several delivery weeks and starts no second subscription.

How to use it

Open Settings, then Storefront pages, and turn on "Only let new customers pick meals for the first week". It is off for every existing shop until you turn it on, and it changes only the pre-subscription menu page.

One trade-off worth knowing: with it on, a new customer can no longer start their subscription on a later week. If letting shoppers begin a few weeks out matters to your store, leave it off.