Food is mainstream. Is one of those topic everyone loves to talk about, both in real life and in virtual one, on social networks. Just look at your Facebook or Instagram feed to realize how food has become the main obsession for many people.
In countertrend with a globalized world but, an increasing number of consumers don’t limit themselves to buy meat, cheese and salads. They scavenge for meat coming from free range animals, they search for greens with the “bio” label, artisanal and hard to find cheeses. Basically, that kind of products you can find in luxury chains like Eataly.
There’s a huge market to satisfy but the approach of stores like Eataly could not work for small producers that, for various reasons, have to focus on their territory. Is it possibile to expand the business of small realities? Yes, of course: we’ve got Internet. Just be aware that you can’t just launch an e-commerce and wait for customers. Selling your goods through a website could generate a solid business but it requires time and dedication before seeing any monetary result.
Luckily you can test the online market easily, especially in Italy, thanks to services like Cortilia and Foodscovery, which basically are the Amazon of food. If you follow this road you don’t have to bother about registering and setting up a website or an app for your e-commerce. Just register to the service and start selling your goods. Of course there will be a verification before they start to put your products in their catalog. If everything goes well it takes just a few days to see your products sold online. Customers will be able both to buy whatever they need once or make a subscription and receive your goods automatically every month, or every few weeks. The portals will take care of all the logistic, the promotion and you can focus on your mission: producing the goods.
If you decide to affiliate, if you want you could still create your website with an e-commerce section. Just consider Cortilia and Foodscovery as a first step in the online market, to see its potential without having to invest too much. Right now, these realities are working only in some regions of Italy but they are expanding fast to cover all the country and even outside Italian borders. Even if it’s pretty new as a business model, competition is already tough. Amazon is already selling food (but not artisanal product like the one we are talking about) and it can deliver it in one hour, in cities covered by Prime Now: probably in a year or two we’ll see a lot of alternatives to Cortilia and Foodscovery all around the world.
