My idea to start an online food business... what do you think?

Let me ask you, if you're buying local products at retail, then marking them up to resell on your website, how are you going to turn a profit? Who is going to want to buy food that is sold online and "marked up"? People shop online to buy things at a discount rather than paying more for them.

Another problem . . . food is perishable. What are you going to do if something doesn't sell?

No offense, but personally I think you'd better re-think your idea.

Steve

Well I think eventually somebody will figure it out! You should try it....

I'm super optimistic about this... I like healthy food myself... and I like "raw"

Of course you would buy it wholesale... Like wholefoods does it...

But I think you might need some investment... Try to raise it like on kickstarter or Google campus or Silicon Valley...

But first...... You gotta to believe that you can do it... and then you will be unstoppable...

I teach my students to be "unstoppable" and I think if you really "want" it you will get it done!

Good luck, brother!

Me personally if was going to do what you want to do, you'd be better off doing localized at start, then drop ship when ordered from retailer or shop have deal with. This way food fresh-you don't mess with delivery and people get what want.

There's actually tons of ways to make it work but like said if goign that route you wanted to go, would suggest my tip because you're not wasting food, siiting on inventory eating all your profits and may have way less to do.

I would take what I said and think bigger, but definitely make it more than about the snacks...

You'll be losing a lot more than "a small amount of money in the beginning" if you mean that you are going to pay for a website, take my order for a Little Debbie oatmeal pie, drive to the store to buy it, drive back home, box it up, drive to the PO to ship it, and then drive back home.

I admire anyone that has plans and desire to improve themselves. I can even see the excitement to get something like this started. But, in my opinion, you really need to take Steve's advice and rethink this whole thing.

Mark

What if your local Walmart or wherever you plan to buy these things doesn't have 5 boxes in stock?

Mark

I think it's one of the worst idea's I have ever heard of...paying retail???

I was recently ask to promote this on a CPA basis and I wasn't interested, but I like it better than your idea. https://www.graze.com They provide custom snack boxes, based on the snacks they provide.

Seems like alot of work, for a probably miserable pay. If you're willing to do all of this to make money at home... you should start an ebay business. You'll get sales faster, and you'll have to drive down to the post office everyday to ship orders... but i assure you that it will be less work (and hassle) ... (and more profitable) than your online food business idea.

If you insist on selling food against everyone's advice which you asked for, maybe you should look into dropshipping as an alternative. Here's an example (just the first hit on Google - don't know these guys from Adam) Dropship organic food and dropship gluten free products with Bangalla Organic

Mark

I mainly generate leads. So it's not like you have to sell anything to make money online.

You have to make it authority first.
People will more likely buy some things on Ebay or Amazon if that things are at same price there

Abort mission!

Just to throw my 2 cents in you need to seriously reconsider this idea. People have given some good ideas on what you can do differently, but for the effort you are going to for little to no profits is mad!

What I don't understand about the idea is why would someone buy from your online store (which then includes postage) when they could just go down to the store and get the same product cheaper?

The fact you are eager and ready to get something started is fantastic, and getting started is always the toughest part. Tweak your ideas a little and I'm sure you'll do well!

Good luck.

Originally Posted by ecomguy First off: please be honest and be brutal. Id rather know if Im going to be making a big mistake than to be told positive things and end up driving off a cliff. So I LOVE food and I have this idea that I want to resell other stores snacks and gifts through my website. Texas food laws don't allow me to cooking anything and sell online, so I just want to sell other stores foods. I set up a woo commerce store with a good name. I was thinking I would just go to specialty stores, local stores and buy their great products and mark them up and resell on my website. Could this work or would this be a disaster? Im in Dallas and maybe theres some specialty BBQ or other local things here people can't buy anywhere else. thoughts?

You can go to sites like Cooking and Foodtube.

Cooking is an online marketplace like Clickbank. There are hundreds of thosuands of recipes and cooking equipment you can research and get ideas from.

You can also check out Foodtube. It is very much like Youtube but ONLY for food.

I may also want to set up a site on food.

On my local S'porean food which makes our country an eating paradise for everybody.

If you really want to go this route, I would consider getting approved to sell grocery on amazon then start sourcing unique food products or bundling. Jessica Larrew has a info product for selling groceries on amazon.

al

Ecomguy,

Nothing personal here, just trying to help and save you from making that "big mistake" you're worried about.

All smart online business owners begin with market research to see what kind of demand there is in the marketplace for their business. Have you done that yet? Have you verified that there is sufficient demand out there to warrant starting a business in the food niche you're choosing?

You won't create demand. It's either in the marketplace or it isn't. Unless you're the 900 lb gorilla, like Amazon or Ebay or Apple, you're not going to have the budget or branding power to create sufficient demand for your business. So it better be in the marketplace already.

If you don't understand who you prime prospects are and where they are, and have verified through research that indeed they are asking for exactly what you're going to offer, then you're building your business on a foundation of sand.

An ounce of prevention . . . well, you know the saying.

Steve

I think Steve is DEAD right.

I've fallen in the trap myself of analyzing it and deciding it's a GREAT idea, without asking my target market what they think.

I run an online course in a specific niche that I'm an expert in. About 4 years ago, I launched a 'virtual' course. In other words, I launched something similar to a course via Google Hangouts. For those I got to purchase, they loved it. I mean really loved it. I had some people, dropping the kids off at soccer practice whilst following me, it was a really convenient and fun way to deliver this type of course.

The problem is.... it was at the earlier adopter stage. In other words, most people didn't want to do it because it's 'new' and they don't like to try something new, the like to wait for others to do it first, and THEN do it. Most people are followers.

My niche just wasn't big enough to run courses on early adopters. I could have known this if I had done some research! But I didn't, I just thought it sounded like a pretty cool idea and ran with it.

So, as is life, I took my eye off the ball, started focusing on something else, 12 months later my competitor is killing it using this format. Now it's standard of course, as everyone uses webinars to deliver information. But my competitor is 'well known' for it.

So from my own experience.... DO SOME RESEARCH... find some forums where you ask people, please do before you sink any time or money into it.

Hope that helps.

Can't predict beforehand if this will be a disaster but do you think you will get enough margin on these things to make a living?

I think one of the initial hurdles that you might face would be, you would have to push great volume to make something substantial so you would have to shell out pretty good pesos for marketing!