5 Amazingly Profitable Food businesses to start Online

Posted by Damian Roberti on September 13, 2020

I'm going to give you five extremely profitable food business ideas, and these are geared towards being online. So after this pandemic situation, which we are all going through, you are going to see a tremendous surge. As it's already started around February, March of this year, a lot more food is going to be purchased online. And there's a lot of websites and internet businesses that are taking advantage of this already. And of course the major was, are amazon.com. walmart.com and even target.com is dabbling into third party seller platform idea, allowing other people to sell on their website. So these are going to be extremely profitable because there are a minimal amount of investment to get them up and running. And most of these are ones that I've actually learned about over the past 12 years of being online, selling my food products, my wife and I started our own food business over a decade ago.

That goes along with it. Before you dive into getting on Amazon. Now, should you start your own website as well and sell on it? A lot of people jumped in that direction at first, but it's not a great thing to do. My own experiences is that we were selling on those platforms before we started our own website. Why would you do that? Well, it's great to have a website. Don't get me wrong. If I said today, I needed you. I would recommend for you to go out and start your own website. Definitely do it. But getting traffic to your website is a huge challenge. So being on Etsy and eBay, you already have a built in customer base. You have customers who are already looking for particular food products. You do not have to send out ads on Facebook.

You don't have to create some type of ad campaign or try to pay to advertise, to get people to come to your website because there's two different things.And we have been on Amazon now for six years that we've been on eBay or on Etsy as well and turned all of those platforms into six figure platforms that have really brought in a tremendous amount of sales for us, but it didn't take overnight. It took, it took a long time for that to happen. It took quite a few years to get it up and running to where we are now. So this was not something that happened instantaneously. If these ideas are very simple to understand and to implement and to get them up and running. So the first one I'm going to start with of course, is an online food business selling on platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy. Now, if you're looking to start on one of those platforms and you've never been on e-commerce, I personally recommend stay away from Amazon. At first, getting on eBay and Etsy is a much simpler process and selling on those platforms will give you a great opportunity to experience being online and being in the e-commerce realm, dealing with customers, dealing with orders, answering phone calls, getting emails, and all of that.

Hi Everyone! I'm excited to announce that I’ve partnering with @KeyBank and some amazing local leaders to support the diverse small business community and local food banks with the #KeyBankAssists program. Keep an eye out for future posts to see our support efforts. Member FDIC pic.twitter.com/uRQJAhnl1y

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) December 1, 2020

There are people who come from your website, then there's people who come to your website, buy something. Those are two different things to get conversion and to get people to buy a product is not easy to do so selling food online on eBay and Etsy is a great step. They've cost, very little to get up and running. You could literally start a store in a matter of a couple of days, have listings and products and all kinds of products up ready to go in front of millions of people's eyes. Now, why not go to Amazon right off the bat? Well, there's a bit of a learning curve and there's an application process for us to get into the food and gourmet food category. We actually had to get ungated. That is a process that requires invoices, documentations, incorporation papers, and quite a few other things that they're going to do request.

Now, what would that said once you do that, it is great because it can make your business go through the roof. Okay. There's a lot of sellers who have had great success. That, of course, there's some who've had kind of mediocre or average success. It's really going to be dependent upon how much you're willing to work for it and learn. You need to be open to understanding how e-commerce works, marketing SEO, and a handful of other things. I could sit here and talk about it, but that is a great place to get started. Especially if you have it, the particular product that you make at you're looking to sell on. Okay. So the next one up is number two, and that is drop shipping food. Yes. Believe it or not. There are companies that can drop ship food, not just dropship, other types of products, but there are websites that can do drop shipping for you.

Now, if you're obviously brand new or beginner at this, that's who this video is about, what do you do? What exactly is drop shipping? Well, it is. When do you selling product on your website and you have somebody else or another company do the fulfilling of the order. So basically if I wanted to sell a, a bag of chips, I could get a website that sells the chips for me. I would create a website and put those chips on my website, charge you a fee, and then I'd make it a small margin or a profit. And then I would have that company ship it to you. Now, are there companies that do drop shipping for food? Yes, there are. And I'll actually put a couple of links down below in the description. You can check out those websites that offer that some of them even go as far actually offer you a website that's premade and built with all of the products into it.

And you literally are running an eCommerce business that they have created for you. Those are great websites to start from. If you're looking to get into drop shipping, what are the benefits of that? Well, you don't have to have any inventory. You don't have to buy something and then put it in a warehouse and hope that somebody finds it online and then you sell it to them. So these are products that could be filled there, physical products that can be shipped to and fulfilled by another company on your behalf. So drop shipping food is another very, very easy way of going about as far as selling food online. If you don't want to have an impact inventory, or if you don't make your own product. Now, when I say easy, of course, that means after 12 years of doing it, it would be easier for me to do that then.

Yeah. If you were just starting, but keep in mind, you have to be open to learning and understanding how e-commerce works, but it doesn't, it is an easier process in the sense that you don't have to have so much inventory. Okay. So the next one, number three is actually made to order food products. Now, what does that mean made to order? Well, the way that our business works is actually we operate a candy and bakery business online, and we have a couple of hundred different products, actually about 350 products. We make chocolate pretzels. Yeah, cookies and bugs and all that kind of good stuff. But we do not make them in advance. You place an order online and we instantly get to work and we start to make the product. Now, what are the pros and cons of this type of a, of a business model?

Checkout Our 14 Top Hacks & Tips to Maximize LinkedIn for Small Business! ~ https://t.co/RrO9qk9SXA #SMM #OnlineMarketing pic.twitter.com/be8FCmLDtk

— Dana Lee Hagstrom (@danahags) December 6, 2020

Well, when you're making product to order, it cuts back tremendously on the amount of waste of ingredients and labor. The reason why I say this is that when we operated our Italian bakery, we used to have to fill up our case full of cookies and pastries. And we all, so have penny sandwiches and gelato ice cream and breads that we handmade and yeah, and batches of ice cream you'll make every single day from scratch that. Now the good thing is, is that it's on presentation and customers come into our place and they would buy it and they would eat it and et cetera, et cetera. But the drawback is, is that it was all freshly made there, no preservatives. So after a certain couple of days, certain period of time, about two to three days out, we had to throw all of it away because it was already expired.

Well, that waste labor, that waste ingredients and everything else that goes into it now made to order kind of bypasses that you could put a listing up on eBay for let's just say, chocolate chip cookies. And if you were in the business of making the chocolate chip cookies or any other food product, then you would kick that order. You'd make the product, print the shipping label and then ship it out to the customer. And you're done. You wash your hands of it and your minimum. I think the amount of waste that you have, because you don't have any retail storefront that you have to fulfill the different display cases with. So that is something that's a big plus because you're not wasting a lot of money on ingredients using a product, and then hoping that it sells by the end of the day, you only make it to order so made to order food.

Businesses can be extremely profitable because the margins are big. As long as you're getting enough traffic to your listings and getting enough orders. Obviously you need that, but you're not wasting ingredients by having to premium anything. The next one up is reselling food in bulk. So if you've ever gone to these really big box stores, as they're known the Costco's and Sam's club, the BJ's of the world, you see that there are products that are being produced in bulk in large quantities. Yes, there are some hugely successful businesses online that selling bulk food products and products that are related to the food category. So how does that work, Damien? Well, this is one that would involve probably the most investment, if any, compared to the rest, because you would need to have a small, all type of warehouse that would be, um, obviously licensed and inspected by either the health department or the department of agriculture.

And this would be the type of warehouse where you can actually buy in bulk, large food quantities, Mark it up for a margin, a percentage. And then that way you would make a little bit of a profit and you ship the product to the customer. So it entails storing inventory, which of course can be expensive if you start off on a big, big scale, can you start this stuff of business small? Yes, you can. You don't need to inventory or have thousands of products like a big store. You can actually carry several dozen or just a few dozen products and build upon that. There's a ton of sellers specifically on eBay set aside, Amazon and Etsy, but on eBay, a lot of people who resell food products that are in bulk, or they create bundle packages where they sell. Let's just say, spaghetti sauce. They fly five or 10, 10 bottles of spaghetti sauce, and they sell it in a big quantity.

So people who may be interested in that particular type of sauce now you're probably thinking, well, Damien, why can't people just go to their local store and pick it up? That's the big benefit of having both food products being sold online is this every community. And he doesn't have access to the exact same products that you have access to. There's a lot of people who live in areas that are not as populated and they may not have those stores. And if they don't have those stores, they can't offer those food products. So believe it or not, the food that is available, where I live is probably much different than the food that's available to you. A lot of people don't realize that nor do they think about it. So it offers a great opportunity for you to cash in on certain products that are not accessible everywhere.

Read Asim Qureshi's answer to What are the most valuable business lessons you've learned? on Quora

So people will pay a premium or much higher than they would traditionally pay for it and locally, because they can't find it. And this is actually true with a lot of health food products, such as low sugar, low carb gluten-free and so on. And so on. Those are some really high margin, high profit products because people need those for their diet, but they're not always available where they live. Yeah. So with that being said, it is a great idea. If you looked into having a business online, that's hugely profitable and very easy to start by simply flipping and reselling bulk through products that you don't have to make, but you can store them. Now, one really quick tip a profitable Chet tip for you, right? Some cases you don't need to actually have it. Yeah. In inventory, I have a few friends who have businesses online who actually flipped products that they only go to buy when they get an order.

Now, should you do this? There's a risk, there's a risk. And obviously a protocol for everything. The con on this one is, is if you have a product advertise on eBay and the local store or a place that you source it from, doesn't have it. Well, then you're out of the product. And that's definitely not a good thing because then that order gets delayed. But if you know that the store is in stock pretty well, most of the time you can offer food products by even, not even having an inventory and simply selling it as an order comes through. So would that be a set? I'll wrap that up. And those are a handful of street, extremely profitable through business ideas that you could start for a very low amount of money that don't take a lot to invest as far as money. But yes, you do have to put the time in and I would highly recommend you take a step little by little towards getting on like Amazon or some of these bigger sites like Walmart, try eBay and Etsy, or even your own website or combination of the three.

And of course, keep in mind that you will have to have certain, either permits or licenses to do this. So depending upon where you are and how you're going to do this product, sell these products is that's going to dictate the type of permit and license you need. And of course, through business insurance. So would that be instead, I'll wrap this video of it. I hope this was informative and gave you some ideas about the future of how food will be sold online. It is a growing business guys and I will not kid you. It is in the billions and there's plenty of room for new people to sell food products out there. It's only going to continue to grow, especially in the big I love what's going on. So thanks for watching marketing food online. And if you are looking to create your own food truck started home-based food business. Under the cottage food law franchise, a food operation start a packaged food business, private label, your own food product, sell on Amazon, get your own online store or sell food online. Remember to subscribe and check out these videos for more resources, take care.