Foodoro, a new Y Combinator startup launching today, is an online marketplace for specialty artisanal foods. The site allows foodies to ship items like sesame nut spice chocolate and Mountain Jasmine Green Pearl Tea, to themselves or friends and family. The site offers a variety of hard-to-find food items from 54 vendors across the country, ranging from California cheese makers to Nebraskan buffalo farms to rice grown in the Philippines.
Foodoro’s concept is fairly similar in concept to a TechStars‘ startup we reported on last year, Foodzie. Like Foodzie, Foodoro aims to be an online hub for artisanal food makers, exposing these vendors to a greater audience of food aficionados than they would get from their own sites or selling solely to specialty food stores. Foodoro takes a 15 percent commission on each transaction whereas Foodzie takes a 20 percent commission on transactions. Both Foodoro and Foodzie leave distribution up to the vendors, allowing the marketplaces to it focus on the transactions, which can be helpful to the vendors who aren’t familiar with e-commerce.
However, Foodoro is doing some pretty nifty things to help these small food vendors incorporate e-commerce into their own sites. Foodoro provides the vendors with an e-commerce widget that they can embed on their sites to allow customers to easily buy the product. Foodoro is also trying to engage the food blogging community by implementing an affiliate program (like Amazon’s) that lets food bloggers earn a percentage on traffic they refer to back to Foodoro (the bloggers can also embed a widget of a product they are writing about in their blogs).
The site also publishes content from food bloggers, including reviews and product photos, with links to the food bloggers’ sites.
Foodoro also offers a variety of shipping options via UPS, FedEx, and USPS (Foodzie only offers FedEx as a shipping option). That being said, shipping on food items can be pricey and sometimes close to if not more than the price of the product itself. For example, overnight shipping for four abalone steaks, (which are priced at $20), is $32.11. The vendor sets the shipping requirements of whether a product should be shipped overnight, two-day etc.
Given the current state of the economy, its plausible to think that most consumers would be hesitant to spend money on high-end, pricey food items. Jay Moon, one of the founders of Foodoro, says that while the startup is not immune to the economic downturn, the company hopes to gain strong business in the food gifts market, which has become increasingly popular. Foodoro is hoping to capitalize on what they say is one of the fastest growing gift verticals, with the food gifting market collecting $15 billion in revenue for 2008, according to Foodoro.
Wow, wild nori!
well that is funny comment , but that is promising start up for food
If people will spend insane amounts of money at whole foods, why not here? Besides, there are always insane foodies who will go to any length to get that one hard-to-find ingredient. Wonder if there’s a restaurant business here…
with people losing jobs, getting kicked out of homes, and facing one of the worst economies ever… its good to know that y combinator is putting money into a site, that tries to convince people to spend money on extravagant items. This is a winner.
With such a negative attitude – how will the economy ever recover. It’s website like foodoro.com that promote the little guys that are venturing into their own creative specialties and open a small business that can prosper. If you step out of your shell and look into the list of vendors that foodoro.com has enlisted, then you will find that they are assisting in economic recovery for the “mom and pop” stores out there.
Mmm…Mountain Jasmine Green Pearl Tea…
This seems like it will work. It makes it easy for the little guy to break through and reach the consumer even when Whole Foods won’t stock their goods.
This is a great site to discover new food! I had these unique and tasty donuts from Foodoro a couple of weeks ago:
http://deesmini...hnuts-8-flavors
true foodies now buy local. carbon footprint of this stuff is just so wrong….
Actually, shipping a package uses less carbon than driving even a short distance.
But can you even find stuff of this quality at your local market? Maybe, if you live in SF and are willing to drive to a few places. I’ve gotten gelato and hand-made donuts from vendors on Foodoro (I’m an investor) and both were astoundingly good — better than anything I’ve had from Whole Foods.
Online farmer’s market! I’m there!
The site seems pretty cool. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops…
Who knew there’s a vendor out there selling and shipping abalone?? I was skeptical until I visited the website! I might have to try some, but the shipping costs are a little steep.
It seems that in the better cold here a nice meal cures
awesome! now the small foodmakers have a way to share their stories with the broader audience. very inspiring!!
By entering into the picture, it seems like Foodoro has created a nice little [2-player] market for specialty foods that didn’t exist before… at least in this particular capacity.
It will be an exciting emerging market to observe, especially as the downturn in our economy calls for smaller, satiating indulgences and less for big ticket items. Will offbeat gifts [À la abalone] ease troubled times? Only time will tell…
Congrats!
i think it’s great that foodoro’s helping small food makers compete against behemoths like whole foods. the little guys need all the help they can get, especially in this economy. i for one do not want to be eating “food” manufactured by gigantic corporations like dole, del monte, or nestle! really–can stuff that’s processed so much that it needs artificial colors and flavors to make it look and taste like food really be called food??
Quick! Lets get some snacks….. mmmmm
With the economy the way it is, probably a tough time to launch such a product. Will require a lot of marketing but possible.
People are going to be eating Ramen noodles for few years not waste money on fancy food.
Deadpool within 6 months.
So all people are only going to be eating ramen noodles? Please.
What a great way to connect consumers (like me) to real, wholesome products made by real people! I can’t wait to order the Heirloom Rice Sampler. Thanks Foodoro!
it’s a great way to learn about new vendors and shopping for specialty items without having one’s hip taken out by those crazy crowds at Whole Foods all vying for their organic, sustainable, gourmet food products. in the right hands, shopping carts can be lethal.
Wow, there is a lot of great stuff here! Great job Foodoro!
You have got to try these donuts…so good. They deliver them the same day for a reason.
http://deesmini...uts.foodoro.com
FOODORO has been an absolutely wonderful tool in finally obtaining some really tasty, all natural local treats!
It’s a beautiful site to browse, and has tempted many colleagues to order and sample some of the delicious goodies…
There IS a lot of great stuff here!
…here’s to many more orders and gifts… :0
Seems like a direct copycat of Foodzie.
Cool-looking site. Once the artisanal ramen noodles to debut on the site…I’m there.
Foodzie copy. Bad form.
I agree the site is even almost a copy, they look almost identical. I know there are always competitors but this is a little weird
is techcrunch being paid by ycombinator?
Recently ordered some honey, and it was the most orgasmic honey i’ve had, ever.
Definitely better than some Ex-girlfriends.
Either you are a Winnie the Pooh or you are lying about having ex-girlfriends. Anyone who has actually had sex would never write such a sexist thing.
This business sounds like a great substitute for fancy dinners out.
Perhaps you have been lucky enough to avoid dead fish.
Foodoro is a great way to help small, speciality food vendors have an online presence. The food selection is great. I didn’t know you could buy half these things online. I’m getting hungry!
the concept of Foodoro is great! i can’t wait to try some of the specialty items like dried pluots and the coffee.
What an amazing concept to bridge the every day retail experience and bringing it online. For those of us who enjoy decadent foods, it helps to have one source to go to. And the icing on the cake is the ability to quickly share with friends. ~ Great job Mr. Moon
Wow, looks like a fun site. The buffalo steaks look yummy.
I agree great concept and I can’t wait to try it, but the similarity to foodzie was immediately apparent – even down to the feedback icon.
That’s wassup, SON
Hmm…. Let’s see. Take a good idea out of TechStars… change 3 letters in your name. Copy everything you can — the squares on the homepage, the category names, the feedback button… just add UPS shipping and pretend you’re bringing something unique to the table. I think I’ll taste something different, thanks.
This is pretty cool — use Foodoro to get food from Sukhi, a Punjabi Sikh auntie:
http://sukhisgo...odoro.com/story
MMMmmm.
Sukhi’s is pretty common, you can find it in Whole Foods nationwide, I wouldn’t consider it artisan. Hopefully they offer other products that are less common, otherwise how is it better than just going to Whole Foods?
I honestly had not known about Sukhi until today — so she just got a new customer thanks to foodoro.
Brilliant – love everything about this site.
Another Etsy for food. There’s another one of these brewing at forage.com. It’ll be interesting to see how shipping plays a factor.
Stefanie,
Do you know any more about Forage.com. My wife and I own a Southern Specialty food store http://www.harrisclark.com and would like to speak with the founders.
All the best,
James
It’s blatantly clear that they’ve copied Foodzie. Wonder if we’ll see anything original… sorry besides the fact that they offer UPS integration in addition to FedEx.
The names seem confusingly similar.
Is it just me, or does it seem like there is an incredible amount of shilling going on in the comments today. I usually see and expect more insight from the Techcrunch community, ideally laced with a nice dose of both pessimism and optimism.
I love Foodzie! They are great. I haven’t tried Foodoro but it looks very similar, as already mentioned. I’m a dedicated Foodzie fan. They have some incredible chocolates!
gosh i wish whenever i read these stories if tech cruch did something to enlighten us on the business logic behind this startups, its good to know something like this has started but if you have a formula to make something like this work there are lots of categories where the same principle could be applied over and over.
I just don’t quite understand how enough people would hear that something like this exists
Great site and wonderful selection. I’m a fan!
With all the applications that YCombinator gets, they decided to go with Foodoro– a Foodzie clone that’s targeting exactly the same niche market. Was the application pool that limited? Foodoro has some great widgets, but it’s too bad they don’t seem to have an original business plan.
Not every business needs to have an original business plan to be successful. Sometimes, tweaking an existing business in key ways is enough to take a good idea and make it great.
Foodoro’s widgets are an innovative (and logical) way to increase traffic and provide a better experience for vendors, bloggers, and ultimately, customers. I think it has real potential.
Did you just say widgets are innovative?
I’ve ordered from Foodoro a few times already, and all the food has been excellent. I especially liked the white peam jam from Hurley Farms, and the granola from Rustic Bakery.
Well as a professionaly train chef, I don’t see anything spectacular on either site. Although Foodoro probably gets the node over Foodzie (even though Foodzie was hatched first).
Just look at the ‘meat & seafood’ section on Foodzie. First of all there is no seafood. Second of all it is all dried (jerky) or Ground meat (Tamales) I check the site out sometime ago when techcrunch first talked about it and was hoping this time is might actually have some new item’s.
Foodoro actually has some fresh meats, interesting cheeses, fun Baked items and artisian Oils.
Where do I get my $1M in seed money?
Call it for what it is–”knock off”
Site looks great! Good work, guys!
Saying that this or any other recently launched online food company has an original business concept is far from the truth. RegionalBest.com, http://www.regionalbest.com, launched in July, 2008, with much success.
RegionalBest.com is an online food market offering regional and local foods from artisans and farmers across the country. It also provides the forum for telling the producers story so consumers have an opportunity to learn more about the foods they are buying and who produced them. Sound familiar? And long before we launched, there was Local Harvest and American Feast. Check us out.
The specialty food market is big enough to support several players. And large companies have had a marketplace for specialty food for a while, too. Amazon and Williams Sonoma come to mind.
Competition is good for consumers, foodmakers, and Foodoro.
Site gets 5 stars from me based on the product pics alone. I love the leaning tower of cookies for Isabella’s Cookie Company.