Upstarts: Convenience Cuisine
Not sure where your next meal is coming from? Try the Web. A look at why several Internet start-ups are hoping online shoppers will turn to the Web to satisfy their appetites.
What's Cooking On-line?
If you're not sure where your next meal is coming from, you might try the Internet
The Web's next killer app? Think arugula.
A host of entrepreneurs are convinced that, just as the on-line arena has changed the way we communicate, shop, and invest, it will change the way we seek sustenance as well. "People have to eat three times a day, but even on the brink of the new millennium, nobody has found a way to get more free time," remarks David Hodess, the 37-year-old CEO and cofounder of Cooking.com, one of the new players catering to today's time-starved -- and just plain starved -- consumers. Along with former Disney Store executive Hodess, refugees from Microsoft and PepsiCo, as well as such high-profile venture capitalists as John Doerr, are staking their money and their good names on new sites that promise to point and click consumers to their next meal.
What to have for dinner tonight? The next five nights? That dinner party you've scheduled for Saturday? Both Hodess's Cooking.com, in Santa Monica, Calif., and another on-line start-up, Tavolo, in San Rafael, Calif., offer thousands of gourmet products and wares that can help answer those questions. Each site is financed with $50 million in seed funds and is as much an information resource as a culinary E-tailer. Click on either site's weekly menu planner for week-at-a-glance menu suggestions, with printer-friendly recipes.
In addition, both sites offer various foodie bells and whistles. Tavolo's site (www.tavolo.com) has features that convert recipes from standard to metric measurements, tailor recipes to the number of people being served, and create a shopping list based on your weekly menu. Cooking.com has an on-line glossary for boning up on the history of cognac or determining the precise definition of a zapotilla.
But customizable recipes and on-line glossaries are just the marketing bait. What these sites really want to do is sell you stuff. "Providing a free recipe certainly has value for the consumer," says Ken Cassar, an electronic-commerce analyst with Jupiter Communications, an Internet consulting company in New York City. "But it's also a great opportunity to sell mortars and pestles."
As Tavolo founder and CEO Kevin Applebaum is fond of noting, with $55 billion in total sales (both on-line and on terra firma), the market for cooking products and gourmet foods represents a huge category. The leading national retailer of cooking supplies -- Williams-Sonoma -- has a market share of less than 1%. But Applebaum, who honed his marketing skills at PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble, also knows he's not alone in spotting cooking sites' potential. Numerous national retailers, from Macy's to the aforementioned Williams-Sonoma, are also chasing the ever-expanding on-line opportunity. So is the ubiquitous Martha Stewart, whose Web site, launched in 1997, is in the process of receiving a $25-million tune-up, courtesy of new investor Kleiner Perkins and its general partner, John Doerr.
The real challenge for all the gourmet sites, says another Jupiter Communications analyst, Michael May, will be to get the people who purchase gourmet food and wares on-line to go from buying gifts to buying for themselves. The majority of the $200 million in on-line sales of small appliances and gourmet-food items last year occurred during the fourth quarter, for holiday gifts, notes May. Arugula-artichoke-with-roasted-garlic pesto pasta sauce may make for a terrific gift, but it isn't what people are buying for their own dinner tables -- at least not tonight.
Cyberconsumption
Food and kitchen supplies may not be the biggest on-line shopping category at the moment (books currently hold that honor), but according to Jupiter Communications, they're where the growth will be between now and 2003. Odds are, Peapod and its ilk will eventually outpace their Amazonian counterparts.
Projected on-line consumer spending, by category
| 1999 | 2003 | % change | |
| (in billions) | |||
| Groceries | $0.2 | $7.5 | 3,650% |
| Housewares | $0.1 | $1.5 | 1,400% |
| Specialty gifts* | $0.1 | $1.0 | 900% |
| Music | $0.3 | $2.6 | 766% |
| Apparel | $0.8 | $6.7 | 738% |
| Videos | $0.2 | $1.1 | 450% |
| Toys | $0.3 | $1.6 | 433% |
| Electronics | $0.4 | $2.1 | 425% |
| Flowers | $0.2 | $0.8 | 300% |
| Books | $1.3 | $4.9 | 278% |
*Gourmet food makes up a significant percentage of this category.
Source: Online Consumer Spending Forecast,
Jupiter Communications, September 1999.
Party of 10? Click Here
Sure, much of the on-line cooking sector caters to aspiring chefs. But what if you and the kitchen aren't on speaking terms? And you happen to like it that way?
