Gift-givers know the joy, and sometimes the frustration, of shopping online for specialty food items. If your loved one is a fan of gourmet chocolate or specialty coffee, there are so many options that choosing just one item from the thousands available can be a dizzying task. But it's still fun to peruse the goods and buy some tasty items for yourself every once in a while. The online food business is booming, and growing every minute.
As the uniqueness of online purchasing decreases with each passing day, people are constantly discovering new things, and reasons, to buy food from faraway sellers. Who are the champions in this massive market niche? If you guessed "sweets," you'd be very close to hitting a home run. But there's more to the multi-billion-dollar online food market than sugary treats. Here are the top scorers in the race to dominate the cyber-based culinary market:
Chocolate
The reigning champion of online food products, chocolate comes in infinite varieties and at every conceivable price level. Hand-made dark chocolate truffles, your own face sculpted onto the front of a gourmet chocolate bar, 10-pound boxes of high-end bon-bons covered with buttery milk chocolate, and giant, pizza-shaped chocolate gift items that range from 1 to 20 pounds are just a few of the oddball offerings in the vast universe of online chocolate products. If you can imagine it, someone sells it as a chocolate treat.
Specialty Cheese
The king of the non-sweet part of this niche is dominated by all things cheese. From gourmet slabs of exotic South African cheeses to more common European and American versions, whatever form, shape, flavor or size of cheese product you have in mind, you can find within minutes. Millions of cheese enthusiasts order Miyoko's online cheeses when they want the non-dairy or vegan versions. Others opt for dairy-based products straight from farms in Wisconsin and other cheese capitals of the world.
Homemade Cookies
The homemade cookie market is crowded with do-it-yourself bakers who tend to specialize in just one or two different products. The larger, commercial sellers move millions of pounds of cookies every day of the week via online sales. If you don't mind spending a few extra dollars for high-quality items and shipping, ordering cookies online can be a smart way to find the ideal gift for someone with a sweet tooth.
Fruit Baskets
One of the stalwarts of the old mail-order food niche, the fruit basket business made a very successful transition to the online marketplace. Often in direct competition with a non-edible product, flowers, fruit baskets are making headway into the "nutritional gift" sub-market, a billion-dollar industry unto itself. Markups are huge in the fruit basket business but the offerings are beautiful, delicious and sometimes quite exotic. It's fun to create your own basket in an online store when there are so many different varieties of fruit to choose from.
Coffee
Coffee has grown in popularity, year after year, since the mid-1970s. The many global chain stores that focus on the dark beverage are a testament to the drink's amazing popularity. When it comes to online sales of foods and beverages, coffee is one of the fastest-growing segments of a very competitive niche.
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of foodworldnews.com
