Why Some Very Online Food Brands Are Going Offline

Five glass bottles holding colorful liquid.
Acid League

Direct-to-consumer brands Acid League and Soom are shutting down their online stores in favor of... actual stores

If 2020 and 2021 were the years that food and beverage direct-to-consumer products boomed thanks to the pandemic, 2023 was the year that trend was upended, with DTC brands focusing on retail expansion instead. It seems that’ll be continuing in 2024, with some brands closing their e-commerce platforms entirely.

The experimental fermentation company Acid League announced earlier this month that it’s shutting down its online store, effective January 31, and is ending some of its online-only product lines. That doesn’t mean it’s going out of business: Acid League is directing its resources “to ensure that all of our products are regularly available in retail stores in North America,” noting that producing all of its current offerings, keeping them in stock, and expanding its international retail lines was “totally unsustainable.” As the company has clarified, that change won’t affect orders made through separate sites like Amazon, just its own e-commerce platform.

It’s a big change, especially for an internet-forward brand, but not an unprecedented one. This December, the tahini company Soom also shut down its online store, similarly explaining that shifting away from e-commerce would allow the company to make its products more accessible and available at physical stores.

Grocery stores, once the thing that DTC food brands were getting away from, seem to now be their most promising growth area. While brands like Fly by Jing, Fishwife, Omsom, and Oat Haus first gained their traction online, they’ve all also made inroads in recent years to get shelf space in stores like Whole Foods and Target. Physical stores are necessary for scale, AdAge has reported.

That shift makes sense on multiple levels. As Fly by Jing founder Jing Gao told me last year in a report on new frozen dumpling brands, “being on a shelf is a billboard for your brand.” Just this week, Fly By Jing announced its chile crisps would be newly available at Costcos in the Northeast, and well as nationwide at Albertsons and Safeway stores. A recent market research report found that, save for Gen Z, most shoppers discover new products on store shelves, not online. Speaking as a consumer, I’m certainly more likely to buy one or two products from small brands if I can find them in one place than separate online stores, where I might find that the shipping costs outweigh my interest in testing out something new.

Of course, when a brand handles its own e-commerce, it has to deal with the tricky logistics and costs of order fulfillment. Bigger companies — like the Morinaga & Company-made Hi-Chew, which just launched its own e-commerce platform — might be able to justify that use of resources, but it’s no wonder small, scrappier brands might find themselves pulled in too many different directions, unable to focus on their original goal: making exciting new food products.

According to Acid League, the end of its online store means the company can “focus on more sustainable experimental product development” (emphasis theirs). Good for them, and good for shoppers, too.



from Eater - All https://ift.tt/onEBWjR

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Comforting Braised Pig Feet Recipe Perfect for Your Pressure Cooker

Image
Louiie Victa Chef Jenny Dorsey’s recipe is a testament to the trotter’s versatility When I go grocery shopping, I always look for pig feet. In the sea of unrecognizably standard-looking cuts of animal muscles at grocery stores — disk-shaped loins, round humps of pork butt — trotters are always the anomaly. They look most precisely as they were: feet, hooves, the tired bones and tissue that kept an animal upright its whole life. Unfortunately for pig feet, their look hasn’t exactly made them a popular part of the mainstream American diet. As Cecil Adams wrote back in 2016, one of the challenges in encouraging more Americans to consume offal and organ meat is that “organs resemble, well, body parts: any steak slapped on a plate looks like dinner, while a lovingly presented calf heart may suggest an autopsy.” And, Adams added, there’s the “socioeconomic stigma…that had a racial component too,” which is only exacerbated by “travelogue shows [like] Bizarre Foods .” Despite being mali...
Read more

Beyond Impossible: The Sanitarium and World War II Past of Meat Substitutes

Image
Photo by Tom Kelley/Getty Images We’ve come a long way from John Harvey Kellogg’s “protose cutlets” It’s no stretch to say that fake meat is having a moment . With the popularity of brands such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat joining fast-food menus and grocery store aisles alike, plant-based meats are no longer seen as a sad option for vegetarians long denied flavor with meat substitutes (though, as we know, plenty of vegetarian food is packed with flavor), but for anyone who enjoys a good burger, fried chicken, or nuggets. But are meat substitutes really the future of eating? Maybe by necessity as food resources run out, but not likely by choice. In fact, despite the big money raked in by Impossible and Beyond over the past few years, industrial meat consumption in America is actually on the rise. This week on Gastropod , Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley see how the not-sausage gets made, with visits to the Impossible Meat lab and Meati , a Colorado-based start-up that’...
Read more

Without Government Aid, Americans in Need Are Shoplifting Food Essentials

Image
Photo: Niloo /Shutterstock Plus, Colin Kaepernick gets his own Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor, and more news to start your day More people admit to shoplifting what they need to survive Since the pandemic began, Americans have called for relief for individuals and small businesses. Stimulus checks, rent and mortgage cancelation, and universal health care have all been on the table. But aside from $1,200 months ago, we’ve gotten none of that, and the latest stimulus package is woefully inadequate. So, as the Washington Post reports , more people than ever have resorted to stealing essentials like bread, baby formula, and diapers to survive. Honestly, what did the government expect? WaPo says there’s been a 45 percent increase in the number of Americans facing hunger this year, up to 54 million people. Lines at food banks have been miles long for months, with many saying that mutual aid groups and donations can’t keep up with demand . And with SNAP and WIC programs cut back,...
Read more