Foodzie Creates New Online Food Court

Foodzie is a new startup in the process of launching and is part of the TechStars startup incubator out of Colorado. I think of Foodzie as an online food court for specialty foods or you could consider it the "mall" concept from the '90s.

What I like about Foodzie is that the service will help offline food producers to increase their sales and awareness by working together with other merchants. I could see offline events working well across the world as the Foodzie food court continues to grow. The offline can help to really drive new customer awareness to the food court for future purchases. If the business side is handled correctly, Foodzie could do very well.

The business plan is based on commissions on sales - there are no charges to get the storefront setup. My guess is that they may need to adjust this over time if it's hard to grab sales for some food merchants. 

There are three keys for Foodzie to be successful. First, it's critical that the Foodzie staff is marketing the site to get customers to the food court overall. Second, the Foodzie staff has to spend time making sure they continue to find new merchants for Foodzie. It's also important that there are ways for customers to browse from one store to another to push crossover shopping. Foodzie has a main food court marketplace but when you enter via a store, it's nearly impossible to jump to other stores. They need to make sure that food discovery is pushed heavily. This benefits all of the merchants and Foodzie as well.

Mr. Frank Gruber interviewed the Foodzie team and I've embedded the interview below.