Three tricks for
successfully selling
food products
on the Web

The best arguments for selling food are taste, smell and sight. Obviously you can’t use the first two in an online store. Therefore, you have to appeal to their taste buds through their eyes.

Choosing the right picture to represent your product is therefore of the utmost importance. The picture that you use on your website must be of the highest quality and should highlight the features that make the item attractive. If you have the means, you could even hire a professional photographer.

A quick look on the Cosmos website is all it takes to see the importance of investing time or money to get quality pictures. All of the desserts on the site are presented in a way that allows visitors to fully appreciate their appeal. Whetting the customer’s appetite greatly contributes to sales.

Even if you present your products in the best possible light, if nobody hears about them, your efforts will be somewhat wasted. To determine your target market and the way to reach it, you have to ask yourself a few questions. For example, do you want to sell locally or do you plan to send your products over long distances? Do you want to sell directly to your customers or would you prefer to go through a middleman?

When the people at Cosmos launched their online store, they had to have a particularly well focused communication plan. Their restaurants are located in Quebec City and Lévis and they don’t deliver; therefore, they are targeting a very local clientele. To specifically reach the people of this region, they opted for a strategy that combines social media, search engines and traditional media.

“In addition to local radio stations, we had strong Facebook and Google AdWords campaigns,” said Jérémie Fortin, marketing director for Le Cosmos restaurants. “We also used Yule logs to promote our service. We felt that a specific event could be a good incentive and we had enough confidence in our product to believe that these customers would come back for future events.”

Successfully selling food products on the Internet requires a quality product that stands out. Why would people go to your website to specifically buy your products if they have the impression that they can get something similar at their local grocery store?

At Cosmos, desserts have always been a house specialty. To have its desserts stand out on the Internet required a little something extra to tip the balance in their favour. Therefore, before launching their online store, the people at Cosmos had their dessert menu reviewed by pastry chef Isabelle Deschamps-Plante. Isabelle became famous after appearing on Les Chefs!, leaving her signature on Cosmos desserts, and giving them a unique touch at the same time.