????鑒于利潤率出了名的低，任何以食品為主業的企業都將面臨著一個固有的挑戰，那就是拿出健康的資產負債表。這就是Gilt Groupe在2012年9月份宣布削減Gilt Taste所提供的產品數量時所給出的原因。Gilt沒有回應筆者為撰寫本文而提出的置評請求。

????然而，將手工食品推介給普通民眾所面臨的諸多特殊挑戰并沒有讓技術型人才和投資者望而卻步。亞馬遜（Amazon）今年6月份將自己于2007年在西雅圖試點的食品雜貨服務AmazonFresh擴大到洛杉磯，加上在線食品零售商FreshDirect已證實獲得的成功，這些都明確證明了上面這一點。FreshDirect表示，該公司2012年營收超過4億美元，而且在過去幾年里就已經實現了盈利。

????亞馬遜之前收購了Webvan，目的在于從這家初創公司的失敗中吸取經驗和教訓，而FreshDirect首席營銷官約翰?利曼則將該公司的業績增長歸功于服務便利和食品質量。他聲稱，雖然在線購物“從根本上說就是一項便利業務”，但FreshDirect爭取回頭客的殺手锏是自身“在食品質量方面的超強競爭力”。利曼說：“在采購中力求食品質量以及信任，正是我們經營模式扎根的基礎所在。”

關鍵在于配送

????試圖銷售食品的公司還面臨一個特殊的問題：配送。據市場研究公司Food+Tech Connect創始人達尼埃爾?古爾德認為，這是創建一個可行的商業模式最困難的部分?！昂芏嗳司褪窃栽诹诉@上面。”

????除了通常的配送要求——倉庫、貨車、勞動力之外，食品還容易腐爛。 她說：“它增加了公司配送的復雜程度以及約束因素，尤其是當它們擴大經營規模的時候。隨著業務開始增長，需求增長，你便成為一家配送公司，一家訂單履行公司”，所以如果無法跟上需求增長的步伐，就無法生存下去。

????總部位于舊金山的在線農貿市場Good Eggs也得出了同樣的結論。執掌該公司的是科技界老將羅布?斯皮羅【社交問答網站Aardvark的聯合創始人，Aardvark在2010年以5,000萬美元出售給谷歌（Google）】和阿龍?薩萬特（軟件設計公司Carbon Five的聯合創始人）。他們最開始嘗試過不少辦法，以便攻克配送的“最后一公里”，向客戶提供地方食品，最后才建立了自己的物流基礎設施體系，得以把食品雜貨配送到舊金山灣區客戶的家門口。然而，與批量購買食品然后銷售給客戶的FreshDirec不同，Good Eggs建立了一個物流平臺，讓食品手工制造者和農場主通過這個平臺把他們的食品直接出售給客戶。通過與生產商合作設計他們自己的在線銷售平臺，Good Eggs團隊能夠迎合不同食品生產者的需求。而這點，Gilt Taste根本沒有做到。

????斯皮羅說：“我們的網站吸引人的地方在于，它感覺像是一個在線食品雜貨店。顧客訂購自己想要的東西，然后就會有人送貨上門。但它實際上在結構安排上完全不同。”這個方法還從配送體系中消除了易腐和浪費因素?！斑M入我們倉庫的所有東西都是顧客已經付過錢的，為顧客制作的。因此，每天結束營業后，我們的倉庫都是空蕩蕩的?！?/p>

????With notoriously low profit margins, any food-based business is going to face the built-in challenge of showing a healthy bottom line. That was the reason Gilt Groupe gave in September 2012 when it announced it would be cutting back Taste's offerings. Gilt did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

????The special challenges of bringing artisanal food to the masses, however, have not discouraged techies and investors. As the June launch of Amazon's grocery service, AmazonFresh (AMZN), in L.A. -- expanding a service it had piloted in Seattle in 2007 -- makes clear, as well as the proven success of FreshDirect, which says it had 2012 revenues over $400 million and that the business has been turning a profit for the past few years.

????Amazon brought in Webvan alum to learn from the startup's failures, while FreshDirect CMO John Leeman attributes the company's growth to convenience and quality. While online shopping is "fundamentally a convenience business," it's the company's "overkill in the quality area" that keeps its customers returning, he claims. "The high quality and trust in the sourcing," Leeman says, "is what our business model is anchored on."

All about distribution

????There's another special problem for a business trying to sell food: distribution. According to Danielle Gould, founder of research firm Food+Tech Connect, it's the most difficult part of creating a viable business model. "That's where so many people have failed."

????Besides the typical distribution requirements -- warehouses, trucks, labor -- food has a perishability component. "That adds levels of complexity and constraints on delivery for companies, particularly as they scale," she says. "As you start to grow and as demand grows, you're a distribution company, a fulfillment company," so if you can't keep up, you won't survive.

????Good Eggs, a San Francisco-based online farmers market led by tech veterans Rob Spiro (a co-founder of Aardvark, which sold itself to Google (GOOG) for $50 million in 2010) and Alon Savant (co-founder of software design company, Carbon Five), came to the same conclusion. After tinkering with a number of ways to deliver local food "the last mile" to their customers, they eventually built their own infrastructure to bring groceries right to their Bay Area clientele's doorsteps. However, unlike FreshDirect, which buys food in bulk and then sells it to customers, Good Eggs built a logistics platform for artisans and farmers to sell their food directly to customers. By working with producers to design their own online sales platforms, the Good Eggs team is able to cater to different food producers' needs in a way that Gilt Taste simply wasn't set up to handle.

????"What's cool about it is that it feels like an online grocery, in that you order exactly what you want and you get a home delivery. But it's actually structured extremely differently," Spiro says. The approach also removes the perishability and waste components from the system. "Everything that is brought to our warehouse has already been bought and made for a customer. So at the end of every day our warehouse is empty."