The 6 Food E-Commerce Trends To Look Out For in {{year}}

Successfully selling food online requires a certain comfort with change. Even a giant company like Amazon has to mix things up every few years to keep customers interested.

Fresh food e-commerce is the same, with customer preferences and trends evolving constantly. Which ones are most important to know, and is following food e-commerce trends worth it?

We’re here to help. In this article, we’ll cover six major trends in food e-commerce that you should look out for and what you can do to capitalize on them. 

Why You Should Follow Food E-Commerce Trends

Every day, you have a ton of to-do items on your plate. Between prepping food, managing orders, packing items, and admin, there’s not a lot of time left for keeping up with trends.

However, those trends will impact how customers find and connect with your business, whether you like it or not. By following food e-commerce trends, you can:

• Meet customer expectations: Understand what customers look for so you can improve the shopping experience.
• Drive growth and revenue: Stay current on e-commerce best practices and food trends to help your business continue to grow.
• Improve product offerings: Understand the types of products that are popular so you can come up with similar offerings and figure out how to put your unique spin on them.

To stay ahead of trends, do you need to read industry magazines and analyze competitors every single day? Absolutely not. 

Instead, take a day or two every month or quarter to see what the biggest trends are, and then create an action plan for the ones that make sense to implement in your business. 

6 Food E-Commerce Trends To Follow in

One overall trend that’s good news for independent food sellers is that the food e-commerce industry is doing great. However, the boom in online food sales slowed after the pandemic, and online food retailers need to do more to win customers’ business.

Here are six trends to follow in 2024 to boost your brand and find success.

1. Cross-Selling and Upselling

Enjoying food and cooking are some of the great things in life — and as people passionate about food know, great ingredients aren’t the only thing to love about it. 

Capitalize on people looking for great quality food by pairing them with complementary items. For example, if you sell steaks, you could pair them with artisanal salts and spice rubs. Offer discounts for the paired items to encourage upselling and last-minute purchases.

You could also sell non-food items like bowls, carafes, cooking utensils, and more. Ideally, work within your local business community to source unique items and form strategic partnerships that customers can’t find anywhere else.

2. Transparency and Sustainability

Many customers buy food online as a more sustainable, ethical alternative to big chain grocery stores. Meet customer expectations by infusing more transparent and sustainable practices into every level of your business. 

• Website and product descriptions: Explain to customers exactly where you source your ingredients, how you grow your plants, and how you raise livestock. This will help build your reputation with customers and help your website show up in related Google results, too. 

• Certifications and partnerships: Seek partnerships with other eco-friendly businesses to help spread awareness of your brand to a wider audience. You could also work with certification bodies to get your products labeled as organic or non-GMO.

• Transparent labeling: Transparency boils down to how effectively you communicate with customers and an easy way to do it is the label on the box. Have descriptive labels that include the items, when it was packed, who packed them, and any other details.
• Eco-friendly packaging: The focus on sustainability extends to packaging, with customers preferring to use businesses that use eco-friendly shipping materials. 

As many independent food suppliers know, sustainability isn’t just a series of boxes to tick off but an ethos that permeates the entire business. Stand out by finding unique ways to share that passion with your customers.

3. Subscriptions

Subscription boxes — from meal kits and frozen food to meat boxes and spices — continue to be a booming industry this year. Subscription boxes give home cooks a low-effort and affordable way to get high-quality, curated ingredients at a great price. 

Find success with your subscription sales by keeping the following points in mind:

• Make sure it’s supported: Unfortunately, many generic e-commerce platforms don’t support subscriptions without expensive add-ons or complex integrations, so ensure you use one that supports subscriptions out of the box.
• Use catch weight software: If you sell meat, produce, or other catch weight items, use software that supports selling items by weight. This will make it easy to adjust estimates, create packing lists, and accurately invoice customers.
• Decide between curation and customization: Choose a subscription style that fits your business. Either use your e-commerce solution to choose which types of items customers can subscribe to, or you could decide to create curated boxes. 
• Understand the margins: Subscription boxes are a great source of recurring revenue, but they should also feel like a good deal for customers. Use your e-commerce software to understand the shipping costs and profit margins of each product to find a pricing point that makes sense.
• Make subscriptions easy: When implemented smartly, subscriptions are a great way to upsell customers. Put a subscribe and save button next to the add to cart button that shows customers what they could save by subscribing. 

Most importantly, figure out what differentiates your subscription box from the competition and then communicate it with customers. You’ve put a lot of care and love into your business, which should come across in every box you ship. 

4. Personalization

Research shows that personalized offers perform significantly better than generic discounts and promotions. Personalizing your products and offers is a huge trend to jump onto in 2024 — but where do you start? 

While personalization might seem like something only corporations can achieve, you’d be wrong. Start simple by using the reports and customer data on your e-commerce solution to understand things like:

• Your bestselling items and product categories
• What marketing promotions were most successful
• Shopping history by customers
• Shopping history by geographic data

All these data points can be used to understand your customers’ preferences and create offers that are relevant to their interests. If you want to go even further, you could create different customer segments (e.g., “customers who order over $200 per transaction”) and create exclusive offers and marketing material that’s only sent to them.

Related Read: Farm Loyalty Programs: 5 Ideas to Create Repeat Customers

There are also simpler ways to personalize offers that don’t necessarily require analytics or data. 

Create discount codes for different types of products and send them out in a newsletter, letting customers engage with the products they care about. Or, put together a subscription box based on different preferences (e.g., “beef and burger lovers”) and then surprise them with curated picks. 

5. Niche + Luxury Products

Not all shoppers are looking for a convenient alternative to a standard grocery store. Many customers go online in search of luxury and niche products they can’t find anywhere else. 

If you have goods that aren’t an everyday item or are expensive to make, why not profit from them? These types of one-off purchases are also great to advertise as gifts or items for special occasions.

However, you can’t just slap a high price tag on an item and call it luxury. If you plan to offer niche and luxury items, make sure to also put effort into things like:

• Product packaging: No one wants a nice item in a styrofoam box. Consider packing nicer items in wood or specialty packaging to give it a more high-end feel.
• Descriptions: To successfully sell customers on a luxury item, you need to be good at telling them why your brand is worth the price. Include well-written item descriptions highlighting the product’s unique aspects on both the website and as a packaging insert.
• Marketing: If you sell luxury items, you’re not trying to cast a wide net and cater to a general audience. That means you’ll need to make a more concerted effort when marketing your store.

Remember, you can still offer high-end products without turning your entire store into a luxury brand. Consider offering deluxe versions a standard order (e.g., cross-sell with other items and include gift packaging) to encourage upselling — especially around big holidays and events. 

6. Quick Delivery

Quick delivery has defined the last decade or so of e-commerce across industries — and food is no exception. 

Customers expect food items fast and many are willing to pay for expedited or even same-day delivery. That’s not a bad thing. The faster you can ship your food, the fresher it is, and the happier customers will be.

So, what can you do to make sure your shipping is as efficient as possible in 2024?

• Have consistent packing processes: Make sure your employees are trained on using the right packing and cooling materials for every type of shipment. Use your inventory system to make sure you don’t miss any details and pack every item quickly and safely. 
• Leverage the right shipping partners: Food shipping and the cold chain has stricter requirements than other shippers for good reason. Partner with reliable shipping partners who understand the needs of food shipment, even if it costs a little extra.
• Ditch manual order tracking: Manually tracking orders, prepping packing lists, and printing labels might be fine when you’re first starting out, but it won’t work as you grow. Use an e-commerce platform with features that help you streamline the process and reduce the risk of human error.  
  
  

Pro Tip: Many retailers offer free shipping to lure in customers, but it’s not always a good option for food delivery. Make sure to set a high enough order threshold that you can offer free shipping without eating all of the cost. 

Make It Easy To Take Advantage of E-Commerce Food Trends

When you sell online, change is inevitable. Ensure you’re able to keep ahead of e-commerce food trends without grinding business to a halt by using a flexible food sales platform.

GrazeCart is built specifically to help small and mid-size food sellers simplify how they sell food online. With a no-code website builder, advanced inventory management, and built-in subscription and sell by weight functions, GrazeCart has everything you need to succeed. 

Start your free 14-day trial today to see everything GrazeCart has to offer.