Buy a full case and the price per unit drops automaticallyRequest a sample
AccountCart0
All ContainersBottlesJarsCaps & ClosuresPumps & SprayersTubs & PailsJugsDroppersTinsTubesAccessories
Industries
Learn
Selling it

Selling online

Updated

On this page5

Online is where spice businesses grow and it is also where several of the assumptions that worked at a market quietly stop being true.

The channel that may cost you your exemption

Check this before building a shop. Many cottage food exemptions cover direct sales only, and several explicitly exclude internet sales. Selling one jar online can move you out of the exemption and into food facility registration.

The exemption is not partial, so this is a threshold rather than a slope. Confirm your own state's rule specifically about online sales rather than assuming the general position.

Postage is the whole economics

A jar of spice is a low value, moderately heavy, fragile item. At these unit prices the carriage is frequently a larger number than the goods, and glass makes it worse.

Which pushes three things: a minimum order that makes a parcel worth sending, packaging that immobilizes rather than merely cushions, and a serious look at whether glass is the right material for the online half of your range.

Work out the real postage on a packed sample before setting a shipping price. Most first-time shipping prices are set optimistically and never revisited.

Selling smell in words

The customer cannot smell it, which removes your main advantage and makes the product page carry the argument alone.

What works is specifics: where it came from, when it was ground, what the difference is against a supermarket jar and why. What does not work is adjectives. Premium and artisan are used by everybody and mean nothing; "ground in small batches, this one on the eleventh" is checkable and rare.

What converts

Blends, because they cannot be price-compared. Sample sets, because they lower the risk of trying an unknown producer. And repeat subscriptions on the lines people genuinely use up, which suit ground spice well because it should be replaced more often than customers think.

Single common spices sold individually convert worst, because that is exactly the purchase a supermarket already owns.

References

US Food and Drug Administration. Food Facility Registration and the preventive controls requirements for human food. fda.gov
Oregon State University Extension. Farm-direct Marketing: Legal Guide (PNW 680). extension.oregonstate.edu
Written from published specification and peer-reviewed work, not from a laboratory of our own. Your supplier's certificate of analysis, your own moisture readings and your state's rules override anything general said here.