International Foods Inc.

I would like to create a business that distributes foods from other cultures all around the US in an online platform or through distribution from grocery stores. Many unmet needs have been stated by my friends and even on online pages that I frequent who have to order from online vendors at ridiculous rates.
The original who, what and why
The Who: Grocery Stores who want access to more international goods and regular consumers who may want foods they can't get locally

 The What: Foods from all over in a central place or website platform which will make acquiring sought after items easier to get

The Why: Challenges happen when trying to find a certain international item which causes consumers to give up and not get it.

I interviewed five people with different cultural backgrounds, genders and all differed in age. My control group was a man from the US who hadn't traveled. A frequent traveler from the US and I interviewed one person who was originally from Thailand. One with a Honduran background and lastly one person from a Japanese background.

The Who: Upon asking my interviewees they responded that they would want foods from other places all around the globe. It seemed that even the person from my basic control group that was from the US and had not traveled even replied that he would want goods from other places just to experience them since he wouldn't normally be able to get them from stores he frequents.

The What: Asking what kind of items they would want got very many mixed answers. There were things that people wanted to obtain all over some didn't even have to do with foods. Items ranged from cosmetics and cigars to candies and different types of soda. Interesting enough I had expected for them to want items from their home countries like Thailand's specialty coffee brews or seaweed snacks but instead it was a Haitian Soda even though they weren't Haitian. In my interviews with the two from the US they even talked about items that weren't actually in another country but were just only relatively popular in certain regions of the US like for example a soda called Cherwine that is only really available in states like North Carolina and Virginia.

The Why: Asking why their needs aren't met are simple enough. Not many people may know about certain goods so stores wouldn't hold them because the demand isn't super high. Some people would go to buy certain items online but purchasing from overseas may have special rates or it would take a extremely long time to have sent or even have a minimum shipping requirement so they couldn't have individual items delivered. Other people didn't even know if goods were available at certain locations so they wouldn't go out of their way to look around for it.

There are a lot of factors that detract this business from starting like the fact that there isn't enough knowledge about goods from around the world and it would be very pricey to have goods sent from all over. Another could be forming relations with international businesses to have those goods be available. One of the things I discovered was that people don't just want foods from other places they could even be specialty items like colognes from France or that some people wanted things from within the US that they aren't able to buy from grocery stores which could open opportunities for intercontinental trade and not even leaving the states. I still believe that the opportunity to start a business like this is here we would just have to find cost efficient ways to receive the goods and get the awareness or marketing about popular items from around the world out.