When Tommy Huynh founded Fuzee Inc in 2001 while still in college, he created one of the first marketplaces for Paintball goods. Sounds like a dud? After the first year they did $300k in sales and he eventually sold the business in 2005. After graduating college and heading to NVIDIA, he quit last year to focus on Purple Menu, a marketplace for gourmet food and beverages.
The idea came one day when Tommy was reading Gourmet Food Magazine and he couldn't figure out a way to buy the products he was reading about. There wasn't one central location where exotic food and drinks could be found. "We want to become the Amazon of gourmet food," Tommy says. "I don't want regular food on our site. Each artist that we work with has their own unique products and style whether it be a soda maker from France or local goods from Petaluma."
The site is beautiful. Purple Menu's team, based in Silicon Valley, takes the majority of the pictures for all of the goods sold and it shows. That won't scale well, but if they can find a way to do it and maintain the crisp quality, they will continue to differentiate themselves. With sites like Foodzie and others pivoting into different types of business models, there looks to be a good opportunity for this product to fill a need for creators and buyers.
At a recent show for local food makers, the Purple Menu team signed up 100 interested venders who will be listing their products on the site starting next week. When they launch they'll have over 500 unique products available for purchase. "Our goal is to help you discover food you've never tried before. The venders want us to grow because it only means upside for them," Tommy said.
The business model is simple in that they either sell the goods at a retail price and pay out the standard wholesale rate to the food makers, or they do deals with the food makers and sell the goods at a discount taking a percentage. The product is launching next week and if they can gain critical mass they have an opportunity to be disruptive in the massive gourmet food market.
