Domain Game: G.O.A.T. Foods URL Strategy To Success
Typically, a brand idea comes before the website is created. One company is making a case for doing the opposite.
G.O.A.T Foods might not sound familiar, but it is the owner and operator of multiple online storefronts selling gourmet snacks and sweets with generic one-word names like Caramels.com and Licorice.com, among others. The nearly four-year old business secured $10 million in July as it scales in ecommerce with a host of new websites that will expand its reach into more categories.
What started in October 2020 with the success of Licorice.com quickly spun out into four more domains — Pretzels.com, Caramels.com, Chocolate.com and Taffy.com — over the course of the ensuing four years. The Delray Beach, Fla.-based operation employs around 80 people between its office and the fulfillment facility where it handles somewhere between 3,000 to 7,000 packages a day across the five websites.
In the next 90 days, the company is expected to go live on its next three websites: Cupcakes.com, Cookies.com and Truffles.com. The cupcakes and cookies websites will be a partnership with Dana’s Bakery and the Wolfgang Puck brand is behind the truffles.
The new ventures with recognizable producer names will help “elevate the brand and put personality” behind the new offerings, said G.O.A.T. Foods co-founder Jonathan Packer, who launched the company with his brother-in-law and father-in-law.
The value of owning the domains stems not just from being one of the first hits from Google searching a familiar food product like pretzels or taffy but holds a certain amount of “respect from the customer,” Packer said. “If you have Licorice.com you probably know what you’re talking about.”
That cachet stretches even further to the manufacturing partners who are supplying the products that G.O.A.T. Foods is selling on its direct-to-consumer sites, Packer added. “A lot of co-manufacturers don’t even have capacity, but when they hear you’re Caramels.com, they want to work with you.”
The company has spent money on television advertising where it has seen sales metrics grow as consumers seem to have an easier time remembering a simple, one-word food product name to search online, Packer said.
The strategy can be compared to the successful ecommerce strategy behind another generic food name website: Nuts.com. Packer conceded that as G.O.A.T. Foods started to gain steam, there was competition building between Nuts.com and Packer’s various websites. After being introduced to former Nuts.com CEO and current chairman Jeffrey Braverman, there is a much more congenial relationship between the two ecommerce companies. Packer now calls Braverman a “good friend” and even a “business coach.”
New Investement For New URLs
Before G.O.A.T. Foods, Packer worked in finance in New York City but was drawn into the CPG food space through his father-in-law, Warren Struhl, who is a serial entrepreneur with over 30 years founding companies like Popcorn, Indiana and Sheets Energy Strips.
Yet, the rapid success of the ecommerce businesses haven’t just come from customers tapping taffy into a search engine and buying a box of sweets.
“They have a really interesting supply chain that’s really more of an inventory management system, and how they fulfill DTC orders really weighs on technology and efficiency,” said Lago Innovation Fund co-founder Heather La Freniere.
The investment firm, which is focused on non-dilutive growth capital, became G.O.A.T. Foods’ first institutional investor last month, providing $10 million last month that was a mix of debt and equity.
“COVID made it really difficult to get on-shelf. And now with inflation it’s just so hard to scale a brand at a margin that allows you to ever become self-sustaining,” La Freniere said. “G.O.A.T. stands out in that regard. They’ve really built a nice business picking the right categories and using fulfillment technology that allows them to continue to add more names and to build a business profitably.”
The process of buying the rights to these various websites has not been the same each time. For example, Chocolate.com was brought to G.O.A.T. Foods in June 2023 after the company had successfully launched Licorice.com, Pretzels.com and Caramels.com.
Packer wouldn’t comment on how much was paid for any of the domains but referenced that the former owner of Chocolate.com paid “seven figures” in 2019.
Along with the three new websites launching by the end of the year, G.O.A.T. Foods also owns the rights to Bagels.com and Cashews.com, which are expected to go live in 2025.
Leveraging the success so far, G.O.A.T. Foods is also planning to move into brick-and-mortar, where it is exploring both options of opening its own storefronts or partnering with existing retail chains.
G.O.A.T. Foods had been bootstrapped up until July, but the company’s 250% year-over-year growth had it looking for additional capital to support its current businesses, Packer said.
