Tag Archives: Ken Cassar

About 4277 days ago E-Commerce

Food for Thought

Markets The online grocery business just keeps growing. So why can’t anybody make any money at it? Here’s a conundrum: On one hand, the market for online grocery retailing has been thriving. Only last spring research firm Jupiter Media Metrix pegged it at $1 billion, up from $600 million last year and $200 million the year before. More than a million people buy at least some of their food on the Web. On the other hand, this apparently booming market is littered with casualties. Streamline, HomeRuns, and other early entrants are dead. Peapod had to be rescued by deep-pocketed acquirers and still isn’t close to overall profitability. Webvan, which had 46% of the industry’s sales, went under in July — an event that led Jupiter to cut its 2001 projection by about $200 million. So it is with new markets: they don’t exist in the abstract. On the contrary, a market appears only when a company’s business model allows it to create and maintain one. Dissect the key elements of online food and you understand why this particular market is so tenuous. In the grocery business, a 2% to 3% return on sales is considered healthy. Supermarkets earn that thin margin only by rigorously controlling three kinds of costs. They keep cost of goods low by buying in huge volume — “full truckloads of the same product straight from the factory,” as Tim Laseter, vice-president in Booz-Allen & Hamilton’s operations practice, puts it. They control marketing expenses by attracting regular (repeat) customers and by enticing those customers to spend nearly all of their food budget at the store. They minimize labor costs by getting shoppers to assemble their own orders and transport them home. Can the three elements of this business model be adapted to online selling? The answers are yes, maybe, and probably not. Buying power? Yes (with help). Webvan, flush with cash from its initial public offering, expanded rapidly into several metropolitan areas. That would have created large-scale buying volume, except that none of the markets grew as fast as Webvan had hoped. Smaller Peapod, running into trouble, stumbled on a more fruitful approach: it sold itself to giant Royal Ahold, the Netherlands-based owner of Stop & Shop and other U.S. chains. Suddenly, Peapod could take advantage of Royal Ahold’s $30-billion-a-year buying clout. Its cost of goods fell 5% to 7%. Marketing? Maybe. Any online seller must persuade customers to give it a try. But low-margin grocers must persuade shoppers to use the service week in and week out. That’s a tough order: any glitch in Web-site operations or order fulfillment discourages repeat business. Worse, customers may rely on Web ordering for only a portion of their groceries — packaged goods, say. “If a store has only a quarter of my grocery budget, they have to acquire three other customers just like me” to make it up, says Jupiter senior analyst Ken Cassar, who follows the industry. “That’s expensive.” The jury is still out on whether the customer base will stabilize. A survey last spring by Gomez Inc. found that 11% of Internet users had ordered groceries online during the previous three months. About the same percentage of users had once ordered groceries online but not during that three-month period. Labor? Oops. Self-service supermarkets drove neighborhood stores out of business partly by economizing on labor costs. Online stores reverse the trend: they pay employees to assemble and deliver the order yet still hope to offer competitive prices. The secret to this economic sleight of hand was supposed to be technology: state-of-the-art warehouses, wearable scanners, and elaborate software to ensure fast, error-free picking and packing; and sophisticated routing software to minimize drivers’ delivery time. Does it work? Webvan’s high-tech, $30-million-a-pop distribution centers were designed to cut head count 40%, says Booz-Allen’s Laseter, and might actually have done so if they had ever operated at capacity. None came close. Peapod last spring claimed to be turning an operating profit in one market, Chicago. But look at the numbers. Gross margin per order, $47. Cost of assembly and delivery, $31. Allocation of fixed expenses and partial corporate overhead, $13. That leaves a “profit” of $3, except that the calculation still excludes all marketing costs and the remaining overhead. Still, what’s a grocer to do? Raise delivery charges too much — or make customers pick up orders at a store — and you may shrink the market beyond recognition. There are lessons to be drawn from the story so far. The online grocery industry may be booming, but it has been propped up by all the free money that investors once poured into dot-com dreams such as Webvan’s. If the industry lasts — and it may not because of those intractable labor costs — it will be a tough, low-margin business of uncertain size. Why did anybody ever think it would be otherwise? John Case is a contributing editor at Inc. Cream of the Crop One Web grocer is making money: Tesco, the big British chain, which expects online sales this year of about $420 million. The secret? In-store picking and packing, says the company, which saves the cost of building warehouses. A harder-to-copy advantage: location. “Margins for grocers in the U.K. are 6% to 8%, versus 2% in the United States,” says Miles Cook, vice-president and director of Bain & Co.’s supply-chain practice. “At those margins you can afford to offer delivery.” Still, the Tesco model presents problems of its own. A store’s online service may cannibalize its existing customer base and thus produce correspondingly lower margins. Get enough customers, points out analyst Ken Cassar of Jupiter Media Metrix, and suddenly your in-store pickers are fighting with moms or dads for that last package of strawberry Pop-Tarts. “The bigger it gets, the more poorly it works,” he says. Incubator High Concept The Loan Ranger Eyes on the Rides You’re Nobody Till Somebody Collects You When I Snap My Fingers, You Will Wake Up and Go National Dossier Enter the Dragon Search InfoPosse Main Street Where Men are Men and Women Buy Limoges Markets Food for Thought Seen And They’re Off 60-Second Business Plan Hell-Bent for Lather Business for Sale Hey, Sailor, Wanna Get Lucky? Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4520 days ago E-Commerce

Online Grocer Fails to Deliver the Goods

Four years after profiling Streamline.com in its Anatomy of a Start-Up series in November 1996, Inc. magazine checked back in to find the company defunct due to its poorly conceived e-commerce model. Here’s a brief overview of what went wrong. Company: Streamline.com Formerly: Streamline Inc. Founder: Tim DeMello Vital signs then: DeMello started a Massachusetts-based service that provided home delivery of groceries and picked up and dropped off movie rentals, dry cleaning, and film. Each customer paid $30 a month for Streamline to deliver groceries weekly and stock them in a box (consisting of a freezer, a refrigerator, and a few open shelves) located in the customer’s basement or garage. In contrast to services like Peapod Inc. that set up partnerships with local grocery stores, Streamline operated its own warehouse. DeMello, with $5 million in the bank, projected revenues of $1.1 million for 1996 and nearly $50 million for 1998. What the experts said: Although one was enthusiastic about the potential for market acceptance, he warned that some customers might find the once-a-week delivery too infrequent. Another expert suggested that at-home grocery shoppers usually liked to be around when the bags arrived, so they could inspect the contents. Finally, noted a third observer, if DeMello couldn’t convince a large number of shoppers in enough cities they needed his services, profits would be pint-sized. Vital signs now: After the original Anatomy article appeared, Web shopping exploded, and Streamline decided to capitalize on the trend by adding the dot-com suffix before it went public, in June 1999. Pricing the offering at $10 a share, Streamline raised $45 million. But for the six months ending July 1, 2000, it lost $23 million, and its stock price dropped to less than $3. In September, Peapod, a Streamline competitor, acquired the ailing company’s Washington, D.C., and Chicago assets for about $12 million in cash. It also agreed to assume Streamline’s lease obligations in those locations. In November, Streamline announced it was discontinuing its service. What the experts say today: “The online grocery model is very expensive to start up and maintain,” says Ken Cassar, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research in New York City. Cassar notes that distributing perishables and nonperishables costs non-brick-and-mortar grocers a pretty penny. “And add to that Streamline’s refrigerator-in-a-garage model, and it becomes a more daunting model,” he says. Then there’s the tomato problem. “People tend to be rather particular about their tomatoes and other produce items. It takes a big leap of faith to allow someone else to pick your tomatoes,” Cassar says. As reported by Anne Marie Borrego. Copyright © 2001 G+J USA Publishing

About 4581 days ago PCs, Laptops, and Notebooks

Bulletin Board

Getting In on the E-Signature Game Over the centuries, signatures have come in many forms, from a simple mark to a copperplate John Hancock to the imprint of an intricately carved ivory seal. Now the U.S. Congress has added “electronic sound, symbol, or process” to the list. That’s how electronic signature is defined in the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, which went into effect on October 1. In principle, the term’s broad definition means that signing one’s name can be as simple as sending an E-mail or pressing 1 on a Touch-Tone phone. But companies doing business online could opt for more sophisticated technologies should they desire a higher level of security and comfort. Anyone can create digital signatures using common desktop applications, such as Microsoft Outlook, Netscape Communicator, and Adobe Acrobat. While those signatures are images, Montreal-based onSign, a unit of Silanis Technology, offers free software for script aficionados that embeds a digital signature in the image of a user’s handwritten name. A digital signature operates by matching two “keys” — very large numbers used to encrypt information. You use your private key to generate a signature. You then send (or store online) a digital certificate containing your public key with each signed document. The certificate explains who you are to the document’s recipient, and the public key allows him or her to verify your signature. If the keys don’t match — or if the document has been altered since you signed it — the verification attempt will fail. In many simple digital-signature programs, users issue their own certificates. That method may be adequate among correspondents who know one another, explains Lisa Pretty, executive director of the PKI Forum, a public-key-technology industry group. If additional security is necessary, companies such as Dallas-based AlphaTrust Corp. can fill the breach by issuing users a digital ID that allows the recipient of their documents to verify their identities and validate their electronic signatures. In the end, ensuring 100% validity when it comes to digital identities may not be possible. But signature verification in the paper world isn’t foolproof either, says Rick Lane, director of E-commerce and Internet technology at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “There’s no difference,” he says. “Those concerns don’t change.” –Mary Kwak The E-Sign Law: Just the Facts Electronic signatures and records have the same legal validity as handwritten signatures. No one can be required to use or accept electronic signatures or records. States can preempt the new law by adopting the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (which is technology neutral) or by enacting laws that similarly do not specify which technologies qualify as electronic signatures. The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act does not apply to certain documents, including wills, divorce papers, and court orders. Source: Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act. High-Wired Competition As recently as five years ago, nothing in New York City symbolized the financial ruthlessness of the 1980s more than a vacant building at 55 Broad St., just west of the New York Stock Exchange. Once the home of Drexel Burnham Lambert Group Inc., the 400,000-square-foot structure sat empty for five years after the giant securities firm collapsed into bankruptcy, in 1990. Desperate to find tenants, the Rudin Management Co. upgraded the building by installing state-of-the-art wiring, then offered the space to high-tech start-ups at bargain rates. From the start, Rudin Management executives insisted they were creating a community, a place where creative entrepreneurs could “cross-pollinate.” John Gilbert, Rudin’s chief operating officer, says tenants cooperate in a variety of ways, from embarking on joint ventures to sharing ideas and services. Ultimately, that’s how it worked for Thomas Pennell, CEO of Pennell Venture Partners, which has been a tenant at 55 Broad St. for more than four years. Initially, he says, he didn’t interact much with his neighbors, mostly other struggling start-ups. More recently, though, the building has attracted bigger, better-known technology companies; as a result, Pennell says, he’s done some deals with his workplace neighbors and expects more to follow. But other people get a little nervous about working side by side with potential competitors. Rudin Management “put a nice spin on it,” says Charles Smith-Semedo, CEO of NewMedia Technology Corp., based at 55 Broad. But in Smith’s opinion, any serious networking happens outside the front door. “When you get on the elevator, everybody stops talking,” he says. Meanwhile, even the most community-minded businesses watch their neighbors for signs of failure. When one Internet start-up directly below Pennell’s space failed, the venture capitalist says, “we just took their furniture and wished them well.” –Anne Stuart Healthy Skepticism for ASPs Application service providers (ASPs), software companies that manage data for you on the Web, are struggling to convince small-business owners that the ASP model is a secure one. Now Accpac, a subsidiary of Computer Associates, has started one of a few partner programs in which accounting firms host Accpac applications on their Web sites. Through those programs, small-business owners can begin using the ASP offerings through companies they already know and trust. Another small-business anxiety: even though the whole point of the ASP model is that it allows data to live anywhere, many CEOs want their data to remain physically close to home. So Accpac has built regional data centers. CEOs “like it that their data is in a building they can drive to, surrounded by fences and guard dogs,” says Robert Lavery, vice-president of strategic alliances for Accpac, only half joking. And small-business owners are absolutely right to be wary, says Joseph Fuccillo, a senior vice-president at Xand Corp., a Hawthorne, N.Y., company that provides hosting hardware and services to ASPs. “If you’re going to outsource any business-critical data, you should go see the facility and make sure it’s not in someone’s garage,” he says. –Jill Hecht Maxwell Things We Love Pat O’Neill’s monthly mailings to prospective new accounts were getting a little stale. Her solution: CD-ROM business cards. First she filmed a three-minute commercial for O’Neill Benefits Group Brokerage, her four-employee benefits-intermediary business in Boulder, Colo., and sent it to Microbizcard Inc., of Toronto, which burned it onto CDs the size of business cards. O’Neill paid about $2 per disc, though Microbizcard has since dropped its prices to $1.50 per unit with a purchase of 500 discs. Microbizcard offers the discs in the customer’s choice of 12 standard shapes, such as squares and ovals, or cuts them into custom designs, such as a pair of boxing gloves or a can of soda. CD-ROM business cards have been around for about three years. What’s new, says Microbizcard vice-president Dionne Skinner, is that the cards can now hold all kinds of multimedia goodies and even have E-commerce capability. The downside: Some computers won’t play the business cards without an adapter. Still, O’Neill remains eager to mail out her multimedia missives along with the regular, paper business cards. “One day CD-ROM business cards will be all over the place, and once people have a pile of them, they won’t stick them into their machines,” she says. “But right now, even if they pop them in for a minute, I look good.” –J.H.M. Tracking Tech Time At first glance the job he’d done on the pet-themed Web site seemed a job well done to Todd Jones. His Internet consulting company, Semtor Inc., had built the site efficiently — or so he thought. But when it came time to bid on the next job, Jones took a closer look. It turned out that his company had invested 1,724 person-hours in the pet site, 124 more than it had figured into the price. “That cost us about $6,000,” Jones says. Jones knew the exact numbers because Semtor, based in Weston, Fla., uses professional services automation (PSA) software from Toronto-based Changepoint Corp. ( www.changepoint.com). Invented by techies for techies, it helps consultants figure out what to charge before a job begins and how to track their services once a project is under way. The software is licensed for a onetime fee of $500 to $2,000 per user. Customers can also rent it from Changepoint over the Internet for $70 and up per user per month. Companies are also using Changepoint to help their own technology departments track their costs — and justify their budgets. For instance, at Integris Health Inc., a health-care network based in Oklahoma City, the 160-person IT division is planning to use the software to send dummy bills to other departments to chart how it’s spending its time. “When the VP of a different division says, ‘I don’t get anything out of IT,” explains Integris IT director Cynthia Hilterbrand, “we can say, ‘That’s interesting. We gave you 2,000 man-hours.” PSA’s ultimate value may be as a management tool for projecting costs for future work. Jones says that the detailed information that Changepoint provided on the pet-site job allowed Semtor to bid for its next job more accurately. Integris, too, plans to use its new knowledge about IT work demands to budget IT staff time. –Jane Salodof MacNeil Outsourcing IT: What It Costs Application Maintenance: $250,000 to $100 million for a three year to five year contract Hardware Support: $2,000 to $1 million annually Application Service Provider: Either $20 to $2,000 per user per month or up to 10% of revenues per transaction Call Center: $100,000 to $2 million annually Web-Site Hosting: $20 to $100,000 monthly Custom Development Project: $2,000 to $100 million, depending on the length of the contract Source: Ian S. Hayes, president, Clarity Consulting Inc., Hamilton, Mass. Wanted: Tomb Raider Computer games are really starting to get down to business. The University of California at Irvine is launching a 10-course program next semester called Gaming Studies. The program melds graphic arts, computer science, social sciences, and performing arts. UC assistant professor Robert Nideffer, who got the ball rolling and holds graduate degrees in computer arts and sociology himself, expects the gaming-studies field to become even more popular than film studies has been. Several other schools have gotten on the bandwagon as well. Nongaming companies should keep an eye out for gaming grads. “Building a game is a very sophisticated project-management environment,” notes Brian Reithel, president of the Foundation for Information Technology Education, the research arm of the Association of Information Technology Professionals. –J.H.M. Hot Tip: Limo as Mobile Office As Steve Healis’s janitorial-services company, Avalon Building Maintenance Inc., of Anaheim, Calif., was expanding, the CEO found himself spending 8 to 10 hours a week just driving to customer sites and division offices throughout southern California. To catch up on the work he wasn’t getting done while on the road, Healis ended up working extra nights and weekends. His solution: a mobile office. Healis and division managers now travel in one of three vans or a limousine, all outfitted with an inverter, a device that lets them use laptops, printers, and fax machines en route. The vehicles each cost about $55,000, plus $1,000 for the inverter. Janitors who do detail work at customer sites do the driving. When Healis visits potential customers, he can go out to the car, work up a proposal, and, he says, return it to the customer five minutes later. He credits the mobile offices with allowing him and his managers to handle more work during the company’s growth spurt — $150,000 a month in business each, compared with the $100,000 they did a month before they got the equipped cars. (Avalon Building Maintenance is on track to do $8 million in business in 2000.) But Healis acknowledges that he sometimes gets a bit uncomfortable riding around in the limo. Referring to the few times the paparazzi have mistaken him for a celebrity when he pulls up to a job on Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive, he says, “I just want to say, ‘No, I’m the janitor!’ ” –Julia Ramey Seeing Blue What is it about the color blue? We’ve noticed more and more companies — especially high-tech and Internet businesses — copping the cool tone for use in their names. Perhaps CEOs want their businesses to grow up to be IBM, or maybe they’re just huge Cookie Monster fans. Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute, in Carlstadt, N.J., counsels companies on how customers react to colors. “Invariably, when we show people a blue swatch, we get the same kind of response: words like constant, loyal, dependable, and always there for you,” Eiseman says. “It comes from the mind’s association of blue with the sky and water — things that are never going to go away.” In other words, true-blue. Here’s a list of just a few of the blue-toned businesses we’ve come across: Bleu22 Studios Blue Dog Multimedia Blue Dot Interactive Bluefly Inc. Blue Hypermedia Blue Martini Software Bluemercury Blue Moon Internet Services Blueprint Technologies Blue Pumpkin Software Blue Shoe Technologies Blue Sky Internet Inc. –J.H.M. Who’s Afraid of E-Commerce? Less than a fifth of U.S. small businesses sell online, according to IDC, a research group in Framingham, Mass. But never underestimate the power of the Net. By 2005, Americans will spend more than $632 billion in stores as a direct result of research they’ve conducted online — more than triple what they’ll fork over when shopping electronically, says Jupiter Research senior analyst Ken Cassar of New York City. –J.H.M. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4886 days ago E-Commerce

Upstarts: Convenience Cuisine

What’s Cooking On-line? If you’re not sure where your next meal is coming from, you might try the Internet The Web’s next killer app? Think arugula. A host of entrepreneurs are convinced that, just as the on-line arena has changed the way we communicate, shop, and invest, it will change the way we seek sustenance as well. “People have to eat three times a day, but even on the brink of the new millennium, nobody has found a way to get more free time,” remarks David Hodess, the 37-year-old CEO and cofounder of Cooking.com, one of the new players catering to today’s time-starved — and just plain starved — consumers. Along with former Disney Store executive Hodess, refugees from Microsoft and PepsiCo, as well as such high-profile venture capitalists as John Doerr, are staking their money and their good names on new sites that promise to point and click consumers to their next meal. What to have for dinner tonight? The next five nights? That dinner party you’ve scheduled for Saturday? Both Hodess’s Cooking.com, in Santa Monica, Calif., and another on-line start-up, Tavolo, in San Rafael, Calif., offer thousands of gourmet products and wares that can help answer those questions. Each site is financed with $50 million in seed funds and is as much an information resource as a culinary E-tailer. Click on either site’s weekly menu planner for week-at-a-glance menu suggestions, with printer-friendly recipes. In addition, both sites offer various foodie bells and whistles. Tavolo’s site (www.tavolo.com) has features that convert recipes from standard to metric measurements, tailor recipes to the number of people being served, and create a shopping list based on your weekly menu. Cooking.com has an on-line glossary for boning up on the history of cognac or determining the precise definition of a zapotilla. But customizable recipes and on-line glossaries are just the marketing bait. What these sites really want to do is sell you stuff. “Providing a free recipe certainly has value for the consumer,” says Ken Cassar, an electronic-commerce analyst with Jupiter Communications, an Internet consulting company in New York City. “But it’s also a great opportunity to sell mortars and pestles.” As Tavolo founder and CEO Kevin Applebaum is fond of noting, with $55 billion in total sales (both on-line and on terra firma), the market for cooking products and gourmet foods represents a huge category. The leading national retailer of cooking supplies — Williams-Sonoma — has a market share of less than 1%. But Applebaum, who honed his marketing skills at PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble, also knows he’s not alone in spotting cooking sites’ potential. Numerous national retailers, from Macy’s to the aforementioned Williams-Sonoma, are also chasing the ever-expanding on-line opportunity. So is the ubiquitous Martha Stewart, whose Web site, launched in 1997, is in the process of receiving a $25-million tune-up, courtesy of new investor Kleiner Perkins and its general partner, John Doerr. The real challenge for all the gourmet sites, says another Jupiter Communications analyst, Michael May, will be to get the people who purchase gourmet food and wares on-line to go from buying gifts to buying for themselves. The majority of the $200 million in on-line sales of small appliances and gourmet-food items last year occurred during the fourth quarter, for holiday gifts, notes May. Arugula-artichoke-with-roasted-garlic pesto pasta sauce may make for a terrific gift, but it isn’t what people are buying for their own dinner tables — at least not tonight. Cyberconsumption Food and kitchen supplies may not be the biggest on-line shopping category at the moment (books currently hold that honor), but according to Jupiter Communications, they’re where the growth will be between now and 2003. Odds are, Peapod and its ilk will eventually outpace their Amazonian counterparts. Projected on-line consumer spending, by category 1999 2003 % change (in billions) Groceries $0.2 $7.5 3,650% Housewares $0.1 $1.5 1,400% Specialty gifts* $0.1 $1.0 900% Music $0.3 $2.6 766% Apparel $0.8 $6.7 738% Videos $0.2 $1.1 450% Toys $0.3 $1.6 433% Electronics $0.4 $2.1 425% Flowers $0.2 $0.8 300% Books $1.3 $4.9 278% *Gourmet food makes up a significant percentage of this category. Source: Online Consumer Spending Forecast, Jupiter Communications, September 1999. Party of 10? Click Here Sure, much of the on-line cooking sector caters to aspiring chefs. But what if you and the kitchen aren’t on speaking terms? And you happen to like it that way? Take heart. A crop of new sites seek to gratify the pantry-phobic as well. Feel like takeout tonight? San Francisco-based Food.com offers on-line ordering — and, more important, local delivery — from more than 13,000 restaurants nationwide. Feeding your face is merely a matter of entering your zip code and navigating menu offerings. Since restaurants are notoriously low-tech, the company’s server in Seattle translates on-line orders into a fax or a phone call, which is then sent to participating eateries, a service for which Food.com reaps a $400 setup fee, a $50-a-month retainer, and 5% of each order. For those who’d rather dine out, at least two new companies offer on-line reservations. Both foodline.com, in New York City, and OpenTable.com, in San Francisco, are attempting to replace the traditional phone-and-paper-based restaurant-reservation system with a Web-based one. They charge participating restaurants about $200 a month in service and transaction fees (and in OpenTable.com’s case, a $1,000 setup fee). Currently serving a handful of cities, both plan to be nationwide and to ultimately link their service directly into the restaurants’ individual point-of-sale systems. They also hope to personalize the diner’s experience. “Imagine being able to remember that Mr. Jones is allergic to shellfish or sending a promotional E-mail to your top 100 August diners,” rhapsodizes former lawyer Paul Lightfoot, Foodline.com’s 29-year-old CEO. CookExpress.com, launched in January 1999, offers an on-line option that’s between cooking from scratch and dining out: a gourmet, ready-to-cook meal sent to your home by FedEx. Founder Darby Williams, 46 — another Microsoft escapee — calls CookExpress.com a “smarter way to cook.” Three-part meals (for example, roasted salmon with herb-caper sauce, potato-olive salad, and baby arugula), each requiring less than 30 minutes to fix, are delivered to your door (currently just in the Bay Area, where CookExpress.com is based) or by overnight delivery nationwide. Prices range from $8 to $15 per serving, plus a single $4.95 local delivery charge or a shipping cost of $12.95 to $16.95 (based on the number of meals). Yeah, but is the stuff fresh? To mollify those squeamish about the idea of filet mignon that arrived through a delivery service (albeit packed in high-tech gelatin ice), the company has devised a system of labeling each package with color-coded dots that change color if the food hasn’t remained chilled. The packaging also indicates how long the food inside should stay fresh (usually two days). Williams boasts that the company has the potential to be a billion-dollar enterprise within five years. He plans to expand the CookExpress.com same-day service into at least 30 U.S. markets as well as another 6 to 8 markets outside the United States — each worth $25 million in his estimation. He also hopes to add a retail component to his distribution. The logistical complexity of such an undertaking actually appeals to Williams, although, he readily concedes, “had I been in the food business before, I probably never would have done this.” Child in the Wild Julia Child is cooking. So who better to ask about the marriage of virtual and victual reality? And, surprise! She’s all for it, having become Web-friendly and computer-adept herself during her many years of bringing haute cuisine to the masses. Contributing writer Alessandra Bianchi caught up with the culinary grande dame at her home in Cambridge, Mass. Inc.: Do computers and cooking mix? Child: They certainly do. It’s marvelous what computers can do for you when you’re cooking. In fact, A La Carte Communications, the producer of my new television series with Jacques Pepin, has a site, Alacartetv.com, and it has everything on there! You can get TV schedules, cookbooks, even précis of our upcoming shows. Inc.: Do you use a computer in your work? Child: Yes, I have had a computer since they first came out. I use it for writing. I used to do my books in longhand, but word processing is so much easier, for a clear copy and for cleaning up. Recently, I started using the Web to find books — cookbooks from London, for example — and it was a snap. It’s tremendously useful for getting products, too. By clicking on www.fromages.com, you can get real French cheese directly from France, even though you’re a person and not a company! Inc.: But would a serious chef log on to the Web for advice, recipes, and menu planning? Child: Perhaps not now. But eventually, quite possibly. Now it’s fairly primitive, and a good chef would already have a recipe in his or her own library. The cooking information on the Web isn’t always complete or easy to find. For example, if you look up fava beans on a search engine, you don’t get much. But the Web sites are particularly good for beginners. One thing the sites haven’t entirely worked out is how you pay for the research you do. Eventually, it will be wonderful. Inc.: What do you think the development of cooking Web sites says about our culture? Child: I think it shows we’re a progressive culture embracing new ideas. It’s incredible, really. Of course, it helps to know what you’re looking for. But what’s happening on the Web is marvelous for cooking.