Commentary: Food Network offering shows increasing reach of e-commerce

The expansion of online fulfillment availability is giving retailers new avenues for selling goods via the Internet.



The latest example of how non-traditional e-commerce opportunities are popping up is a just-launched partnership between Food Network and Instacart. The lifestyle network/website does directly sell a variety of cooking-related products and utensils online, but until now has not been involved in the sale of food items.



That has changed. Food Network is teaming up with Instacart to integrate the online grocery delivery service with the Recipe Box and Grocery List features available on FoodNetwork.com and Food.com. The offerings allow consumers to search for online recipes and then create and share shopping lists of the necessary ingredients.



Through a new integration, customers can now also seamlessly add ingredients from a recipe to their Instacart shopping cart, purchase them from a participating local store, select a delivery time, and have Instacart fulfill the order.



No details of how revenue generated from Instacart sales that begin from Recipe Box or Grocery List have been shared, but presumably Food Network receives a share and of course Instacart makes money with every delivery. However, given the popularity of the Food Network, grocers that are part of the Instacart network have a new opportunity to create Instacart sales, without having to do anything. This type of partnership could bring significant benefit to retailers, and could even potentially exist directly between a media entity and retailer without a third party involved.