I Sell Onions on the Internet (2019) | Hacker News Reader

I Sell Onions on the Internet (2019)

deepsouthventures.com

I can buy 3lb of Vidalia onions from Whole Foods right now for $3.99 ($1.33/lb). The prices on his site range from $40 for 5lb ($8/lb) to $110 for 40lb ($2.75/lb). What's the deal with that?

It's great that he found a business that works for him, and this was an enjoyable read, but I'm confused about the value proposition. Is the target audience people who can't buy Vidalia onions from a supermarket due to geography? He mentions putting up a billboard in Georgia, the state where they're grown, so that doesn't seem to be it. Are his onions so much better than other Vidalia onions as to be worth the extra price? If so, I would be more inclined to try them if the site made that clear -- the word "superior" is used in one place, but it's not emphasized or expounded upon, and reads more like puffery than like a full-throated claim of superiority.

Maybe they weren’t as common back in 2019?

Vidalias have been ubiquitous in grocery stores my entire adult life (which is ~20 years)

If you live in a bigger city like Seattle or LA you are probably set when it comes to getting food, even specific onion varieties, but the mail goes everywhere, and there are plenty of places where you don't have those options.

You actually miss the point if you think the prices are a problem. He's got the brand and audience that allows him to charge a higher price. WF onions have no brand or audience they are a commodity.

The website (https://www.vidaliaonions.com/product/) includes shipping costs.

Hi Eurleif, Peter(author) here.. Essentially - for most folks - it's very difficult to find Vidalias at the grocery. If they do, the quality isn't to their liking. And ultimately, my customer want to ensure they're buying genuine Vidalias, as a lot of places mis-mark other 'sweet' onions as Vidalia, and they're not (so they're hot, pungent, etc). Hope that helps!

IMO, the story is not about the onions. It's about building a business from a domain name. A good domain name is worth x10 in marketing. The other HN articles show more of strategy of building around a domain name.

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=deepsouthventures.com

Some folks are VERY particular about their produce.

"universally, the domain name always comes first, the business idea comes second"

The target audience is people who are too lazy to Google "Vidalia onions" and just go to vidaliaonions.com, I guess?

Just as long as you don't sell onion futures on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act

Planet Money podcast on same topic

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/09/19/649273647/epis...

I think what's really strange about this is that it is written as though there is just one kind of onion, whereas any connoisseur will wax poetic about the difference between Walla Walla Sweets, Vidalias, Mauis, Texas varieties, generic yellow, white, and red onions, shallots, leeks, scallions, pearls, cipollinis... so does the law just cover generic yellow onions?

Futures contracts on commodities necessarily assume fungibility of the underlying commodity!

I think the issue is: are tomatoes fungible for onions? What about garlic, or leeks? Or shallots? Just some pretty fuzzy categories.

Best way to find out is to try suing someone using the law and see how far the case goes. Let me know how it ends up!

Ugh.... with this activist supreme court, it's not worth the risk. /s

I totally get that, but I guess that's perhaps part of the conflict between big ag and more traditional farming... or said another way, as a cook, I know the difference between so many varieties of vegetables et. al. and I want very specific types for their unique qualities. But I guess I'm not buying by the ton or train car either.

That article was a ride!

Shipping onions to be reconditioned, like an old alternator.

Onions were a condiment not a food staple?!

I bought a crate of onions from them in 2019 after reading this article. I got many many onions.

They say you can eat them raw, and its true - they are delicious. You still smell like an onion afterward but given the quantity of onions I had, afterwards was a long time.

I brought them to work and ate them during meetings. I can happily report that my calendar became much more clear after that.

Now we need virtual onions

And let me tell you, I buy a case every year and they are the sweetest, most delicious onions I've ever had the pleasure of acquisitioning. Not only is the author a good salesperson, they also do a wonderful job of making their customers thrilled and excited to be repeat customers.

Same! I’ve ordered a case every year since I first saw this, and it’s well worth it. I grew up on the East Coast and got used to being able to just get Vidalias in the grocery season each year in the spring, but when I moved to the West Coast, I discovered that they’re much harder to come by here.

thank you so much, sweettea! Peter (author) here.. truly appreciate the business & support!

I bought 8 kilos of Roscoff onions on the internet, back at christmastime. I gave several kilos to various relatives; I have a couple of kilos left.

Roscoff onions are recommended by French chefs, particularly for making onion soup and tarte a l'oignon.

Roscoff onions have bite; but they are also sweet, and can be scrumped like apples. Breton fishermen used to cross the channel with a load of onions and a bicycle, and cycle around the English south coast with strings of onions dangling around their necks, for sale. So for many years, the stereotypical Frenchman (in English eyes) wore a beret, and a white jersey with horizontal blue stripes - the costume of a Breton mariner. This was the "Onion Johnny".

You can't (generally) buy Roscoff onions in British supermarkets. I've heard of sightings, but I've never seen them myself.

Roscoff onions are seasonal (I think the harvest is late autumn), and they don't keep very well unless you put them somewhere really cool and dark.

Vidalia onions are a new one on me. Maybe they're a US specialty.

Here's a good video on vidalias: https://youtu.be/M2GIXU_WFC0

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132 - April 2019, 441 comments

Vidalia onions make the best onion rings I ever had when dipped in tempura batter and fried in vegetable oil, then salted.

AHEM. Try the superior onion, the Walla Walla Sweet.

Peter (author) here.. Your Walla Wallas are quite tasty, I will admit.. I enjoy them as well (when I can get my hands on)

What’s amazing is that there are only 400 acres of Walla Walla Sweets. So yeah, they are in short supply.

What cracks me up is when I see vidalia onions for sale in Walla Walla. I wouldn’t go to Bordeaux and expect to see Walla Walla cab sav as the special of the week at the local wine shop.

He should add the domain vidalia.onion for the privacy-conscious customers.

.onion version 3 addresses are 56 characters. As far as I understand they're based on a public key so you'd have to brute force creating key pairs until you end up with a fitting address. Duckduckgo for example is duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion

Interesting ways the Internet is enabling business.

The reduction of friction in Information flow, via the internet, is the greatest innovation in the history of mankind.

How about writing?

Scriptures, codified laws, reliable accounting of debts, written history, written correspondence... pretty big deals!

And language itself.

Does anyone else hate onions as much as I do? They make me gag. If I accidentally eat one (happens often due to sloppy food prep) I just want to vomit. They have the taste and smell of sweaty gym socks mixed with a landfill.

Maybe you're sensitive to the sulfur containing compounds which onions have, which give them their "bite" and their pungency, as well as making eyes tear.

No I love onions, they're pretty much used in every dish I make.

Maybe. Is it then weird that I absolutely love garlic? I've surprised some people with that one. They think that because they're in the same family, it would make sense that I'd hate both.

I'm like this. Any amount of onion (cooked or uncooked) in a dish ruins the dish for me. If it completely fried down to the point of being unrecognizable its fine. I happily eat garlic though. I wonder if theres a genetic thing like with cilantro.

My dad overtly hated them, but if cooked long, and hard, barely noticed. My mum used to make a point of adding garlic to things, as long as he only found black fried chunks he was content.

There's food allergy, anaphylaxis, intolerance, sensitivity, and "I don't like it" all mixed up in this.

Rotting onions do stink.

It seems to be a special trick that onions do, to rot from the inside. So the outer copule of layers of the onion are fine, but then there's two layers of mushy brownish stuff, then the onion's core is fine again. You can't tell if your onion's rotting without cutting it open. This can be super-annoying if it's your last onion, because I don't care to use rotting onions.

With respect to tears: my daughter adopted the practice of slicing onions while wearing swimming goggles. I think she was about 12 years old when she first did that; she's 35 now, and is still doing it. She looks a hoot, but looking daft is better than suffering. I think I've developed immunity to sulphenic acid myself.

Contact lenses, for those that wear them, also largely mitigate the tears and stinging.

Onions are actually toxic to many animals, clearly they developed these noxious compounds as a defense mechanism, but then humans developed a tolerance and taste for them! Just another chapter in the ongoing biological "arms race".

Yeah when I chop an onion I sometimes just gotta take a little break.

I use swim goggles as well. :)

> They have the taste and smell of sweaty gym socks mixed with a landfill.

Old onions taste like this to me. My onions need to be fresh and young.

I won't eat raw onions (especially on sandwiches), but onion rings or cooked onions in various dishes are nice. Vidalias in particular make really good onion rings.

I can't eat raw onions, allium intolerance! I can when they are thoroughly cooked.

Same. I am not very picky with food, but I can’t stand raw onions. Among other problems, they overpower everything else.

Nah man, I love onions. Cooked, raw, I'll go full Tony Abbott on them if I have to.

Never go full Tony Abbot, not even for onions.

Certain onions can trigger a gag reflex for me, just like you mention. It's not an intentional thing in my part, my throat just goes NOPE. Generally though, if onions are well-cooked and aren't the dominant ingredient in a dish, I don't notice them.

I'm not a fan. Especially texture, I don't like the mix of crunchy and chewy / rubbery, which means I hate finding bits and pieces of them in my food. Off to the side of plate they go!

Hitchhiking in Japan, I once ended up in Awajishima, a large but rather obscure island between Kobe and the island of Shikoku in Japan. Turns out the island's major export is onions, and I'd arrived at harvest season, when the entire place smelled of overripe and rotting onions. One night there almost put me off onions for life.

Yeah, plenty of people.

welshleeks.com

It's available should any Welsh Tech Farmers want to do something. Leeks are an underrated and highly versatile allium.

Well, that was one impulse purchase.

I live in Wales and in a rural community at least.

That's super!

I grew up in Ceredigion, you'd better make good use of it :)

Looking forward to seeing your article on HN in a few years :)

They also have https://www.onions.com/

Peter (author) here.. yessir, we do .. we had the opportunity to acquire that a few years after this project began, and pulled the trigger to take that name off the market. Aries (our farmer) mainly uses it for email : )

Oh that was a very satisfying read - thanks for sharing. I feel like I must order some Vidalia onions.

I will point out the fortuity of a lot of these events almost like it was destined to happen - i.e. domain let up, individual with capacity/interest to build a business, locality, finding a high quality product read to go D2C etc. I love the chutpah of OP and all the marketing campaigns!

I wonder if other farmers have asked to join the supply side and how the journey has been from upstart to a relative established market position of niche(?) quality product?

I should add I am a fan of quality produce - and we need more people growing good produce and access to markets too support those growers before it disappears to mass farming.

I wonder about food safety. I grow grains like wheat, barley, chickpeas. Would selling 1kg bags online require some sort of food safety standard approval or just give them a vendor dec if they ask for it like selling in bulk.

I'd start by talking to talking to your state's Dept. of Agriculture (or equivalent). But in general, if you're selling only plant products (vs. meat, fish, dairy) that are ~completely unprocessed and safe to store longish-term at room temperature, then I suspect that 99% of the food safety rules & regs do not apply to you.

I knew it'd be Vidalias. [1]

1. https://youtu.be/M2GIXU_WFC0

damn that's one lovely story. go Vidalia man!

thank you Lapsa! (Peter, author here)

What I find interesting is the sweetness of these onions derives from the unusually low sulphur content of the soil they're grown in and not the varietal.

I have to wonder if I could grow these myself and how they compare to red onions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidalia_onion

Supposedly they require a special kind of dirt. [1]

1. https://youtu.be/M2GIXU_WFC0

A business is a business, that's a pretty funny way to enter the food retail space though!

Offtopic: does anyone else think this website scrolls weird? I can't put my finger on it but when I drag up this website just doesn't feel right for some reason. Is my phone being slow?

this is the kind of business that would blow up on tiktok. it's a niche business and people would be captivated by the whole process. theres a guy with millions of followers and views from cleaning pools for example.

Peter (author) here.. we have a tiktok account (https://www.tiktok.com/@vidaliaonions).. I'm gonna try to do a better job uploading farm vids during our 2023 crop : )

This is the third time I've seen this on hackernews and I'm always happy to see it. I comment this everytime this is posted: this is my favorite startup, period. Vidaliaonions.com is American capitalism at its finest. Someone saw a need, fulfilled that need, and continues to fill that need without gimmicks that ruin it's mission to slightly optimize sales.

I always joked about creating a Peanuts Startup with an app and a fleet of guys on scooter delivering at your door bags of peanuts at any hour you need, at the click of a button.

Do you think I could do it into Y Combinator?

I reread this every time it pops up! :) it makes me smile!!

appreciate that, cpfohl! Peter (author) here : )

I have read this story before on HN and every time it brings a smile to my face and idk why.

previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132 (441 comments)

Isn't it illegal to send produce by mail?

What happens to the green tops of the onions?

good for you

Please do not ever bring random produce into a restaurant and ask them to make a meal with it.

It's also a really weird flex to do the most bland, generic, 'safe' form of tourism and brag about how you're such a food connoisseur that you smuggle in your own onions. You're eating at a glorified, floating McDonalds.

Man, relax, it's not worth it getting worked up by an aside quote in a funny article about selling onions online.

I can imagine some uses for vidalia or other sweet onions, but they are not good substitutes for onions. Onions taste good, raw and cooked. If you don't like raw onions, it's perfectly fine to like vidalias, but it's a completely different ingredient rather than a slight variant. I have no use for them, sweet onions offer no advantages in my guacamole or pico de gallo or on a roast beef sandwich or for roasting alongside a chicken.

I'm deeply peeved that trader joes only offers a choice of bagged sweet onions or bagged organic onions: TJ's organic onions get moldy sooo fast.

and while this guy's story of acquiring vidaliaonions.com is cute, it's hardly comparable to say that vidaliaonions.com wrote its own story like one of faulkner's characters. Were Harry and David Faulkner characters?

I think you’re being weirdly dismissive. Anyway that is super weird that Trader Joes doesn’t have non organic yellow onions

I spoke in detail about onions which is not dismissive, who cares if there's a food I don't like? When I was young, endives were bitter, that's why we ate them. Lamb was gamy. Now they've been made mild so more people like them, but at the same time there has been a loss of the foods that I loved.

they have them individually, but I use a lot and bagged is cheaper

Trader Joe's produce is uniformly weak

All of Trader Joe's produce gets moldy really quickly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com