Choo Choo R Snacks says web will drive up beef jerky sales
In an example of how the web helps even small, niche retailers significantly expand their market, Choo Choo R Snacks Inc.’s recently launched ChooChooRSnacks.com is expected to add 15% or more to the company’s $2 million in annual sales of beef jerky, co-founder and CFO Paul Squires tells InternetRetailer.com.
He says Choo Choo R Snacks had resisted launching a web site for years out of fear it would be too costly, until he discovered a $500 shopping cart system from ComCity Corp. “We didn’t want to get held hostage by an outside design team and have to pay big fees,” he says. He adds that Lebanon, PA-based Choo Choo R Snacks also wanted to avoid the possibility that to maintain continual service from an outside vendor, it might lose control over where its web server was located.
The site, which debuted last month, is generating incremental sales from consumers who can’t buy Choo Choo R Snacks’ Buffalo Bill’s beef jerky in their local stores, Squires says. The company’s traditional market has been in selling to wholesalers who distribute the beef jerky to convenience stores and other retail outlets.
Squires says he chose to build a shopping cart system with ComCity’s SalesCart PRO software because it could be developed as part of the Microsoft Front Page web site design tool and because it could be run on any server location Choo Choo R Snacks wants to use. “We didn’t want our shopping cart on a third-party server,” he says.
He notes that the $500 package price includes two plug-ins, one that connects to credit card processing and one that enables customers to get real-time shipping costs from UPS based on the weight of their order.
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