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Selling food online can feel overwhelming in 2025. With dozens of platforms to sell food online, each with different rules, fees, and features, it’s tough to know where to start. Whether you’re a farmer, a new food entrepreneur, a food artisan packaging specialty snacks, or a growing food brand, choosing the wrong platform can result in lost sales, delivery challenges, and regulatory setbacks.
It’s even more frustrating when platforms aren’t built with food sellers in mind. Some limit what you can sell. Others make it difficult to manage local food delivery or track fresh inventory. And trying to scale without the right tools can slow down even the best food business.
This guide breaks it all down clearly. We’ll cover the best platforms to sell food online in 2025, compare their strengths, and help you decide which option fits your business, product, and goals.
Not every platform fits every business. Here are five key factors to evaluate:
Read our step-by-step guide on how to sell a food product successfully.
Before choosing a specific platform, it helps to understand the three main types of online food sales channels. Each category offers different levels of control, visibility, and complexity depending on your business model.
These platforms enable you to create your own branded online store and manage everything, from inventory to checkout and delivery. You’re responsible for bringing in traffic, but you keep full control of your brand, pricing, payment methods, and customer relationships.
Examples: Local Line, Shopify, Squarespace, BigCommerce
Best for: Food brands, farmers, meal services, and grocers who want ownership of their customer base and the flexibility to scale
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Cons:
Read more about the best e-commerce platforms for farms.
Marketplaces act as central hubs where customers browse multiple food sellers in one place. These platforms handle much of the marketing and logistics, making them easier to join, but they often take a percentage of each sale and limit branding options.
Examples: Etsy, Goldbelly, Cookin, Foraged, Amazon, Mercato, Too Good To Go
Best for: Artisanal brands, home chefs, regional producers, and sellers looking for instant exposure or limited setup.
Pros:
Cons:
These platforms let you sell directly through social media platforms or integrate with them using tools like Facebook Shops, Instagram Shopping, or TikTok Shop. While they’re not full e-commerce systems, they offer a simple way to reach followers and take orders, especially for local or small-batch sellers.
Examples: Facebook Shops, Instagram Shopping, TikTok Shop
Best suited for: Home-based food businesses, pop-up vendors, and small producers with a strong local or social media presence.
Pros:
Cons:
Read our ultimate guide to social media marketing for farms and food hubs
Here are the best platforms to sell food products online:
Local Line has become the go-to sales platform for food producers, especially those selling fresh, local, or seasonal items. Built specifically for farmers, butchers, bakers, food hubs and food co-ops, it provides tools that make direct-to-consumer (DTC) and wholesale sales easier to manage.
Local Line has features for building and hosting a food website, managing food subscriptions, inventory management, selling by weight, integrating a Point of Sale system, custom delivery zones, and setting up multiple pickup locations.
For businesses that want full control of online sales while focusing on local communities, Local Line offers a practical, well-supported alternative to more general e-commerce platforms.
Tip: Use Local Line’s Box Builder to create customizable CSA boxes, meal kits, or seasonal bundles. Allowing customers to swap items and personalize their boxes can help boost average order size, reduce excess inventory, and increase retention over time.
Shopify is a widely used e-commerce platform that supports food sellers at various stages, from home-based businesses just getting started to established brands operating at scale. Its flexibility makes it suitable for selling a range of food products.
The platform offers tools to build a custom online storefront, manage inventory, process payments, and connect with customers. It also integrates with delivery services like Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart, which can be useful for businesses offering local fulfilment alongside national shipping.
Shopify’s app marketplace offers a range of free and paid add-ons for subscriptions, pre-orders, bundling, and marketing, although setting everything up can take some time.
Businesses without in-house technical support may need help from a developer or Shopify Partner, especially when implementing more advanced features.
Overall, Shopify works well for food businesses that want full control over their store and are prepared to manage the platform over time. It may be less ideal for sellers looking for a turnkey solution tailored to fresh or local food.
Learn more about Shopify vs other top food e-commerce platforms
Freshline is tailored to food producers that sell both wholesale and direct-to-consumer. This platform works well for meat producers, seafood vendors, bakeries, and meal kit companies. It allows sellers to manage inventory by weight, batch, or unit and can handle complex orders from restaurants or institutions.
One of its biggest advantages is automation. Freshline’s tools let you set availability, manage order cut-offs, and coordinate delivery schedules. For food businesses juggling both retail and B2B sales, these features save time and reduce errors.
Freshline is a good fit for companies that are already growing and need a platform that can scale with them. Pricing varies depending on the complexity of your operation, including warehouse usage and delivery options.
Etsy is still a favourite for small food sellers offering shelf-stable, handmade, or novelty items like jams, cookies, spice blends, and chocolates. It’s quick to set up, offers built-in buyer traffic, and handles payments and reviews.
The downside is that Etsy isn’t built specifically for food. You’ll need to ensure your product qualifies under their policies (generally no perishable or temperature-sensitive items), and you may face competition from non-food items in your category.
For part-time sellers or those looking to build a loyal niche following, Etsy remains one of the easiest and most affordable platforms to get started.
Amazon offers massive reach and robust logistics, making it a logical choice for food companies that are already shipping at scale. Amazon’s Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) program lets sellers store inventory in Amazon warehouses.
Both platforms come with significant requirements. Selling food on Amazon involves strict food safety, packaging, and labelling standards, as well as approval to list in restricted categories. Fees are also higher than most other platforms.
However, for brands with professional packaging, stable shelf life, and ambitions for national reach, this can be a powerful sales channels.
Goldbelly is known for featuring iconic regional foods and gourmet experiences. From Montreal bagels to Texas barbecue, it curates top-quality vendors and offers national delivery to a food-loving audience.
Getting listed on Goldbelly requires an application and approval. Once accepted, you’ll benefit from branding support, subscription box options, and featured marketing placements. The platform takes a commission on sales and handles many of the customer service and logistics concerns.
If your product tells a story and travels well, Goldbelly can significantly boost visibility and credibility.
Foraged is a marketplace for wild and seasonal ingredients like mushrooms, ramps, and truffles. Foraged us highly curated and targets consumers who are looking for unusual or gourmet items.
This platform offers storytelling and product education alongside shopping, which helps justify higher price points. However, they are selective, and availability for sellers is limited. Expect to apply, and possibly wait, before you’re able to join.
If you operate a local grocery store or multi-location food market, platforms like Instacart and Local Express provide specialized tools for building a branded online storefront. These platforms handle delivery zones, third-party integrations, and in-store pickup scheduling.
They are more expensive and require more setup than small-business platforms, but they are essential for grocers that want to compete online without relying solely on larger aggregators.
With so many platforms available, choosing where to sell your food online depends on what you're offering and how you operate. Some platforms are built for mass-market packaged goods, while others focus on handcrafted or gourmet products. But many weren’t designed with the realities of selling fresh, local, or seasonal food in mind.
Local Line is different. Local Line’s e-commerce platform was built specifically for food businesses, whether you're a farmer, run a CSA, manage a food hub, or sell prepared meals in your community. From subscriptions and box building to delivery zones and inventory management by weight, Local Line includes the tools that most general e-commerce platforms simply don’t.
Local Line also has built-in connections with food buyers of all sizes, including Chipotle, Tops Friendly Markets, and Shapiro Produce.
If you're looking for the best platform to sell food online with full control, fair pricing, and features designed for how local food is actually sold, Local Line is a clear and proven choice.
Create a Local Line account to start selling food online - it takes only a few minutes to get started!
A good online food-selling platform should combine strong e-commerce capabilities with tools tailored to food businesses. Look for reliable inventory management that can handle perishable items and, if needed, sales by weight or volume. Flexible delivery and pickup options are key, along with support for multiple payment gateways to make checkout simple for customers. Built-in reporting and analytics help track sales and plan production, while integrations with shipping providers, POS systems, and accounting tools can streamline operations. Platforms like Local Line stand out because they bundle these features with food-specific tools such as subscription management and box building, making it easier to grow and manage a food business effectively.
You must follow provincial or state laws around kitchen certification, food labelling, and product safety. Cottage food laws may allow some home-prepared goods, but these are typically limited to specific non-perishable categories.
Invest in strong product photography, clear labelling, and compelling food product descriptions. Offer multiple delivery or pickup options, and collect reviews to build trust. Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) to help customers find your store via food-related searches on search engines like Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.
Shelf-stable items like dry snacks, coffee, teas, sauces, and spices are among the easiest to manage because they don’t require complex storage or shipping. Locally, baked goods and prepared meals can be successful when paired with pickup or short-range delivery. Fresh products such as meats like beef and pork, seafood, dairy, and vegetables can also be sold online, but they usually require specialized packaging, cold storage, and reliable delivery systems. Finally, gourmet and regional foods, from artisanal cheeses to specialty cured meats or heritage produce, tend to perform well when they are marketed as unique, high-quality, and carefully branded.
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