June 30, 2004 -- GreatFoodsDirect.com is the vision of two e-commerce veterans who share a passion for specialty foods, food & wine, and anything gourmet. Steve Leous – who has spent most of his career in the food industry, and Steve Eckfield, a key behind-the-scenes technologist for VerticalNet, joined forces to launch this new online specialty food distributor.

CEO Leous explained, “Most small natural food and gourmet food suppliers who have tried to navigate the current food supply channel in the US have neither the resources, expertise, nor patience to get their specialty food products onto supermarket shelves. At the same time, the supermarket business model - tens of thousands of SKU’s, huge stores and a penchant for big deals with big international suppliers – does not fit typical natural food or gourmet food consumers tastes.”

Combine that supply channel friction with a growing appetite among natural-, organic-, and whole-food consumers for newer, innovative and bolder tasting products, and the two think the opportunity is ripe for the concept of selling specialty natural & gourmet foods direct to consumers on the web.

GreatFoodsDirect.com focuses on procuring high quality, natural food & gourmet food products from niche suppliers, aggregating them in a central warehouse and selling them online.

All food products are distributed from the GreatFoodsDirect.com Buffalo, NY, facility. This is a strategically chosen location with about 50% of the US and 60% of the Canadian population within a one-day drive.

GreatFoodsDirect.com has started small, with approximately 100 products, but is planned to scale quickly. “This isn’t Web-Van, nor is the 1990’s where if one could fog a mirror and write ‘dot com’ venture capitalists would step forward with a check,” notes Steve Leous. “We want to make sure the model works for suppliers, consumers and our internal operations before hitting the gas pedal.”