Due to COVID-19, restaurants, home bakers, and home cooks have taken to selling their delicious dishes online. Foodies can now order tasty treats from the comfort of their homes. However, the ordering process is often complicated and tedious. Most sellers manually message customers to take orders and receive payments, which can be overwhelming and inefficient.
Luckily, a better solution has emerged. A small startup called Cococart is now making waves among sellers in the Philippines. With their unique boast of “creating a shop in 1 minute”, the e-commerce platform has already helped over a thousand businesses around the world build their own website, with no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
The best part? It’s free to use Cococart, thanks to their campaign to support local businesses.
Photo from Cococart
Helping Local Businesses
Founded in 2020 by Derek and Zhicong, the two young entrepreneurs were pushed by a desire to help local businesses who were struggling due to the challenges of COVID-19. As the food industry shifted online during quarantine, they wanted to develop a better solution tailored for home businesses’ needs.
Most businesses and restaurants take orders through direct messages or online forms. However, it is time-consuming and unreliable as they need to manually check for new orders, leaving room for some to slip through the cracks. For customers, the experience can be just as annoying. Busy sellers can sometimes take more than a day to confirm an order, and the process may involve a lot of back and forth discussion regarding the menu, delivery fees, and payment method. All this discourages customers from going through the hassle of shopping on social media…
That is where Cococart comes in. Priding themselves on the simplicity and functionality of their design, the site offers a wide range of must-have features, such as the ability to pay by credit card and bank transfers, or setting inventory and calendar availability.
Simple and Fast to Get Started
Here’s how it works:
- Visit the Cococart website.
- Create a new shop in just 1 minute.
- Put your shop address online for customers to visit.
Orders, payments, and inventory can all be managed from the intuitive dashboard, and further customization of your store’s design is also available.
Photo from Cococart
To help small businesses, the basic features of the site are free to use. Businesses can choose to upgrade and unlock additional features, such as promo codes, bulk discounts, custom domains, and analytics. Upgrades begin at only $5/month.
Expanding into the Philippines
The site initially started in Singapore and has rapidly picked up steam around the world. The Philippines is the latest market where it’s made a splash. Amy’s Oven, a beloved Manila-based bakery that offers mouthwatering homemade “sourdoughnuts” and cookies, recently made the jump over to Cococart, and are loving the decision.
Photo from Cococart
“Cococart takes away the difficulties of having to do inventory on my own,” said founder and owner Amy. “With their system, it automatically tells me how many orders I have to fulfill and how many more orders I can take.”
Photo from Cococart
“Cococart also saves a lot of time for both me and the customer since all the details are already there when they click through the order form. It gives me more time to focus on baking & other work!”
The Future of Online Stores
With the population of home chefs and businesses continuing to grow, Cococart looks to be a valuable tool to help entrepreneurs take their business online. Their most recent initiative, #SupportSmallBusiness, has them partnering up with local businesses and offering exclusive promos to get started selling online. As more consumers flock towards social media sellers, there’s no better time than now to join the home business wave.
Looking to take your business online? Head over to Cococart and create your own shop today! Don’t miss out on this opportunity to bring your business to the next level.
