PastaCheese Review — Gourmet Food Comparison (2012)

PastaCheese is much more than its name suggests.  Your initial thought may be that this website simply sells Pasta and cheese.  This is not the case.  Not only does this site offer both fresh and dried produce, often at discounted process, it also offers a wide range of other products and services.  These include a catering service, prepared meals, gift baskets, gift certificates, kitchen wares, cookery books and many other items.  These items are simply ordered via PastaCheese and then delivered to your home.  When you spend over certain amounts of money on the site, then discounts are offered using a coupon code from the homepage.  In addition to this, the site also has a recipes page and an affiliate program.  There is a strong Italian American theme to the produce and services offered by this site although they do also have a section for Spanish food.

Although there are many sites where you can buy high quality grocery items, one of the key differences with this site is that it focuses mainly on Italian food.  Also, usually when a site sells groceries, they often don't sell other wares.  PastaCheese offers quite a diverse selection of produce and additional services, including catering and an affiliate program.  The way in which the produce is categorized in the subsections of the website is also different to many other similar sites.  Whilst other sites may divide product up into dried food, fresh food, frozen food, etc., this site has many categories that cover specific product types.  For example, there are subsections for caviar, olives and salami.  

PastaCheese is far from being alone in this area of the market.  There are many other sites that offer similar products.  One example of this is Gourmet Food Store.  It is immediately clear from the homepage that this site is very different to PastaCheese, even though they are rivals in the same field.  Whereas PastaCheese has a strong focus on Italian gourmet foods, Gourmet Food Store has several different international cuisines on offer.  

Another leading rival of PastaCheese's is Nibble Gourmet Market.  Again, this is an American based gourmet food website.  This site is similar to PastaCheese in the sense that it offers featured produce on the homepage and that the actual products that are sold are very similar.  However, the shopping experience with this site is completely different as you can shop by product, recipient, price, occasion and holiday.

Pricing And Packaging

When it comes to the issue of pricing and packaging, it is going to be really difficult making accurate comparisms. This is because, though the gourmet might be similar, the quality and specialty does differ. The better way to do the price and packaging comparison would be to consider the discount on the purchases made.

For PastaCheese, making a purchase of $50 or above on any products entitles you to $5 discounts while on $100 or above entitles you to a $10 discounts. Every club member is entitled to 5% discount on all purchases.

Gourmet Food Store offers 10% discount on next purchases after joining their club which is free.

Nibble Gourmet Market also offers 10% discount on all their purchases.

Considering the packages, PastaCheese is definitely the better option.

Overall the reviews for this site are positive.  The ease of suing the site and ordering products ahs been commended, as has the delivery and customer service.  People who have bought products from the site feel that their goods were to the standard that should be expected from a retailer claiming that their goods are of gourmet standards.  Reviews also suggest that the packaging of the products is good and that they feel that they have received value for money.  Very little negative feedback can be found about PastaCheese with just a few customers having problems with ordering on the site or with getting coupons accepted.