[spapas82]

Is this actually a business that can make money? My family owns around 1000 olive oil trees in Greece that produce eatable olives and extra virgin olive oil.

The thing is that we always sell the product in intermediates that would pack it up and sell it in a much higher price. I don't know of any small producer that sells the product directly to the consumer. This seems like a very big investment and not really sustainable. Are there other people that are doing it?

Could my knowledge as a software engineer help that family business in any way to be more profitable ?

[satvikpendem]

I sell onions on the Internet [0] is a well known example I've seen, whose author sells Vidalia onions direct to consumers. Another one I know are Miami Fruit [1]. There are no doubt countless examples, but more than software engineering, you need good marketing. If you made an ecommerce site via Shopify (do not code this yourself, it's a waste of time) or wrote a similar article, and posted about them, I'm sure people would find you and order. Personally I'd be interested in buying directly from your farm, let me know how that is possible even if it's a low tech solution for now.

Something you might be able to code is plugins for these ecommerce sites, if it makes sense for your business. I also used to run a loose leaf tea ecommerce store via Shopify but I imported from producers like your family as you describe, and I wrote one for dynamic pricing for buying from various countries due to their purchasing power being less. It'd calculate their power as well as my thresholds and figure out optimal prices where more people could buy it but wasn't screwing me over too.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46385308, https://www.vidaliaonions.com/

[1] https://miamifruit.org/

[spapas82]

Thank you for the info and your kind words!

[elAhmo]

Most likely not, this is more of a way to retire with money earned from software development and spend time "on business" that isn't really financially viable.

Kudos to author for going this path, but it takes a lot of resources to be able to make a move like this, which is not really an option for a large majority of population.

[Bairfhionn]

I always get my olive oil from a farm in Italy that only sells direct to customer. Or my coffee from a shop that gets the beans directly from the farmer (direct trade > fair trade).

It's possible, the market is kind of small I guess but you need to have a product where the customer is happy to pay a premium.

And being a software developer helps because you might have the money to invest?! :)

[cpr]

Would love link to olive oil farm…

[grunder_advice]

At that point it becomes an exercise in marketing more than anything else, because the whole business model depends on finding rich customers that are willing to pay a suitable markup to make the extra effort feasabile. And then you have to also be constantly trying to retain those customers....etc

[gaws]

> Could my knowledge as a software engineer help that family business in any way to be more profitable ?

In Silicon Valley fashion: raise VC money to acquire Dylan's farm and either bring him and his family on as acquihires or pay them out.

[alexnewman]

Yea csa are boring and normal