Oct. 24 2011 | - San Francisco Restaurants and Dining - SFoodie| By Jonathan Kauffman .

By DAMON DARLIN
September 24, 2011

San Francisco-based Cater2.me, delivers food from carts and small
restaurants to businesses that aren’t big enough to afford their own
chefs. The Web was supposedly eliminating the need for the layers of
brokers, agents, wholesalers & even retailers that separate the
consumer from the producer.

That has happened in some instances, e.g. drastically reducing the role
of travel agents. But consumers still need help and the Web has provided
the tools & the environment for companies like cater2.me to
flourish. It has made it easier for middlemen to reach consumers and
made it remarkably easy and inexpensive for these middlemen to create
companies to do just that.

While there has been a lot of talk about how the technology industry
does not create jobs on the scale of traditional manufacturing — a
shrunken GM still employs more people than a thriving Google — the
Internet has made it a lot easier to create a broad array of new small
businesses.

May 12, 2011 By JESSE McKINLEY

March 27, 2011 | | By ALLISON ARIEFF. Mark Dwight, CEO of
Rickshaw Bagworks, initially started SFMade with the intention of
creating a brand identity for the products produced within San Francisco
city limits, something he calls “geographic ingredient branding.” More
easily understood as something akin to terroir, geographic ingredient
branding emphasizes “pride of place,” which runs deep in cities like San
Francisco and New York. “I saw this as a way to ‘brand’ the history,
culture, personality and natural beauty of our city as a means to
uniquely differentiate our local manufacturers,” says Dwight. “I coined
the term ‘geographic ingredient branding’ as an emulation of successful
technology ingredient branding campaigns such as ‘Intel Inside.’”

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010 | Wall Street Journal | Vauhini Vara

August 5, 2010 | BusinessWeek | By Alexandra Wolfe. When
Joseph Diaz saw the bubble, he sold his real estate company—and launched
a travel magazine. "After returning from India, Diaz read a dozen
how-to books on the publishing business and then flew to New York to
meet James B. Kobak, a veteran adviser to magazines such as Playboy.
Kobak suggested they put together three sample issues. Diaz and Sullivan
went a step further. With $15 million of their own money and
investments from family members, they started an operation in San
Francisco and hired a small staff of editors and salespeople. In August
2009 they launched the glossy, photo-laden Afar. "

June 29, 2010 | NYTimes.com | By ELIZABETH WEIL. Marilyn Powell, author of “Ice Cream: The Delicious History.”