'Social Shopping' Site Delicious Karma Introduces New 'Karma Kredit' Features

Delicious Karma will soon be introducing new ways to get more discounts on artisanal food products, The Daily Meal has learned.

This 'social shopping' site has a Karma Kredit system, which awards customers with points to buy products at a lower price. Registered members get points by joining the site, making purchases, getting friends to join, taking a survey, or following Delicious Karma on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Ten Karma Kredits are worth one U.S. dollar; they can be used to get up to 20% off your purchase.

Michelle Ritchie, the Chief Marketing Officer and Founder, told us that they are making it easier to get more Karma Kredits. New ways to get points include: reviewing products you've tasted, adding products to your "Craves" wish list, adding tags describing a product, and an automatic 100 Karma Kredits for your birthday. By late summer or early fall, customers can make even more points by sharing product recommendations via Facebook, Twitter, and email.

In addition to discounts, Delicious Karma makes it easier for us to access artisanal food and easier for small businesses to sell their products. "I know how hard and costly to put artisanal products in supermarkets," Ritchie said. "Artisanal products have amazing ingredients, quality ingredients, and are usually handcrafted in small batches. We learn about vendors to see what their story is, so consumers get a sense of where the product is coming from."

Food options include meats, seafood, cheese, sweets, drinks, kitchen gear, and more. Prices range from $7 condiments to $900 caviar. The team tastes all the products and makes sure the ingredients are all natural before selling them. Their "taste gurus," which include James Beard Award-winning chef Nancy Oakes and James Beard Award-winning author Laura Werlin, are food experts who review the products and preparation and recipe ideas.

Every purchase will help nonprofit organizations such as La Cocina and Seedling Projects. "We donate 1% of our profit, 1% of our time, and 1% of our equity to our Karma Kauses," Ritchie tells us. Around next fall, expect a new feature that allows people to donate their unused Karma Kredits to the organizations. "Every month, we will tally Karma Kredits that people donate and then issue a check to the nonprofit," she continued.

With so many products to choose from, where do we start? Ritchie recommends Seely Family Farm's handmade chocolate peppermint patties and Chile Colonial's Irresistibly Hot Chile Crunch Condiment. The first is "insanely good" and the latter is "like crack," according to Ritchie.