Edge cases, single-category specialty store vs full curated gourmet marketplace. Which Magento setup?

The platform decision changes meaningfully based on store shape:

Single-category specialty (one cheesemonger, one olive-oil house, one charcutier): 50-300 SKUs, deep origin storytelling per producer, subscription-led, low B2B share. Magento Open Source + Hyvä is overkill in some ways and exactly right in others. Overkill because Shopify could host the catalog. Right because origin storytelling, cold-chain shipping, and subscription cadence are easier on Magento at the $2M+ GMV mark. I’d migrate around $3M GMV, not before.

Curated multi-producer marketplace (Murray’s Cheese, Zingerman’s, the “Goldbelly minus the marketplace” play): 2,000-15,000 SKUs from 50-500 producers, deep filtering by category + origin + diet, B2B share 20-40%, subscription clubs across categories. Magento Open Source + Hyvä is the right answer from day one. Catalog depth + B2B layer + multi-source inventory (different warehouses per producer or per region) are native strengths.

B2B corporate-gifting led (Harry & David model, white-label gifting): 100-800 SKUs, mostly curated gift boxes, >60% B2B / corporate, massive Q4 surge, repeat corporate buyers. Adobe Commerce (paid Magento) earns its license here because the Companies B2B module ships polished corporate-portal UX out of the box. Open Source + extensions works for <$10M GMV; above that, Adobe Commerce pays for itself in B2B feature depth.

The single decision that flips Open Source → Adobe Commerce in gourmet is corporate-gifting share crossing ~30% of revenue.