In accordance with the present invention, ingredients for a particular electronic recipe accessible at a particular web site are encrypted, wherein the encrypted ingredients may be decrypted by a food retailer that intends to pre-package the encrypted ingredients. Instructions for preparing the electronic recipe and the encrypted ingredients are transmitted to a computer system associated with a particular user. The particular user may select the food retailer at which the encrypted ingredients are to be pre-packaged and transmit the encrypted ingredients to the food retailer. The selected food retailer may decrypt the encrypted ingredients utilizing a decryption key provided by the particular web site and pre-package the encrypted ingredients for the particular user.