Integration connects consumer journey from recipe inspiration, to ingredients in the virtual or physical shopping basket, to the meal on the table
Consumers can now turn any recipe from Whisk’s network of publishers, brands, and apps including the UK’s largest recipe sites, into a smart shopping list and instantly purchase for click and collect or delivery from Sainsbury’s. (Graphic: Business Wire)
Find full press release on Business Wire.
BIRMINGHAM, England–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Whisk, the Samsung Next food technology platform that takes inspiration from planning to plate, today announced the addition of one of the United Kingdom’s leading supermarkets, Sainsbury’s, to the Whisk ecosystem. Now, consumers can turn any recipe from Whisk’s network of publishers, brands, and apps including the UK’s largest recipe sites, into a smart shopping list and instantly purchase for click and collect or delivery from Sainsbury’s. The daily store inventory feed across Sainsbury’s stores is powered by Whisk’s Food GenomeTM that uses artificial intelligence to ensure that a recipe’s ingredients are matched with the correct and currently available products at each store, and provides for a seamless customer experience from recipe to shopping trolley.
This December, UK shoppers spent £11.7 billion on take-home groceries in the busiest month on record for British supermarkets, with digital orders accounting for 12.6% of grocery spend during December, compared to only 7.4% last year, according to recent Kantar research. Typically, Christmas grocery sales are offset by meals in restaurants, pubs and bars. However, with the strict pandemic-related restrictions in place, more Brits than ever are cooking at home, looking for recipe inspiration, planning their meals and shopping lists further in advance and relying on click and collect options from supermarkets, as evidenced by Sainsbury’s Q3 grocery sales which were up 7.4% year-on-year. Especially as lockdowns continue into 2021 and as consumers move into the new year with the accompanying resolutions to eat healthier and move more, the new partnership with Whisk will help to ensure that Sainsbury’s continues to meet customer demand and that what users see online is actually available in their local store.
Sainsbury’s users will be able to take full advantage of access to the entire Whisk ecosystem, including access to recipes from recipe publishers, CPG brands as well as the full app experience that is also accessible from Samsung Family Hub refrigerators. Sainsbury’s product-matching and shoppable recipe options are powered by Whisk’s AI Food GenomeTM, the AI and Natural Language Processing technology that maps the world’s food ingredients, the relationships between them, their nutrition, perishability, flavour and availability and matches them to the ingredients listed in recipes from any platform and available at local grocery stores.
With over 500 million recipe interactions each month, the Whisk Food Genome becomes more robust as the Whisk ecosystem grows, making it attractive to large grocers, recipe publishers and grocers publishing food content, alike. Supermarkets are able to produce data-enriched recipes as well as personalise customer interactions, tailoring outreach and content to shopper preferences and needs.
James Leech, Head of Product at Sainsbury’s said: “Customers are increasingly choosing to do their grocery shopping and find recipes online. They need to find their favourite foods quickly and conveniently and this new partnership with Whisk will help inspire shoppers with a huge range of recipe ideas and make it even simpler for them to add to their bag and buy.”
The addition of Sainsbury’s to the Whisk ecosystem brings the number of Whisk UK grocer partners to five, creating a more robust ecommerce experience for UK consumers during the pandemic.
“We’re thrilled to bring Sainsbury’s into our Whisk partner ecosystem,” said Nick Holzherr, Head of Whisk. “As one of the premier grocers in the UK, Sainsbury’s is a leader in online grocery delivery and e-commerce. We know from our user feedback that a Sainsbury’s integration will be popular with users – at a time when online grocery shopping is critical in the UK.”
