Whisk Adds Sainsbury’s to Partner Ecosystem to Enable Shoppable Recipes Across the UK
Integration connects consumer journey from recipe inspiration, to ingredients in the virtual or physical shopping basket, to the meal on the table
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.”
You can find more about Whisk at https://whisk.com/business/
About Sainsbury’s
Offering delicious great quality food at competitive prices has been at the heart of what we do since John James and Mary Ann Sainsbury opened our first store in 1869. Today, inspiring and delighting our customers with tasty food remains our priority and our purpose is clear – driven by our passion for food, together we serve and help every customer.
Our focus on great value food and convenient shopping, whether in-store or online is supported by our brands – Argos, Tu Clothing, Habitat, Sainsbury’s Bank and Nectar. Sainsbury’s has over 600 supermarkets and over 800 convenience stores. Argos is a leading digital retailer and is the third most visited retail website in the UK, with over 90 per cent of its sales starting online. Argos is conveniently available for customers to collect from hundreds of Sainsbury’s stores. Digital technology enables us to adapt as customers shop differently and our profitable, fast-growing online channels offer customers quick and convenient delivery and collection capability.
Our 172,000 colleagues are integral to our success, now and in the future.
About Whisk
Whisk powers the creation, discovery, personalization and monetization of food content online, in-store and at home. Whisk’s consumer recipe app, allows users to save a recipe from anywhere into a personal recipe box and export the ingredients to an interactive shopping list that can be sent to Whisk grocery partners across the UK, US, Europe and Australia, including Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s Waitrose and Ocado. Whisk is a winner of the Google Play, Best of 2020 Everyday Essentials award and has been featured on the Apple app store.
In addition to the award winning consumer app, Whisk works with the world’s largest retailers, publishers, CPG brands and health companies to help them connect with their consumers and drive product purchases at every stage of their food journey – from inspiration and consideration to purchase and preparation. Whisk powers shoppable recipes for publishers like BBC Good Food, JamieOliver.com and the Food Network, and uses the Food AI to match ingredients in recipes to actual products on shelves. Whisk was founded in 2012 and was acquired by Samsung Next in March 2019. For more information, visit https://whisk.com/business/.
Contacts
Rhiannon Pacheco, Whisk Communications: Rhiannon.pacheco@samsungnext.com