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SPOON GURU TAGS™ Opens Up Possibilities, Offers Relevance, Accuracy and Ease
LOS ANGELES (December 8, 2017) With 64% of the world’s population now following some form of exclusion diet[1], the segment of people that require tailored food choices, often with multiple requirements, is larger than it has ever been. This presents a difficulty for both customers trying to find the right foods, and retailers struggling to categorize and market their products.London-based tech startup, Spoon Guru, which launched its free App in the U.S. on Nov. 4th (iTunes, Google Play), has developed a new search platform that uses a unique combination of AI, machine learning and nutritionist expertise to instantly search and deliver hundreds of thousands of food products, relevant to each individual consumer.
The Spoon Guru B2B platform TAGS™, used as the basis for the App and all Spoon Guru searches, features over 100 proprietary tags, offering the broadest coverage of dietary profiles across the market. (As the app is still in Beta in the U.S., it’s working toward the 180+ TAGS™ already in effect in the U.K.) When shopping using TAGS™, customers can set any number of food allergens (i.e. sesame, shellfish, gluten) or lifestyle (i.e. vegetarian, pescatarian) – to quickly search for and find products that exactly match their individual dietary requirements. The app will let consumers know if they should be wary of a particular purchase, or feel confident in buying it (see screen shots above).
The U.S. app currently covers 90% of online grocery. It includes these companies’ own products: Kroger, Walmart, Walgreens, Whole Foods/Amazon Fresh and more. It also supports Safeway, Stop & Shop, Aldi, Hannaford, Meijer, Hy-Vee, Wegmans, Kmart, etc. The database so far includes over 20,000 recipes and over 7,600 different manufacturers.
The TAGS™ platform gives retailers the power to deliver relevant, transparent, accurate and personalized food choices to their customers. Tesco PLC, the grocery market leader in Great Britain, is the first retailer to recognise the power of this capability and embrace TAGS™ on their online shopping platform, Tesco.com, and mobile app. Doing so has given them the ability to provide a better shopping experience for their millions of customers across the UK.
Former CEO of Walmart-owned ASDA and recently appointed Chairman of Spoon Guru, Andy Clarke, commented: “We have witnessed a consumer evolution in the retail industry. People today have increasingly complex dietary preferences, and, being highly conscious of buyer power in a competitive market, demand products tailored to their needs. If retailers don’t wise-up and adapt to this change, they simply will not be successful in the market of the future.”
He goes on to say: “The great thing about Spoon Guru’s TAGS™ technology is that it can be applied to any retailer that has an online shopping platform - exemplified by the success of the company’s early corporate partnership with Tesco PLC.”Co-founder and CEO of Spoon Guru, Markus Stripf says: “Our goal is simple – to take the fuss out of finding the right food, and the TAGS™ platform we have created does just that. The result is a highly personalized food search and discovery experience. The benefit of this is twofold - consumers are presented with more options, while businesses can maximise sales by ensuring that all their products are being found in online searches.”
He continues: “Struggling to find appropriate foods is an unnecessary struggle and no longer acceptable in this day and age, when we have the technological means to streamline the process and simplify people’s lives.”
Spoon Guru constantly update the TAGS™ platform, to ensure it supports all wellbeing, lifestyle, religious and medical diets, as they emerge.