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With a click, recipe ingredients delivered to the doorstep

Written by RetailWire Staff

In what it claims is an American first, Foodily, a social network and recipe search engine for foodies, has found a way to send recipe ingredients directly to a shopping cart for home delivery, often next day. Its new Popcart technology allows users to select from millions of recipes and transfer the ingredients to FreshDirect, which fulfills the order.

Granted, you get more than you need to cook the dish just once, and there is a minimum order charge, but none of the other apps or grocers with recipes and online shopping has yet apparently merged the two.

According to a press release, Popcart allows consumers to browse recipes across more than 150+ million food websites and blogs. It looks to address consumers' top routines, desires and challenges around preparing and shopping for food:

  • Eighty percent of home cooks find recipes online (Allrecipes Measuring Cup Reports, 2014);
  • Seventy-five percent of consumers prepare most of the food their family eats from scratch (FreshDirect Insights, 2014);
  • In the past 10 years, the number of consumers that say shopping for ingredients is the hardest part about getting dinner on the table grew by 24 percent (Allrecipes Measuring Cup Reports, 2012).

"The web is the number one resource for home cooks, but when you go from online to browsing to in-store shopping, buying the ingredients can take hours and be a deterrent to getting dinner on the table," said Foodily's CEO Andrea Cutright in a statement. "Popcart removes the friction from shopping for recipes, making meal planning more efficient than ever before."

Many apps create shopping lists, leaving customers to place orders separately, while grocers may use their own recipe databases for shopping lists. Door-to-Door Organics, for example, offers doorstep deliveries, using "planning and shop-by-recipe tools." Food Planner and Ziplist facilitate integrated meal plans, grocery lists and recipes, but stop short of turning ingredients into lists sent directly to shopping carts.

The British Retail Consortium recognizes a great opportunity, however, claiming "many grocers are integrating their online shopping offer with recipe websites and apps. This means that when customers find a recipe they like, they are a mere one click away from having all the ingredients placed in their online shopping basket," Real Business reported.

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