New Kroger Partnership Is All About the Pandemic
The Kroger Co. is looking to leverage pandemic-related cook-at-home trends with a new innovation.
The grocery chain is teaming up with shoppable recipe platform Whisk to allow users of the service in 35 states to shop recipe ingredients from Kroger stores for delivery or pickup.
The new capabilities enable Kroger to better meet the 40% of consumers cooking more at home during recent months and the millions of Americans living in 35 states that live within reach of a Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, Ralph’s, King Sooper or other Kroger banner earlier in their food inspiration and grocery shopping journey.
“Kroger is always innovating to help make our customers’ lives easier and influence the path to purchase,” stated Jody Kalmbach, Kroger’s group vice president of product experience. “The Whisk partnership is a new part of our seamless experience to help meet our customers’ evolving needs, especially as more households are cooking at home and searching online for recipe inspiration. Whisk supports a frictionless customer experience through premium integration and precise product matching, which is key as we continue to expand our digital ecosystem and adapt to our customers’ changing shopping styles.”
Customers now have more paths to purchase groceries from Kroger, including through the Whisk mobile app, website, browser plugins, Samsung smart appliances, voice assistants like Samsung Bixby and Alexa, and integrations into major food sites including Food Network and Food.com.
The Whisk-Kroger partnership comes at a critical time for the millions of Americans who are shifting to online grocery delivery. With 40% of consumers cooking more at home in recent months, the partnership is designed to help millions of Kroger customers go from meal planning to grocery pickup or delivery to food on the table, more seamlessly. The integration between Whisk and Kroger reduces common customer friction points by leveraging a premium API to ensure accurate inventory and product matching.
The Kroger-Whisk partnership is just the latest addition to Whisk’s roster of grocery retailers, brands and food content providers in the U.S., UK, Australia and throughout Europe. Whisk maps the world’s food ingredients, their relationships, their nutrition, perishability, flavor and availability and matches them to the ingredients listed in recipes from any platform and available at local grocery stores. Grocers are able to produce data-enriched food content as well as personalize future interactions, tailoring outreach and content to shopper preferences and needs.
“As more retailers strengthen their e-commerce strategy to adapt to changing consumer preferences and expectations, we’re excited to grow the Whisk ecosystem and bring Kroger, the largest grocer in the U.S., to all the users on our existing recipe and hardware integrations,” said Nick Holzherr, Head of Whisk. “Users in 35 states can now access fresh and affordable Kroger groceries conveniently from the buttons we power on published recipes from any app or website.”
Last week Kroger launched Chefbot, a first-of-its-kind AI Twitter tool that offers personalized recipes based on the ingredients a customer already has on hand at home. Developed in partnership with integrated creative and media agency 360i, and technology partners Coffee Labs and Clarifai, Kroger's Chefbot AI analyzes photographs to recognize nearly 2,000 ingredients, unlocking 20,000 Kroger recipes for users to cook.
Cincinnati-based Kroger employs nearly half a million associates who serve 9 million-plus customers daily through a seamless digital shopping experience and 2,800 retail food stores under a variety of banner names. The company is No. 3 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2020 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.
