Dive Brief:
- Food artificial intelligence platform Whisk recently announced plans to acquire Germany-based competitor Avocando.
- Whisk is currently focused on the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia, and officials say the acquisition allows the startup to expand services across Europe. A news release notes that Germany, France and Spain combined represent a larger e-commerce grocery market than either the U.S or U.K. individual, a big boon for Whisk.
- Avocando is a leader in making recipes shoppable at grocery stores in Europe and counts some of Europe’s largest Internet of Things companies, recipe publishers and retailers as customers. Whisk is a smart platform used by food companies to power digital food apps and make recipes shoppable, making the combination a good fit.
Dive Insight:
Whisk is betting big on becoming THE company to help users organize everything food and recipe related. Its clients already include Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Tesco, Allrecipes, FoodNetwork, General Mills, Nestlé and Unilever and more. Acquisition of Avocando will give the fast-growing company, launched in 2013, an enviable global reach.
Access to Avocando’s recipes and relationships with European grocers and food companies will allow the digital platform to expand in those areas much more quickly than starting from scratch. The company boasts a reach of more than 100 million through its clients’ apps, and likely will see those numbers explode as it digs into the European market.
This comes at a time when consumers are at the cusp of understanding ways AI and the Internet of Things fit into their lives. Whisk CEO Nick Holzherr has likened the platform’s ability to upend the way consumers choose recipes and buy foods to that of the digital music world: Whisk can offer users a way to store favored recipes and suggest others they may enjoy based on past choices; keep track of the items they need to buy create certain recipes; and provide fast, easy ways for them to purchase groceries. The company also can track data to help retailers and recipe companies better reach the consumers most likely to be interested in their services.
Gathering large amounts of information from global users is highly valuable to grocers and food companies Whisk partners with. But it also will likely be big players, such as Amazon and Walmart, that can most easily afford and adapt to the new technology. This could leave smaller grocers falling even further behind in the world of e-commerce.
This deal comes at a time when the public seems uncertain whether convenience is worth a loss of privacy. While the amount of personal information a user gives to a social network like Facebook or Instagram is obvious, the information available from these apps is a little harder to grasp. Data about things like recipes and grocery shopping may seem innocuous from a user standpoint, but it provides powerful information for retailers and food companies to further customize offerings and items for sale. It also creates another opportunity to make grocery shopping easier for consumers.
It’s too soon to tell whether Whisk will disrupt grocery shopping as much as iTunes did the entertainment realm, but the company’s ambition and acquisition into a global market could make it possible. Through a platform like this, AI and big data could play a more significant role in both grocery store pricing and inventory, as well as consumer buying habits.