Walmart Is Using AI to Help Customers with Meal Planning

We all live pretty busy lives these days and it can be hard to find the time to plan proper meals. This is perhaps part of the reason why takeout food businesses and platforms such as Just Eat have been performing so well in recent years - aside from us all being stuck at home because of COVID-19, of course.

However, one industry which has been trying to redress the balance is the meal planning business. The most famous example of this type of brand is the mail order food box. With this kind of product, a customer orders the meal/s they want and are delivered the exact ingredients to make it/them. Everything is weighed out and measured, so it's not only convenient, but great for reducing food waste (although some criticisms have been aimed at the excessive packaging often used for the ingredients).

However, food boxes are not the only way brands can help customers with meal planning - and retail giant Walmart has some smart ideas to bring to the table.

Walmart

As the world's largest retail brand, Walmart can usually be relied on to have its finger on the pulse of most trends. Indeed, it even has its own dedicated innovation department in the form of Walmart Labs.

Walmart hasn't been unaware of the surging popularity of meal kit services. After all, the industry is predicted to be worth $11.6 billion by 2022, and 29% of millennials and 26% of GenXers have tried them out. Compare this to just 12% of those over 45 having tried meal kits and you can see the growing appeal in younger generations.

However, rather than simply following the crowd, Walmart wanted to try something different when it came to helping its customers better plan their meals - especially given the rise in customers doing their grocery shopping online. The solution was to find a suitable partner to work with to bring grocery shopping and meal planning together.

To this end, Walmart recently announced it would be working alongside major media brand Meredith. Through the partnership, Walmart and Meredith will bring new digital content and features to the shopping experience and assist customers with making better purchasing decisions.

"The partnership pairs Meredith's expertise in food content, hyper-local consumer insights, and proprietary technology platform with Walmart's wide customer reach, omnichannel presence, deep product assortment, convenient shopping experience, and delivery options," said Walmart in a press release. "This is the latest strategic addition to Walmart's thriving grocery ecommerce business."

AI

The deal with Meredith will bring tools such as visual search, voice-activated assistance, chatbots, and AI-powered meal planning to Walmart customers.

The AI tool will allow Walmart to make recipe suggestions for its products in real time and allow customers to add those products directly to their online shopping cart - making ecommerce grocery shopping simpler and more streamlined than ever before.

There will also be a range of exciting content - including a new "Foodology" program for kids and budding young chefs, TikTok-based social commerce promos, and the "Make It Easy" platform, which provides food inspiration and easy recipes for customers who need something to inspire them and dig themselves out of a cooking rut.

"Consumers are craving food and recipe ideas and want cooking inspiration", said Walmart. "Through these new shoppable ad experiences, customers can meal plan and add recipe ingredients directly to their Walmart online grocery cart for convenient pickup or delivery. The innovative combination of inspiring content and commerce takes the guesswork out of meal planning for busy families, making it easier and faster to discover, plan, prepare, and enjoy delicious meals together."

The visual search feature allows users to take photos of ingredients they already have in the larder and receive recipe suggestions which incorporate them. In addition, a shoppable digital magazine - created in partnership with Allrecipes 30 Minute Meals - will enable one-click shopping to purchase ingredients needed for a particular meal. Customers will be able to shop for Walmart products across the rest of Meredith's portfolio of brands, including Allrecipes, Better Homes & Gardens, PARENTS, EatingWell, and REAL SIMPLE.

"Finding ways to help our customers live a little better each day is at the heart of everything we do, and that includes helping them shop more quickly and conveniently for affordable, high-quality products," said Senior Director of Content and Influencer Marketing at Walmart, Sarah Henry. "We know that customers today are increasingly looking to shop in the moment, both on and off our platforms. We are focused on meeting customers where they are discovering inspirational content and enhance the customer experience.

Final Thoughts

Walmart and Meredith are a match made in heaven. Combining digital technology, the Walmart shopping experience, and Meredith's portfolio of food related brands and media knowledge should ensure this partnership proves to be a massive success.

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