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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Cooklist

Target (Finally) Enters the Shoppable Recipe Game with Cooklist

Yesterday Target announced that it was kicking off a partnership with shoppable recipe startup Cooklist (h/t Dallas News). The retail giant will launch the new service first in 47 Dallas-Fort Worth stores and Target’s delivery service Shipt.

The Dallas-based Cooklist is a mobile app that lets people search from the million-plus recipes in its database, select their favorite, then compare prices and order the ingredients for either pickup or same-day delivery from nearby participating grocery stores. The app also keeps track of what groceries you have in your house and helps remind you when food is about to expire.

As of now the app can generate shopping lists of goods from 81 national grocery chains, but only offers grocery delivery through Target.

Cooklist’s partnership with Target isn’t exactly surprising. Last July the startup announced that it had raised a $250,000 “pre-seed” round, half of which came from the Techstars Retail Accelerator in Minneapolis. As part of the membership, Cooklist got office space at the Target HQ.

This is Target’s second shoppable recipe partnership announcement in as many days. Earlier today, guided cooking platform Innit revealed new shoppable recipe capabilities that basically let users create their own individualized meal kits(ish) and pick them up or order them for delivery from more than 30 retailers, including Target.

However, “Tarjay” has some catching up to do: Walmart and Albertsons/Safeway have been working with shoppable recipe platform Myxx for months, and Amazon Fresh has a whole bevvy of shoppable recipe partnerships with Fexy Media, Whisk, and SideChef.

It’s no secret that grocery competition is heating up, with retailers big and small trying to find ways to get you your goods list faster, cheaper, and more conveniently. Compared to some of its competitors, Target’s recent dive into the deep end of shoppable recipes is definitely on the later side — but I don’t think that’s a dealbreaker. The entire space is pretty young with lots of room for growth. With two partnerships in two days, Target shows that it’s taking shoppable recipes seriously.

Cooklist Officially Launches to Connect Your Grocery Shopping with Recipes

Cooklist, a new mobile app that automatically keeps track of the groceries you buy and recommends recipes based on them, officially launched today. It also announced it has raised $250,000 “pre-seed” round, half of which will come from joining the TechStars Retail Accelerator in Minneapolis.

The Cooklist app connects with more than 80 grocers including Amazon, Walmart, Costco, and Kroger. Using those retail loyalty programs, Cooklist automatically keeps track of the groceries you purchase. Cooklist will then recommend one of 1.3 million recipes (and counting) based on the food you’ve bought and to help you avoid food waste, it will even alert you when products are going to expire.

I talked with Cooklist founders Daniel Vitiello and Brandon Warman, who explained that the expiration information isn’t precise. Instead, it uses general guidelines — like onions expiring in 1 – 2 months — to give people warnings about when items will go bad.

Cooklist 1min Walkthrough

Vitiello and Warman built the first prototype of Cooklist last September and started developing the app in earnest this past January. The company is just the two founders at this point. Along with the money, their TechStars membership will get them office space at Target HQ (with whom TechStars partners), which is a little ironic as the app does not work with Target groceries yet.

Cooklist is free right now and Vitiello and Warman said that they are looking at a premium model when they move to monetize. A premium version could be a monthly subscription that would generate a smart shopping list and push those purchases to your preferred grocer for delivery or pickup.

Cooklist is facing a lot of competition as there are a number of apps looking to make a more direct connection between the food you have and the food you can make. Chefling does a very similar thing to Cooklist in keeping track of what you buy, but requires manual input. Innit’s guided cooking app lets you automatically adjust recipes by swapping in ingredients already have on hand.

Further up the stack, companies like Fexy Media, Whisk and AllRecipes are making recipes directly shoppable, enabling you to assemble all the ingredients you need for any recipe that same day.