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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

NorthFork

Shoppable Recipe Service Northfork Raises $1.1M

Northfork, a Swedish company that enables shoppable recipes online, announced yesterday that it has raised 10 million Swedish Krona (~$1.1 million USD). The round was led by J12 Ventures with participation from DHS.

Northfork creates a white label platform for retailers to create shoppable recipes. For example, last year Northfork provided the software that powered BuzzFeed Tasty’s shoppable recipes through Walmart. As we wrote at the time of that announcement:

The [Tasty] app maps a user’s location to the nearest Walmart and is tied into that’s store’s inventory to ensure that customers can get all the ingredients necessary. The app even lets users swap out items based on quantity needed or dietary, nutritional or brand preferences. Once purchased, the groceries can be scheduled for delivery or pickup as early as that same day.

The shoppable recipe space has actually been kind of quiet for most of this year. In July Thermomix announced shoppable ingredients through its Cookidoo platform (powered by Whisk), and in June Innit announced a shoppable recipe related partnership with product data company, SPINS.

This relative quiet in the shoppable recipe space is curious, given that the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred record amounts of online grocery shopping. With so many more people eating at home, you’d think there would be more activity around connecting meal discovery through recipes and e-commerce solutions that make buying those ingredients easier.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason Northfork raised this money. According to Nordic 9, Northfork will use this new money for product development and U.S. expansion.

Alexa Adds Thousands Of Buzzfeed Tasty Recipes To Echo Show

This week Amazon and Buzzfeed announced a partnership that brings thousands of Buzzfeed Tasty’s famous quick-play social videos to Amazon’s video-enabled digital assistants.

According to email sent to The Spoon, here’s how it works: First ask Alexa to find a recipe by saying something like, “Alexa, find pork recipes from Tasty.” Alexa will then show you options, and you can tell the device which recipe to select by saying something like, “Alexa, select recipe number three.”

From there, say, “Alexa, start recipe” and Alexa will read off each step in the recipe as well as list them on the left-hand side of the screen of the Echo Show. It will also show a looping video of the recipe on the right. You can also ask Alexa to read off ingredients by saying “Alexa, read ingredients” and add it to a shopping list by saying “Alexa, add to shopping list.”

I wish I could tell you how well it works, but at the time of this writing I couldn’t get either of my Echo Show devices to actually find Buzzfeed Tasty recipes. The new feature is supposed to be available to anyone in the U.S. with an Echo Show as of this week, so I assume I will be able to access the program over the next few days as the kinks are worked out.

Too bad, since I am very curious about how well turning a Buzzfeed Tasty recipe into a more instructional/step-by-step format on a screen will work. Like many, I’ve watched a lot of Buzzfeed recipes online but have never actually cooked to one of them, in part because they seem designed more for entertainment than to be functional. Putting them onto the Echo Show could change that, so I’ll update this post once I can actually cook with one.

One thing that struck me about this integration is that it is simply turned on and available to work (once it works) for anyone with an Echo Show. This is different from earlier Alexa Echo Show integrations like that of Allrecipes, which required the user to add as an Alexa Skill.

My suspicion is that Amazon is having trouble getting people to add new skills to their voice assistants, so at this point the company is, in some cases, just doing it for the consumer. Makes sense, actually, since a “cloud computer” like Alexa isn’t exactly short on storage. That and it just seems a bit more magical if you one day could just ask Alexa to do something and she does it rather than going through an “add skill” extra-step.

I am also curious how the “add to shopping list” feature works. This news follows an integration with Walmart (via shoppable recipe platform Northfork) that allows Tasty app users to make recipes shoppable by adding them their Walmart shopping lists and online grocery carts. The Alexa/Tasty integration doesn’t quite look like it takes recipes all the way to the Amazon cart, but if I know Amazon, I expect that will eventually change.

BuzzFeed Tasty and Walmart Serve Up Shoppable Recipes

If you’ve ever been inspired by one of those seemingly simple, overhead cooking videos produced by BuzzFeed’s Tasty but then were crestfallen because you didn’t have all the ingredients, you’re in luck! Walmart announced today that it is bringing shoppable recipes to the Tasty platform, deepening the relationship between the two companies.

Right now, the shoppable recipes features works with the Tasty iOS app. Once a user finds a recipe they want to make they can view the list of ingredients and tap the “Add items to your grocery bag” button, which redirects them to either the Walmart Grocery app or online store.

The “shoppable” part of the recipes is being powered by Northfork‘s software, which provides a white label platform for grocery retailers. The app maps a user’s location to the nearest Walmart and is tied into that’s store’s inventory to ensure that customers can get all the ingredients necessary. The app even lets users swap out items based on quantity needed or dietary, nutritional or brand preferences. Once purchased, the groceries can be scheduled for delivery or pickup as early as that same day.

Walmart’s relationship with Tasty goes back to December of 2017 when the two entered into an e-commerce agreement to sell the basic cookware and utensils needed to make Tasty dishes. In March of last year, that relationship expanded when the two partnered to sell an exclusive line of Tasty branded cookware. Shoppable recipes seemed like the logical next step in their relationship.

Tasty has been relatively quiet lately; the last we heard from them was in October of 2018 when Cuisinart launched a version of the Tasty OneTop cooktop. Adding to any mystery about what is going on with Tasty is the fact that it was announced last week that Ben Kaufman, who provided BuzzFeed’s quote for the Walmart press announcement, was stepping down from his role as BuzzFeed’s Chief Marketing Officer. As Variety reported at the time: “During [Kaufman’s] tenure at the digital-media company, he helped develop the Tasty line of products for Walmart and the Goodful brand at Macy’s.” Kaufman will now focus on the BuzzFeed Camp retail stores.

Regardless, the shoppable recipe sector continues apace. Samsung bought shoppable recipe site Whisk in March of this year, and just today, Mealthy announced it had equity crowdfunded $1.07 million for its full-stack consumer solution for shoppable recipes, guided cooking and kitchen appliances.

And it looks like Walmart and Tasty will have more announcements to come as today’s shoppable recipe press release says “This feature is the first of many upgrades to the Tasty app that will continue to deepen Tasty’s partnership with Walmart and sweeten the shopping experience for the Tasty audience.”