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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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The Food Tech Show: The Story Behind Spoon Plus

We write and talk a lot about product launches here at The Spoon, but we look inward on this week’s Food Tech Show as we discuss the backstory behind Spoon Plus, our membership community we launched last week.

If you’re a blog or online content nerd, this one is for you as we talk about our previous efforts at one of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech blogs and how the world of online memberships has evolved over the past decade. We also discuss how we’d been planning on building Plus before COVID-19, but how the pandemic gave the launch a little more urgency.

If you’re a food tech nerd, we’ve got you covered too, because in this show we also talk about these stories:

As always, you can listen to The Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download it directly to your device or just click play below.

Be Like Walmart and Swing for the Geofences

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Prior to the pandemic, I never grocery shopped at Walmart. It was too far away and I wanted to support my local supermarket. Throughout this pandemic, however, I’ve been at Walmart every week for my curbside grocery pickups. One reasons I’m such a frequent Walmarter now is that they make the whole process of getting groceries via curbside easy. I place my order, schedule my pickup time and when my groceries are ready, they send me a notification on my phone.

Part of that notification asks me to check-in with the Walmart app to let the store know I’m on my way. As I pull into their parking lot, the app automatically recognizes that I’ve arrived, thanks to the GPS on my phone and Walmart’s geofencing technology. Once I specify my parking stall, a Walmart staffer is out with my order and bada-boom, bada-bing, in minutes my trunk is loaded, no human contact has occurred and I’m on my way back home to shelter in place for another week.

Contrast Walmart with the curbside pickup experience at my local Safeway, which is a lot closer than the Walmart but does not have geofencing in its app. When I arrive at the store, I have to call a special number to let them know I’ve arrived, they ask me what stall I’m in and then send someone with my order out. Obviously my calling a number isn’t a huge deal, but it’s one extra step, and one more thing for a human staffer at Safeway to deal with all day while dealing with all the other changes this pandemic has brought with it.

Contactless is going to be the word of 2020, especially as it relates to food delivery and curbside pickup, and geofencing is going to play an increasingly important part of that. Yesterday, Panera announced geofence-enabled curbside pickup for orders, and IBM has been touting Safe Queue, a virtual line app powered in part by geofencing that was created for Big Blue’s Call for Code Global Challenge contest.

As a technology, geofencing has actually been around for long time. But it will take on more importance as restaurants and grocers look to efficiently maximize their revenues while reducing human-to-human contact. Restaurants that must operate at reduced dine-in capacity need a robust off-premises plan, including curbside pickup, and people are still scared of going into the grocery store itself, requiring pickup options as well.

Geofencing means orders can be fulfilled more quickly because the restaurant or supermarket knows when you’ve arrived. Walmart may have huge parking lots and plenty of space for cars pickup up orders, but a lot of restaurants and independent grocers don’t. They’ll need to make the most of their physical takeout/pickup space. The faster a curbside order is handed off, the faster cars turn over in the parking lot and the more orders can be fulfilled.

There is obviously a privacy tradeoff with geofencing. Some people may not want to hand over their location data to Walmart, Panera or whomever, and that’s okay. Different strokes and all. Privacy is a constant question we come up against in this connected world, and we should definitely hold businesses accountable to being good stewards of our data.

There are lots of changes consumer facing food businesses will need to make (and re-make) in order to survive this pandemic. But if curbside pickups are part of your plan, you should fire up the geofencing now.

Woot! Founder Launches Pasta by Mail

It kinda makes sense that Matt Rutledge, the founder of Woot!, an e-commerce site known for its sense of humor, would choose noodles for a food-related project. I mean, noodles are funny, especially the way Rutledge is selling them.

Rutledge launched PastaDrop, a “pasta as a service” online pop-up that lets you buy random amounts of pasta and have it sent to friends. PastaDrop determines the quantity of noodles being shipped and hilarity ensues (again, because noodles = funny).

Spoon founder Mike Wolf reached out to Rutledge for an email interview to find out more about PastaDrop. You should read the whole exchange (it’s very entertaining), but here’s an amuse-bouche to get you started:

Wolf: Why pasta?

This is our first Pasta experience! What a product! There is a subset of variety with personal opinion. There are amazing recipes to share. It’s a comfort food. It has a long shelf life and can be transported without much risk of damage. It is quite dense and therefore efficient to ship; hundreds of servings can fit in a box. Best of all it can be funny in mass quantities! Oh, and there are pasta puns — we love puns!

Sign Up for Spoon Plus, Our New Membership Insights & Virtual Events Community

Last week we announced the launch of Spoon Plus, our new membership community that gives you exclusive deep dives on food tech trends, original market research, and virtual events with the smartest people in the industry.

You can read Mike’s post about the launch of Plus here to learn about why we’re so excited about it.

There’s a plan for every budget, and if you buy an annual subscription, you get a ticket to Smart Kitchen Summit Virtual 2020, the industry-leading global food tech summit.

Spoon Plus is our chance and yours to connect on a deeper level and engage with the issues in a more meaningful way. We are offering a one-time charter member discount of 40% for those that join by the end of this week. Join today and use coupon code LAUNCH at check out.

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Walmart Launches Two-Hour Express Delivery as Grocery E-Commerce Surges

Walmart announced Express Delivery, the company’s zippy new two-hour delivery service for food and other goods, yesterday. The new service comes in the middle of a global pandemic that has spurred a drastic wave of demand online grocery shopping.

According to the press announcement, Express Delivery was being tested in 100 stores since Mid-April. In early May, the service will broaden to nearly 1,000 stores before rolling out to 2,000 total stores in the ensuing weeks. Express Delivery costs an additional $10 on top of the initial delivery fee.

The obvious motivation for Express Delivery is simply that more people than ever are shopping for groceries online. In fact, a survey out this week from Brick Meets Click found that online grocery sales hit $5.3 billion in April, up 37 percent over March (which was its own record-setting month). Order number, size and frequency are all up as well.

In March, a market research study from Gordon Haskett Research Advisors found that Walmart was the top destination for those shopping for groceries online. So the company has been bearing the brunt of this crush of online shoppers.

Walmart, as well as every other grocery retailer, has been struggling to keep up e-commerce demand. It was looking to bring on an additional 150,000 workers this Spring to keep up. In addition to delivery and now Express Delivery, the retailer also expanded its contactless curbside pickup options.

Back before the dark times, Walmart was in the midst of working on Walmart+, its answer to Amazon Prime. Walmart+ reportedly would expand on Walmart’s Delivery Unlimited subscription service as well as offer perks on things like prescriptions and gas.

Speaking of Amazon, Walmart’s Express Delivery also brings it up to speed, as it were, with the two-hour delivery Amazon offers for free to its Prime members. Once this pandemic recedes, it’s not too hard to imagine Walmart’s Express Delivery, having been scaled and battle-tested by COVID-19-driven demand, would be a benefit of Walmart+.

For those interested in trying out Express Delivery, visit walmart.com/grocery or the Walmart app and search for your ZIP code to see if Express Delivery is offered in your area.

Thank You, Walmart and Safeway, for Keeping Us Fed. Now Fix Your Confusing and Misleading E-Commerce

Grocery stores have been a bright spot in this otherwise dark time of global pandemic. Store workers are braving an on-edge public and risking infection to stock shelves or come out to our homes to deliver groceries. I appreciate and thank them for all their hard work.

So it’s not on the front lines where grocery stores have an issue right now. Instead, it’s on the back end, in the way big grocery retailers manage and communicate about e-commerce orders, where the problems seem to be happening.

Like millions of others, my family has been self-isolating for a couple of weeks, which means more grocery shopping online. I’ve used Safeway for delivery and Walmart for curbside pickup. Both have problems with the way they relay information about out-of-stock items.

Before going off on too much of a rant, I should note that I’m extremely lucky. My wife and I are still employed, we are sufficiently stocked with food, and if need be, we can easily and safely go to an actual grocery store. But there are a lot of people in worse off situations, and those people need a consistent and reliable method for ordering groceries from home.

I also understand that we are in unprecedented times, and as such, people are stocking up/hoarding, so some items are just aren’t available. I have yet to find toilet paper anywhere online, and evidently everyone is baking loaves of sourdough, so there’s a run on flour.

The problems I’ve encountered with Safeway and Walmart is that those platforms accept and process my online order, leading me to believe all items are in stock and that I’ll get everything I need/want. Then, literally a couple hours before the scheduled pickup or delivery time, I get notifications telling me some items are out of stock and I won’t receive them.

In the case of the Safeway, it was a delivery order that had been placed a week and half prior. So during that time, I assumed my entire order would arrive and didn’t make any other plans to get groceries. Thankfully, the only things the store was out of were flour and yeast (to make bread, he admitted, sheepishly), and not more necessary staples like eggs or milk. But there was a gap of a week and a half in between the time I placed the order and the delivery date. At some point in there, Safeway should have communicated that items are out of stock so I could figure something else out.

The same thing happened with Walmart when I ordered food for curbside pickup. The system accepted my order the day before, leading me to believe everything was a-okay! Then the next day, shortly before I drove to the store for pickup I got an email from Walmart that basically said, “Just kidding! We’re out of a bunch of stuff you ordered.” Some of the items, like toilet paper, I kinda figured might disappear, but there were also things like fruits and vegetables in there that suddenly couldn’t be fulfilled. This was more baffling because Walmart is a logistics and supply chain monster. Why, then, was the online ordering so far off from reality in the 24-hour period between when I placed my order and when I picked it up?

Again, the reason for this whole rant is that as we are told to shelter in place and avoid crowds (especially if you’re older), e-commerce will become increasingly important, depending on how long this outbreak lasts. It’s critical that people can feel confident in the online orders they place. I’m fortunate in that I have the time and means to compensate if something goes awry. But there are lots of people who don’t, and lots of people who can’t go into the store because they have young kids, or are sick who will rely on online grocery shopping. If it’s too difficult to align store inventory with demand at a store, then retailers should improve and clarify messaging around orders so that people understand that what they receive may change, and if it does, give them ample time to either prepare for the outage or make substitutions.

For the most part, online grocery shopping is great! And I really do appreciate all the work Walmart and Safeway are putting in quickly to make it happen. We just need to make some changes to make sure we aren’t worse off in these worst of times.

We’re spending every day tracking the impact of COVID-19 on the world of food. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our analysis and hear stories from the front lines.

As Online Grocery Shopping Surges, Walmart Leads the Retail Pack (and Could Stay There)

With COVID-19 limiting movement in some cities and raising new concerns about being out in public among groups of people, there’s been a surge in online grocery shopping. And according to a piece in Bloomberg yesterday, Walmart was the top destination for online grocery shopping, which could translate into being the long-term leader in the space.

Bloomberg writes:

As online grocery shopping goes mainstream, Walmart will be the main beneficiary. One-third of shoppers surveyed by Gordon Haskett Research Advisors on March 13 said they bought food online over the past week, and of those, 41% were doing so for the first time. For those newbies, Walmart was by far the most popular option, capturing more than half of orders. Amazon and its Whole Foods chain garnered only 14%.

Now we don’t know how big the sample size of this survey was, but the results seem in-line with what we would expect. Walmart is a massive retail operation with a broad distribution of physical stores, so it makes sense it would be a big beneficiary of our current situation.

Prior to the global pandemic, Walmart and Amazon had been locked in a heated battle for supremacy in the online grocery space. The two retail giants exchanged tit-for-tat moves over the past year: Walmart launched and rolled out Delivery Unlimited for groceries nationwide, Amazon waived delivery fees for its Prime members, Walmart started testing its own Amazon Prime-like membership service, and Amazon started building its own physical grocery store locations.

Walmart already having physical locations definitely gives it an advantage in this time of social distancing. Walmart stores are there for people brave enough to actually go out and shop in person. The stores also act as a distributed network for home deliveries, or can provide pickup locations for online orders.

I myself am putting this last scenario to the test. I live in a more rural area and while delivery from my local Safeway couldn’t be fulfilled for more than a week and a half at the time of ordering, I can do an at-store pickup from Walmart tomorrow. Aside from a couple of minor hiccups, the Walmart app and online experience was pretty easy. Most everything I wanted was in stock, and if it wasn’t, they made it easy to swap.

As more people are forced into online grocery shopping for the first time they will go to where they can get the food and supplies they need in a timely manner. With Amazon struggling to keep up with delivery demand, Walmart, with its network of stores could become people’s de facto preference. And once they have an account set up with Walmart, re-stocking pantries will be that much easier as this lockdown continues and into a time in the hopefully not too distant future when we can emerge from our homes.

Report: Walmart+ to Take on Amazon Prime

Walmart is working on a new membership offering to take on Amazon Prime. Recode was first to report on the forthcoming Walmart+, which will broaden Walmart’s grocery Delivery Unlimited service and include perks like discounts on gas and prescription medication, as well as a Scan & Go service so members wouldn’t have to wait in line.

Recode writes that Walmart has been looking at this for the past 18 months, and the first public tests of Walmart+ could happen as soon as next month. It’s easy to see why Walmart is looking to launch this type of program soon, especially in light its fierce ongoing grocery battle with Amazon.

For its part, Amazon has been making very aggressive moves recently to expand its shopping dominance into the grocery aisle, including:

As you, and Walmart, can see, Amazon has an army of Prime members, and is quickly putting in place the real world means to grab more of their grocery dollars.

I mean, Walmart hasn’t exactly been slacking in the innovation department. It’s experimenting with self-driving delivery vehicles, robot-powered micro-fulfillment, has built out the AI-powered IRL store which uses cameras for real time inventory, and is making a big marketing push for its in-store pickup service.

But Walmart’s Delivery Unlimited, which the company started rolling out in earnest across the US last year, costs $98 for a year. But that’ll only get you free delivery of your groceries. At $119, Amazon Prime is pricier, but you also get music streaming, Prime video, two-day shipping from Amazon and a bunch of other stuff.

So it’s smart for Walmart+ to leveraging what infrastructural advantages it has, pharmacies, gas stations, etc., to fight off Amazon.

One thing is for sure. Walmart+ is just going to be one salvo in a big battle between the grocery retail giants this year.

Walmart’s Super Bowl Ad Uses Famous Characters to Push Grocery Pickup

You know something has officially “made it” when it has its own Super Bowl ad. So by that completely arbitrary standard, it’s safe to say that grocery pickup is now “a thing,” thanks to Walmart.

Walmart shared its Super Bowl spot on its company blog today. The retail giant’s Big Game ad touts the convenience of grocery pickup using a host of sci-fi related pop culture icons like C3PO, Bill S. Preston from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Buzz Lightyear, The Lego Movie‘s Wildstyle and Benny the Spaceman, Groot and a (much older) Flash Gordon, the titular character from the 1980s movie.

This is Walmart’s first Super Bowl ad and was, I imagine, a licensing logistical nightmare. It follows Walmart’s similar grocery pickup campaign from last year that featured famous cars like the Batmobile and Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine.

Famous Visitors | Super Bowl Extended Cut

Walmart’s doubling down on its famous cameo count reflects the company’s continued push for consumer adoption of grocery pickup. According to a recent Retail Info Systems story, Walmart’s grocery pickup is currently available in roughly 3,000 stores.

Last year, Walmart also started experimenting with back-of-house automated fulfillment at its Salem, New Hampshire locations. Using Alert Innovation’s robotic system, Walmart can automate the assembly of an online grocery order so a consumer can pick it up directly from the store in as little as a half hour. Walmart’s automated fulfillment is similar to the ones powered by Takeoff Technologies, and both solutions aim to make the fulfillment of online orders faster and give the consumer flexibility to pick up their groceries while they are out and about (rather than having to wait at home during a specific time for delivery).

It’s not too surprising that Walmart is putting its marketing dollars behind grocery pickup instead of delivery right now. As noted, Walmart grocery pickup is broadly available, and the company only started rolling out its Delivery Unlimited subscription service nationally in September of last year. At that time, Delivery Unlimited was expected to hit 50 percent of the country by the end of 2019.

But if delivery keeps pace and spreads across the entire U.S. this year, then perhaps we’ll see a Super Bowl ad with a cavalcade of pop culture icons getting their groceries delivered directly to their doors next year.

Nuro and Walmart Partner for Autonomous Grocery Delivery in Houston

Walmart and Nuro announced a collaboration today in which the two companies will pilot autonomous grocery delivery in Houston, TX via Nuro’s self-driving pod-like vehicles.

According to the press release:

In the coming months, the autonomous delivery service will be available to Houston customers who have opted into the program. The service will use R2, Nuro’s custom-built delivery vehicle that carries only products with no onboard driver or passengers, and autonomous Toyota Priuses, all powered by Nuro’s proprietary self-driving software and hardware.

Nuro’s R2 pods are low-speed vehicles roughly half the size of regular cars. There are two compartments for cargo, and literally no room for a driver. The advantage of the R2 is that is is more nimble than a full-sized auto and can’t drive as fast. This could make it a “safer” choice than self-driving cars as local governments look to regulate the emerging world of autonomous vehicles on city streets.

This is not the first autonomous delivery rodeo for either Walmart or Nuro. Nuro has tested self-driving grocery delivery for Kroger in Arizona as well as Houston. Walmart announced a partnership with self-driving van delivery startup Udelv earlier this year, and with Gaitek in July to make “middle mile” deliveries between Walmart stores.

Questions remain, however, about whether consumers will want fully autonomous grocery delivery devoid of any human. While it opens up a whole new world of around-the-clock delivery, the drawback is that the vehicles stop at the curb, so shoppers still need to go out to the vehicle and lug the groceries back in. Most of the time, that’s probably a first-world problem. However, it becomes more of an issue if you in a fourth-floor apartment or have mobility issues.

Houston, which has become quite the hotbed for self-driving vehicles and robots. In addition to Kroger, Nuro has been doing self-driving pizza delivery for Domino’s there. Starship robots are now rolling around the University of Houston delivering food to hungry students and staff.

Kroger and Nuro’s pilot will first be available to a select group of those who have opted-in to the service, with plans to expand to the general public later in 2020.

Walmart’s Jet.com Shuttering Fresh Food Delivery in NYC

Jet.com, which is owned by Walmart, is ceasing delivery of fresh groceries in New York City only a little more than a year after the service started.

Bloomberg first reported the story, writing:

The retailer will close a warehouse in the Bronx it was using to prepare orders and also let some drivers go, resulting in the loss of between 200 and 300 jobs, according to a person familiar with the decision. Jet — which will continue to sell dry groceries like cereal and other general merchandise — will inform customers of the news Friday and fulfill any existing orders already placed.

Jet’s move into fresh food delivery kicked off last year with a hyper-targeted focus on New York City. In addition to general fresh food, Jet also offered delivery of NYC-specific items from retailers like Bedford Cheese Shop, Orwashers Bakery and Just Bagels. (An interesting sidenote, around the same time as the Jet announcement, Walmart also announced it was acquiring Latin American online grocer, Cornershop. That deal also went bust after facing Mexican regulators).

But as Bloomberg reports, problems plagued Jet’s NYC service from the start with warehouse issues, product price fluctuations, hiked delivery fees and lots of items being out-of-stock.

Walmart acquired Jet.com for $3.3 billion in 2016 [–LINK?–]as part of an effort to expand its customer base and reach urban millennials. But a lot has changed since 2016, and even since 2017 when Jet launched the New York City delivery service.

Spurred on by Amazon getting into the grocery space, Walmart has been quick to expand its own grocery delivery and curbside pickup options independent of Jet. Walmart has been piloting automated micro-fulfillment for faster order assembly, is rolling out its Delivery Unlimited service to 1,400 stores nationwide this year, and is testing out in-home delivery.

And while Walmart lags behind Amazon is overall online grocery retail sales, research this year showed that Walmart shoppers spent more online per for groceries with Walmart than they were at Amazon.

Jet.com closing fresh food delivery in NYC wasn’t the first sign of its flagging importance to Walmart. Earlier this year Walmart conducted a sweeping overhaul of its Jet.com unit after it failed to meet expectations.

Walmart Officially Launches In-Home Delivery in Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Vero Beach

Online grocery shopping took another big step today… inside your house. Walmart officially launched its InHome Delivery service in the previously announced cities of Kansas City, MO; Pittsburg, PA; and Vero Beach, FLA.

For those unfamiliar, InHome uses a combination of smart locks and live streaming so Walmart delivery people can get inside your house (or garage) to drop off your groceries, and even put items in your fridge.

Customers in these select cities interested in trying out the service can go to InHome.Walmart.com to see if their address is eligible. If so, they select whether they want delivery in a kitchen or garage fridge and also need to buy a fifty dollar smart lock (which includes professional installation). Once the smart lock is set up, customers get unlimited deliveries for an introductory price of $19.95 per month (with a $30 minimum per basket).

When a delivery arrives, the customer is notified and then the delivery person gains access via the smart lock. The delivery people wear cameras that livestream their actions so shoppers can watch deliveries remotely on the Walmart app.

What Walmart didn’t address specifically in its post is how long this $19.95 introductory price will last, or how any change in price will square with other delivery options. Just last month, Walmart announced it was expanding its Delivery Unlimited service, which hands items to you at your door, nationwide for $98 a year or $12.95 a month. How much more will people pay to get their groceries put in the fridge while they are out?

While online grocery shopping is still a small percentage of overall grocery shopping, it’s definitely growing. Retailers like Walmart, Amazon, Target, and Kroger are all working on ways to make the process more fast and convenient. Robotic warehouses, micro-fulfillment, self-driving delivery vehicles are just a few ways supermarket chains are transforming how we get our groceries.

But is in-home delivery a bridge too far? I’m a bit older so the idea of letting a stranger into my home just to drop off food seems ridiculous. But we live in a time of letting strangers ride in our cars and sleep in our houses, so maybe it’s just a generational thing.

InHome may not be for me, but I’m curious if any of you will try it. If you’re InHome curious in Kansas City, Pittsburgh or Vero Beach and try it out — drop us a line to let us know how it goes!

Walmart Rolling Out its “Delivery Unlimited” Grocery Service Across the Country

Walmart announced today that it will be expanding its $98 “Delivery Unlimited” grocery delivery service to 1,400 of its stores later this fall, and will reach more than 50 percent of the U.S. by the end of the year.

The Delivery Unlimited program lets customers pay $98 a year or $12.95 monthly to get unlimited Walmart grocery delivery orders without paying the $9.95 delivery fee per order. A pilot of the program launched earlier this year in Houston, Miami, Salt Lake City and Tampa and will now expand to the 200 metro areas where Walmart’s grocery delivery is available.

Online grocery shopping is still a small fraction of the overall grocery shopping market. A recent survey from Gallup showed that 81 percent of Americans “never” order their groceries online. But that stat actually represented year-over-year growth in online grocery shopping, especially among families with kids under 18.

This growth is the reason all the major retailers are investing in ways to facilitate and expedite online grocery shopping. Target offers a similar delivery subscription through its Shipt service, and Amazon, of course, has its Prime membership.

Walmart partners with a number of different grocery delivery services including Deliv, DoorDash, Point Pickup, Skipcart, AxleHire, and Roadie. Additionally, Walmart launched its own delivery service called Spark towards the end of last year.

And if you can’t be home when your groceries are delivered, Walmart will be happy to upsell you on its Walmart InHome service where delivery people bring your groceries into your house when you’re out and place them in your fridge (with your permission, and livestreamed so you can watch). Though that service is online trialing in Kansas City, MO, Pittsburgh, PA and Vero Beach, FLA.

Walmart already leads the pack in online grocery shopping, and by expanding its Delivery Unlimited the company is poised to extend that lead.

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.”