(HealthNewsDigest.com) –
LOS ANGELES – Sixty-four percent of the world’s population now actively exclude foodstuffs from their diet. Retailers are under pressure to meet the growing consumer demand for a shopping experience tailored to their food requirements. And consumers are seeking the clearest, most trusted and accurate route to guide them. With that landscape, Spoon Guru, the smart food search engine for people with specific or complex dietary preferences, launches its U.S. Beta version on November 4th. A free consumer app demonstrates the company’s pioneering capabilities and is available via iTunes and Google Play.
Launched in 2015 in London, U.K., by CEO and Co-founder Markus Stripf, Spoon Guru’s awards-winning, proprietary search technology takes the fuss out of shopping by easily identifying products for the consumer with special food needs, and thereby helping retailers refine their product offerings based on individual profiles. This increases the choice of foods available to customers while making it easier to find them.
The U.K.’s biggest grocery retailer Tesco stepped up to change the game for consumers by looking to the future and partnering with Spoon Guru. This provides a free and unique online and mobile shopping experience, through Tesco.com, that helps customers filter their food searches. Spoon Guru’s Stripf is in talks with multiple retailers across various sectors in the U.S. and globally, both online and brick-and-mortar, as the consumer app launches.
To start, consumers create a profile with the Spoon Guru technology, select from 180+ distinct tags (starting with 45 on 11/4, and rolling out the rest in due course) to establish what intolerances they have (i.e. eggs, fish, lupin, sulphites, gluten), and/or lifestyle diet categories they abide (i.e. low carb, organic, vegan, low sugar, paleo, etc.). The savvy search engine then finds tailored recipes and products for individual tastes.
When shopping, the app’s powerful barcode scanner can read a product barcode to identify what the consumer can(not) eat, thus making the act of grocery shopping enjoyable instead of a chore. Whatever your individual food requirements may be, Spoon Guru finds food for every body. [Click image for brief video.]
Stripf states, “Understanding people’s individual needs is at the heart of Spoon Guru, and transforming the world of food is our mission. Having had such a high level of positive response from both the U.K.’s business sector and consumers thus far, we are excited to launch now in the U.S., one of the biggest and most important markets in the world and which is home to a very large and passionate population of people with special food needs. We will be at FaBlogCon in Denver on our launch date, connecting with a number of bloggers and attendees who very personally understand these challenges.”
The database so far includes over 20,000 recipes and over 7,600 different manufacturers (a mix of retailers and manufacturers), including Walmart, Kroger, Whole Foods/Amazon Fresh, Wegmans, Safeway and more.
When shopping, the app’s powerful barcode scanner can read a product barcode to identify what the consumer can(not) eat, thus making the act of grocery shopping enjoyable instead of a chore. Whatever your individual food requirements may be, Spoon Guru finds food for every body. [Click image for brief video.]Key aspects of Spoon Guru’s groundbreaking search optimization:
- The technology combines leading medical insight with unique machine learning algorithms and AI, to reveal previously hidden dietary attributes in food products and recipes.
- Spoon Guru is capable of supporting endless combinations of unique consumer dietary preferences and needs.
- An advisory panel of eight world-leading health and nutrition experts will work with Spoon Guru’s in-house nutritionists and product team to ensure the latest scientific knowledge is integrated into the technology’s DNA to further empower those with specific diets and food preferences. The carefully-selected panel includes two U.S.-based experts: Dr. Marc E. Rothenberg MD, PhD, Director of the Division of Allergy and Immunology and Director of the Cincinnati Center for Eosinophilic Disorders, and Dr. Carina Venter PhD, RD, a registered dietician in the U.K., U.S. and South Africa.
“I am excited to work with Spoon Guru. They have a game-changing technology that has potential to revolutionize the way we eat and improve healthy eating,” states Dr. Rothenberg.
Spoon Guru’s solution for industry and consumers alike is gaining notice and attracting interest, through awards and new partnerships–from Tesco, to running a trial for NHS Scotland with openbrolly Health using AI to help treat IBD. Last mont
h, Spoon Guru was awarded the IGD Digital Engagement Award in the U.K. IGD is an education and training charity for the food and grocery industry that undertakes research for the benefit of the public. According to John Maltman, Chief Executive of E Fundamentals and sponsor of the IGD Awards: “Spoon Guru is a really good example of how technology can be used to solve a real problem for lots of shoppers: how to find products that fit with their dietary needs. The team created an innovative solution and has moved at impressive speed to deliver at scale.”
The company is led by tech entrepreneurs Stripf and co-founders Simon O’Regan and Tim Allen. The idea for the Spoon Guru app originated when Stripf’s wife Jeany developed multiple food allergies and she found it difficult to shop for foods she could eat, due to lack of transparent information about products that catered to people with allergies and specific dietary preferences.
The company is led by tech entrepreneurs Stripf and co-founders Simon O’Regan and Tim Allen. The idea for the Spoon Guru app originated when Stripf’s wife Jeany developed multiple food allergies and she found it difficult to shop for foods she could eat, due to lack of transparent information about products that catered to people with allergies and specific dietary preferences.