When Katie Hotze welcomed her first child, her cooking habits changed. While she had previously spend the better part of most Sundays planning recipes and visiting her local grocery store to stock the kitchen for the week, said Hotze, “all of my free time disappeared and I found myself wandering the grocery after work desperately in search of something to pull together for dinner, or turning to take-out.”
Dinner went from an enjoyable hobby for Hotze to a burden, challenge, and struggle. She tried meal delivery kits; while the convenience was nice, there were limited options, and they were expensive due to the shipping of small amounts of prepared ingredients across the county.
“Why are we shipping,” said Hotze, “when you can buy ingredients from the grocery store down the street?” Answering this question became a personal quest, one she would work on for nearly two years, including throughout a move from Chicago to Charlotte and enrolling in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s VenturePrise program.
As Hotze wireframed, tested, and validated assumptions, grocers began to embrace digital innovation. Grocers have rolled out e-commerce programs and curbside store pickup. They’re building or expanding loyalty programs.
Others attempt to solve one part of that challenge: what’s for dinner. Hotze wanted to solve a different problem: helping grocers sell more of their products once people decide what’s for dinner. Her answer: Grocery Shopii, which allow grocers to seamlessly activate meal planning technology on top of their existing e-commerce platforms. The company launched earlier this month.
Shoppi recipe dashboard. Source: Shoppi
Hotze launched her company as grocers are moving to be early adopters in technology, she believes. Gallup found that just four percent of shoppers are consistently shopping online for groceries. Grocers, and Hotze, are betting this trend shifts, and online shopping expands.
“Digital shelves, dynamic pricing, and just-walk-out shopping experiences are incredibly appealing to Gen Y and Gen Z,” said Hotze.
Only one percent of those surveyed by Gallup reported consistent, regular use of a meal kit service, and there are other signs that this trend is on the decline. In July 2018, Chef’d shut down despite a prior valuation of more than $150 million. Blue Apron, which as recently as March 2018 controlled 35 percent of the U.S. meal kit market according to data from Earnest Research, has seen its stock price fall from $140.10 in June 2017 to $6.95 at the opening bell on August 21, 2019.
Yet grocers are investing resources in identifying solutions that treat meal preparation and meal kits as an in-store or e-commerce product rather than as a service. Hence, the rise of the concept of the shoppable recipe.
For example, Walmart announced this week that it would partner with BuzzFeed’s Tasty food network and provide customers shoppable recipes from more than 4,000 Tasty videos.
Award-winning technology, immediately
Grocery Shopii launched their platform earlier this month, and soon after, Progressive Grocer named the company the industry’s “Best Tech Application” at the 2019 Total Meal Solutions Awards. The awards are given to companies with “some of the most innovative and creative ideas we’ve seen,” said Jim Dudlicek, editorial director at Progressive Grocer.
Hotze’s idea is based on the research she conducted through VenturePrise, interviewing more than 100 customers in her target customer segment. “We learned that the store shopper is scanning the grocery shelves for inspiration,” said Hotze. The taco shells that are on sale enter the cart, and now it’s taco night at home. “That visual inspiration is an enormous gap in online grocery shopping today,” said Hotze.
Hotze and her team of six people, including business partner and chief marketing officer Louise Pritchard, believe this visual gap in current technology solutions is the root cause of the high levels of shopping cart abandonment.”
Grocery Shopii embeds meal planning into the online shopping experience, said Hotze, adding value for shoppers and for grocers by inspiring meals, reducing cart abandonment, and expediting online shopping.
“We are honored to be selected in such a competitive space” said Hotze upon receiving the award. “This level of support from the grocery industry is incredibly meaningful for us.”
