A time-strapped consumer may buy a pizza on impulse, but what about impulse recipe planning?
A new service called Popcart — developed by FreshDirect and the social recipe network Foodily — encourages consumers to do just that.
Through a browser bookmarklet, users highlight ingredients on any online recipe and those products are automatically added to a FreshDirect shopping list. The shopping list is streamlined to identify items that shoppers may already have in their kitchens.
“We really try to help people shop efficiently, which is ‘Hey, you might already have salt and pepper on hand, you might already have olive oil on hand, if you don’t of course you can easily add that to the cart,’” Andrea Cutright, CEO of Foodily, told SN.
Foodily has worked in the past on analyzing complex recipe data and categorizing diet and nutrition of recipes. The Popcart partnership builds on this knowledge; the bookmarklet pulls from FreshDirect’s product catalogue.
“And that same kind of intelligent understanding of products as we do with recipes, lets us do this kind of magical matching. So when you’re looking for mint you don’t get mint gum,” said Cutright.
Popcart is aimed at those shoppers who like to cook. FreshDirect research found that 75% of consumers claimed to prepare most of their meals from scratch.
“Our customers really also care about knowing the ingredients that are going into their bodies. That’s their number one concern when they are cooking — especially for families  or for themselves,” said FreshDirect spokesperson Amanda Cortese Vogel.
“Something like Popcart lets them have more control over their diet.”
The Popcart team is working to allow the service to function on mobile devices. They have already been receiving customization requests from shoppers such as the ability to convert a recipe into a vegetarian meal, set price boundaries or adjust the size of a recipe.
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Popcart is being introduced in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Philadelphia and Delaware.
“One great thing about our two companies is how committed we are to helping people discover great recipes, discover great products and really be able to take action on them. This came out of a real understanding that recipe discovery takes people everywhere on the web,” Cutright said.