Schnucks, Spoon Guru Reward Shoppers’ Healthy Purchases
Schnuck Markets Inc. has joined forces with AI nutrition technology company Spoon Guru to develop and launch an exclusive new healthy eating platform. Good For You aims to help customers make healthy choices by using a set of nutrition guidelines to identify products, including fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and whole grains, and low in added sugar and saturated fat, to help shoppers eat more healthfully.
Introduced on Jan. 1, 2022, the platform is free to all Schnucks Rewards members. Shoppers who opt into the program will be entered into a sweepstakes to win Schnucks Rewards Points and gain access to a fitness library and wellness tips through the Schnucks Rewards app.
“Schnucks is committed to promoting healthier choices for its customers, which is why we chose to partner with Spoon Guru and harness its unique, cutting-edge technology, built on six years of machine-learning algorithms, which provides invaluable data to retailers to help influence consumer shopping habits,” said Joy Petty, Schnucks’ senior director of retail and brand marketing. “There is a common perception that healthy eating is expensive – we are confident that by highlighting the broad range of healthy products out there, Good For You will change this.”
The platform was developed with Spoon Guru’s proprietary technology alongside nutritionist-led categorization of products in accordance with ever-evolving government guidelines. The combination of artificial intelligence with accredited nutritional expertise was designed to offer individuals a shopping experience fueled by both data and human insight.
“We are delighted to partner with Schnucks to build its health-and-wellness offering with our nutrition expertise and scientific rigor,” said Markus Stripf, co-founder of London-based Spoon Guru, which works with such retailers as Tesco in the United Kingdom, Albert Heijn in the Netherlands, and Woolworths in Australia and New Zealand. “A growing number of retailers are offering customers a personalized product discovery experience which rewards shoppers for making healthy choices. Retailers that fail to keep pace with this trend, and the role of technology in enabling it, will lag behind competitors in the race to win and retain customer loyalty.”
Spoon Guru will help Schnucks qualify Good For You products by developing the program’s criteria, which are informed by the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Heart Association. The company will also act as a third party assuming responsibility for the Good for You list, and help Schnucks market the products, helping customers find healthier choices more quickly and easily.
The Good For You product list will be updated on a monthly basis to identify any changes in product ingredients and to incorporate new health guidelines as they arise. According to Spoon Guru, the partnership with Schnucks is “the first of several exciting developments” that the tech provider will launch in the health-and-wellness arena this year.
St. Louis-based Schnucks operates 111 stores in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, and employs 13,000 associates. The company is No. 64 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2021 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.
