The Kroger Co. launched the first generation of Chefbot, its AI-powered Twitter recipe tool that helps users' pair the groceries in their fridge and reduce food waste by providing mealtime inspiration and personalized recommendations.
Developed in partnership with integrated creative and media agency 360i, and technology partners Coffee Labs and Clarifai, Kroger's Chefbot offers an innovative and user-friendly conversational solution for breaking away from mundane mealtime routines and unwanted at-home food waste—common challenges for many as families continue to enjoy more meals together at home. Chefbot's AI analyzes photographs to recognize nearly 2,000 ingredients, unlocking 20,000 Kroger recipes for users to cook.
How Chefbot Works:
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Snap: Users snap a photo of three ingredients from their refrigerator or pantry
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Tweet: Users tweet their photo to @KrogerChefbot. Through artificial intelligence, Chefbot identifies ingredients and then scans thousands of unique recipes on Kroger.com
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Cook: Within seconds, Chefbot responds to the user's original tweet to deliver a list of personalized recipe recommendations based on the selected ingredients
"Last year, we launched Kroger's Fresh for Everyone brand transformation campaign to underscore our commitment and belief that everyone should have access to fresh, affordable and delicious food," says Mandy Rassi, Kroger's vice president of marketing. "Chefbot is one of the ways we're delivering on that brand promise by making it even easier for our customers to achieve their meal aspirations, especially as the majority of shoppers are eating meals prepared at home multiple times a day during the pandemic.”
Chefbot provides an interactive experience to help make life at home more manageable and reinforces Kroger's commitment to Fresh for Everyone as well as encourages professional foodies and amateur cooks alike to utilize use all the food found in their pantries to help reduce food waste. Chefbot's experience includes multiple touchpoints, offering fun social engagement through Twitter paired with Kroger.com e-commerce integration. Over time with learned insights, Chefbot's food recognition and recipe search technology will evolve and improve, allowing the possibilities of this powerful tool to advance.
"Never has it been more necessary for people to be able to find quick, sustainable, and easy solutions for making meals at home - and no place makes it easier for food brands to engage directly with these people than Twitter," says Dennis Bree, Twitter's Director of Catalyst + Government & Causes. "Through the use of innovative technology, Kroger is bringing meal-time inspiration to the people on Twitter who are actively Tweeting about the need for new recipes more than ever before."