Meredith Corp. and Walmart's Grocery Shopping Partnership

What’s for dinner? A new partnership between Meredith Corporation and Walmart wants to make answering that question easier than ever. The two companies announced a partnership this morning pairing the culinary acumen and consumer insights of Meredith with the convenience and reach of Walmart to make meal-planning and grocery shopping simpler than ever. The financial details of the collaboration were not disclosed. The partnership includes new technological features such as artificial intelligence-powered meal-planning and shoppable recipes, a visual search tool and voice search using a Google Assistant. It also includes an array of content including a shoppable magazine, a social commerce promotion on TikTok and programs like Make It Easy and Kid Foodolgy designed to personalize users’ content and advertisements. Despite the diverse nature of the initiatives, the new features share a common goal: reducing the friction between meal-planning and grocery shopping by linking Meredith recipes with Walmart supply chains. The partnership specifically includes the Meredith properties Allrecipes, Better Homes & Gardens, Parents, EatingWell and Real Simple. How We Cooked at Home During the Pandemic, According to Allrecipes “We are partnering with Meredith Corporation to help millions of busy families plan and prepare meals faster,” said Sarah Henry, senior director of content and influencer marketing at Walmart. “The partnership is a mix of content, media and product innovation, but above all, it's rooted in a shared commitment to building experiences that bring solutions to customers’ daily lives.” The collaboration comes as more publishers look to build the revenue they generate from commerce. In many cases, publishers have leaned into merchandise, licensed products or affiliate links, but the pandemic has created a unique opportunity for food publishers like Meredith. At-home grocery shopping and delivery became more common due to social-distancing measures, which has spurred retailers like Walmart to partner with the brands that home cooks trust to help them find recipe inspiration. Online grocery shopping has experienced 40% growth since the start of the pandemic, and 90% of online grocery shoppers say they plan to continue the practice even after life returns to normal, Henry said. The heart of the deal The partnership has been in development for more than 18 months, said Corbin de Rubertis, the SVP of innovation at Meredith, due to the technical infrastructure required to incorporate real-time price data from Walmart, customized to reflect the location of a user. When a user browsing Allrecipes reads a recipe, they will be presented with the price and availability of the necessary ingredients in the Walmart closest to their location. The user can then add those ingredients into a virtual shopping cart, purchase them and schedule them for at-home delivery or in-store pickup. At-home cooks will also be able to ask their Google Assistant for recipe inspiration from any of the participating Meredith brands, and the smart device will reply with suggestions that reflect the pricing and inventory of their closest Walmart. Inspiration-seeking gourmands can also snap a picture of the ingredients they do have on hand, submit it on a dedicated webpage living on the brands' websites and receive recipe suggestions. Likewise, via the TikTok social commerce promotion, users will find popular Allrecipes videos that are shoppable via Walmart with ads on TikTok. The user will simply tap the “Shop Now” call-to-action button in the TikTok video to load all of the ingredients into a digital shopping cart on Walmart and be ready for checkout. “We're trying to climb on the train in terms of the shift in consumer behavior toward embracing ecommerce for food delivery,” de Rubertis said. “Covid made online pickup and delivery a necessity, but now that necessity has transformed into convenience. And we want to meet that need, consistently, across all of our portfolio brands.”

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Meredith Corp. and Walmart Announce Shoppable Recipes Partnership Making Meal Planning Easier

The collaboration pairs the consumer insights of Meredith with the convenience of Walmart

Mark Stenberg

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