The Problem: Americans are Cooking Less

In 2015, Americans spent more on eating out than they did on groceries[i]. When asked why they are cooking less, people’s answers range from not having the right ingredients to not being able to cook to not having the time to look for something quick and easy. Our new technology, SMaRT Pantry, aims to solve all of those issues.

 

The Solution: Curated Menus for the Average Joe

The Simple Meals and Recipes Tonight (SMaRT) Pantry uses machine-learning techniques to provide consumers with access to recipes that meet their flavor and time preferences while only using the items they have in their kitchen. By taking user preferences, similar customer data, and pantry contents, SMaRT Pantry generates customized dinner solutions – it’s like having a personal chef hand-pick every night’s dinner menu.

How It Works

Step 1: Pantry contents (as provided by store receipts or manually entered), favorite recipes, food allergies and dislikes, total cook-time preferences, health and budget desires, and preferred difficulty level are uploaded into the SMaRT Pantry app.

Step 2: SMaRT Pantry uses your historic data (ratings, similar-user preferences, recipe characteristics) and, with state-of-the-art machine learning technology, returns a personalized set of suggested recipes. Depending on your settings, this list may include recipes using only what’s currently found in your pantry, or it may generate a grocery list that allows you to pick up a few key items to execute the perfect recipe.

Step 3: Simply rate your meal to improve future recommendations. With additional use SMaRT Pantry gets better at personalizing recipes for you: providing new ideas and additional variety to meals you would normally cook.

 

 

Additional Features

• On the day of your choosing, SMaRT Pantry will provide you with a suggested grocery list, taking into account previous purchase behavior, current stock of pantry items, and potential recipes you could make with a few additional ingredients. With the click of a button, it can even directly order those items to your door.
• Push notifications will provide you with information on what products have been sitting in the pantry for a while and likely need to be used up before reaching their expiration dates.
• SMaRT Pantry could even be expanded to incorporate other augmented perception technology (e.g. smart fridges, RFID tags, or other sensors) to automatically identify pantry contents, or internet of things appliances to assist in recipe execution (e.g. preheating the oven for you or notifying you to start your slow cooker in the morning).

 

Demonstration Design: SMaRT Pantry vs. Personal Chef

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the SMaRT Pantry we propose a cooking challenge in which the target consumer provides information on her favorite recipes, allergies, and preferences to a professional personal chef. This chef, using a typical pantry, picks a recipe and prepares a meal for her. SMaRT Pantry takes the same information as the chef and, using its database of other users and user preferences, selects a recipe. A second professional chef will prepare this meal. The outcome? Our target customer tastes both meals and sees that SMaRT pantry is better able to predict what she likes. In other words, SMaRT Pantry is better than a personal chef picking your menu every night! The bonus, of course, is that she can use SMaRT Pantry herself and pick a recipe in a fraction of the time that it would usually take.

We could pilot this demonstration either directly for investors (showing them the potential value of this product) or to random potential customers. We could then use those results in advertising, showing testimonials where new users rave about how much the SMaRT Pantry understands their preferences. Our marketing could then be based around the idea of “having a personal chef pick your menu every night.” This gets to the core technology of the system – the data-based approach to choosing a meal that fits every individual’s needs and wants.

 

[i] Americans Officially Spend More at Restaurants Than Grocery Stores

 

By Anecdotal Evidence – Allison Miller, Patrick Miller, and Jordan Bell-Masterson