Kitchen assistant app Remy has launched a new feature that allows users to fill baskets at their chosen online supermarket with ingredients required to make recipes they have spotted on social media.
The latest update of the app, which keeps track of users’ cupboard and fridge contents – including when they expire – and automatically builds shopping lists for them, has been launched in response to the fact that “the way households find recipe inspiration has fundamentally changed”, it said.
The app can convert a recipe from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, any website, or a photo of a cookbook page into a list of ingredients required to make it, then auto-fill the user’s basket at most major UK supermarkets including M&S, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons.
“People scroll for recipes and ask AI for ideas, but the journey from inspiration to dinner is still broken, and that’s a problem for shoppers and for retailers,” said Conrad Kissling, CEO and co-founder of Remy.
“With Remy 5.0, every recipe on the internet or in your cookbooks becomes shoppable at the UK’s major supermarkets in a few clicks. We’ve closed the loop, helping households cook efficiently while helping retailers grow their baskets responsibly.”
Users can also refine what is suggested for their basket based on their dietary preferences and weekly budget.
In addition to drawing inspiration online, app users can chat to RemAI, Remy’s personal recipe assistant, to find and plan meals and get meal plans built around the ingredients already in their kitchen.
A ‘live impact view’ shows food saved, money saved and CO₂ avoided as they shop. Remy’s multi-retailer architecture means users can compare a single shopping list across banners and optimise for price, convenience or range.
“Recipe apps have existed for years, but they stop at the point where it actually gets hard: matching loose ingredients to real products, in stock, at a real retailer,” said Aurelio Sanchiz, co-founder and chief product and technology officer.
“That matching layer is what we’ve spent months building, and 5.0 is the first time consumers get the full benefit of it, from a reel or a picture to a basket across thousands of SKUs, automatically,” he added.
In June, HelloFresh launched a similar AI-powered feature on its app which allows users to share any video from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or external websites, as well as handwritten recipe cards, family notebooks or magazine clippings to create a recipe of the content – albeit not a shoppable one.
The AI “instantly extracts the information to create a structured recipe with step-by-step instructions that mirror HelloFresh’s own intuitive cooking guides, complete with an organised ingredient list”, the recipe box brand said.
Other players have introduced social media ingredient extraction tools, including CookifyAI in the US, which lets users send shopping lists to Instacart and some retailers, and Pluck, which offers the extraction tool as a standalone service.
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