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Hellmann’s Fights Food Waste With AI
Meal Reveal app turns leftovers into delicious meals
People waste a lot of food because they don't know what to make with leftovers or forget about ingredients they already have. British households waste 4.7 million tons of food annually, or eight meals a week per household. This is a global problem with households wasting over 1 billion meals per day in 2024, according to a UN report.
Hellmann’s partnered with Publicis Sapient and Google Cloud to create Meal Reveal, an AI-enabled app that scans refrigerators and recommends recipes based on available ingredients. The brand aimed to align this initiative with its "Make Taste, Not Waste" mission, reinforcing its commitment to sustainability and resonating with consumers who increasingly prioritize eco-conscious practices.
Meal Reveal has helped millions of people reduce food waste and save money, while also enhancing customer engagement and brand loyalty for Hellmann's. The concept supports UK households in saving the average £780 that is typically lost annually due to food waste.
The Imperative for Change
To compete with new food and beverage startups and direct-to-consumer companies, Hellmann’s, a Unilever brand, needed a new approach to connect with consumers. Hellmann’s recognized the widespread problem of "fridge blindness," a situation where individuals struggle to envision meals from the ingredients they already have. This problem contributes significantly to food waste, a pressing global and economic concern.
As people search for ways to cut back on spending, the need for creative solutions that make the most of what they already have is more urgent than ever. Hellmann's sought a solution to empower consumers, enabling them to utilize existing ingredients effectively and minimize waste.
The Transformative Solution
Hellmann’s partnered with UniOps, Publicis Sapient and Google Cloud to develop Meal Reveal, an AI-enabled app that utilizes cutting-edge technology to combat food waste. Recognizing that modern consumers expect convenient solutions, the development team prioritized user experience. Users simply scan the contents of their refrigerator using their smartphone camera, capturing video or uploading images to the Meal Reveal app.
The app leverages the power of Google's Gemini Vision technology to accurately identify ingredients within the refrigerator. This advanced image recognition technology can process various refrigerator types and layouts, ranging from meticulously organized to cluttered spaces. To ensure accuracy, the technology was trained on diverse fridge images sourced internally and from third-party vendors, accounting for variations in organization, ingredient placement and regional differences in food items.
Once the ingredients are scanned, an AI recommendation engine built and implemented by Google Cloud Premier Partner, Publicis Sapient, takes over. Leveraging Google's Vertex AI platform, the engine analyzes the scanned ingredients, user preferences and dietary restrictions to suggest personalized, relevant recipes. This intelligent system helps people discover meal options using existing ingredients, reducing waste and inspiring culinary creativity.
The Business Impact
Unilever, Google Cloud and Publicis Sapient teams worked in close cooperation for a rapid production process. The team’s proactive approach, coupled with their prior ideation on a similar solution dating back to 2022, facilitated a swift development process. The project, initiated in December 2023/January 2024, was successfully launched in just 10 - 12 weeks due to parallel testing processes.
The launch of Meal Reveal coincided with Food Waste Action Week in March 2024, maximizing its impact and visibility. This strategic timing allowed Hellmann's to capitalize on heightened public awareness surrounding food waste and garner significant media attention. The app's intuitive interface contributed to its widespread adoption.
User feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with 80 percent of respondents reporting satisfaction with the app's ability to combat "fridge blindness." Notably, 63 percent of users indicated a preference for their top-matched recipes, further validating the effectiveness of the AI-powered recommendation system.
"People never set out wanting to throw food away. Food waste is an unintended consequence of our busy lives, where we look in the fridge after a long day and see disparate ingredients but nothing to eat. We saw an opportunity here to create a straightforward, easy to use tool. Meal Reveal is powered by the latest Google technology where a simple scan of the leftover ingredients lets you see the delicious potential in your fridge, in the palm of your hand.”
-Christina Bauer-Plank , Hellmann’s Global Vice President, in Sustainable Brands
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