Online Platform Provides Recipe-Led Shopping for U.K. Consumers

In what might be a recipe for success as a new iteration of digital shopping, the U.K. startup Lollipop is set to launch a new recipe building and grocery shopping service to consumers in Great Britain.

Lollipop AI was designed to help people create meal plans from recipes and automatically put those ingredients into their shopping carts. According to a report in TechCrunch, Lollipop AI plans to partner with Sainsbury’s, the second largest grocery chain in the United Kingdom, and with the BBC Good Food website, among other collaborators. The site will be free to shoppers, and retailer partners will pay a small commission to help fund advertising.

“It’s a marketplace, so we could partner with traditional supermarkets and online retailers, direct to farm/organic, mission-led single component, recipe boxes and rapid delivery,” founder and CEO Tom Foster-Carter told the editor of TechCrunch.  “The plan is to be the single place you go to for all your food needs – we’ll enable you to order your Deliveroo or restaurant kit from us. Groceries are delivered by our partners, and then when it’s time to cook you’ll be able to use a cooking companion app. In the future you’ll be able to improve your cooking skills through Lollipop.”

Lollipop AI is currently taking registrations for a waitlist of users. The first 10,000 signups will receive free premium accounts for life, according to the company website.