THE REALITY FOR CANADIANS
Inflation – particularly in grocery items – has left Canadian families in a precarious position. With prices fluctuating constantly and little understanding of what drives the volatility, it has become near impossible to manage food expenses while maintaining a healthy, nutritious diet. In turn, many families are being forced to choose unhealthy, lower-cost foods. And in 2022, over 8 million Canadians skipped meals, forced to choose between essentials like food, rent, medication, and clothes. Foodbank usage also skyrocketed, increasing 425%1.
Food Banks of Canada and Skip Express Lane wanted to empower Canadians to make informed choices helping them adapt to real-time price fluctuations, save on groceries, and
cultivate wholesome dietary habits.
Our initiative aimed to position SkipExpressLane as an innovative alternative to traditional grocery options, while providing a personalized, budget-conscious, and reliable tool for families.
THE CREATIVE IDEA
Inflation is the cruelest tax.
Price volatility is influenced by so many complex, invisible and unpredictable factors from supply chain disruptions to weather events half-way across the world, wars and even religious holidays (lamb prices explode at Easter and Eid el Fitr), that it’s impossible for a human to make an informed choice anymore.
The severity and sustained pressure of food inflation meant the issue wasn’t exclusive to lower income households. Hence, our targeting approach had to be inclusive and account for several types of family profiles (from income to household sizes) who share a common goal of achieving a balance between budget and healthy nutrition.
Inflation Cookbook is a digital grocery shopping tool that tracks real-time food pricing data to help Canadians get inflation out of their cart. It addresses the complex challenge of price volatility in the industry by harnessing real-time data tracking weekly price fluctuations of 400+ key ingredients across major retailers and 80+ locations nationwide.
The core creative idea lies in its ability to transform real-time data on price volatility into actionable, budget-conscious options for consumers. Providing this invaluable information to Canadian families while grocery shopping allows them to make informed decisions that lead to significant savings and healthier meal choices. The data journey begins with an always-on and comprehensive, real-time data-gathering process, accounting for the complexity of price volatility in groceries. Next, the platform's innovative algorithm interprets the data, identifying trends in price changes and translating them into actionable real-time grocery insights revealing what to buy and, perhaps more importantly, what not to buy.
This information is then made actionable, generating personalized recipes with Ai, using the chatGPT API for recipe creation and midjourney5 for imagery. A chef and nutritionist then validate the recipes and their nutritional benefits before they go online. And recipes are customized based on each family's size, location, and budget. Targeting is done geographically, accounting for cultural, income, and weather variables across the Canadian provinces.
THE IMPACT
Inflation Cookbook is self-sustaining and launched in 2023 through a partnership with Canada’s largest newspaper, giving it unprecedented scale and embedding it into the space where inflation was the most covered topic. It was also supported with a digital and PR effort. It covers every region in Canada, the world’s 2nd largest country, and has an adaptable and scalable foundation with the potential for expansion into other markets. Inflation Cookbook‘s impact on Canadians’ grocery bills is undeniable, allowing a family of four to save, on average, 20.3% on their weekly cart2. This undeniable reduction in grocery expenses demonstrates Inflation Cookbook's effectiveness in empowering consumers to make informed, budget-conscious, healthy decisions. By December 2023, the platform is projected to have generated over $21.8M in total savings for Canadian families3.
Inflation Cookbook quickly captured a sizeable following (28,600 weekly users), a testament to its widespread resonance. The platform gained significant attention as soon as it was launched, with over 400 million earned media impressions4 and 355+ articles published within the first week alone. In that same week, it had sent over 3000 new customers to shop on SkipExpressLane.
1 Foodbanks Canada, CBC.
2 Average savings for a Canadian family of 4 using the service since its launch vs. weekly pricing average
3 ProjecAons using StaAsAcs Canada grocery data and Dentsu Media growth modeling.
4 Netvibes AnalyAcs
