As food and beverage companies announce their participation in the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, many are taking advantage of the opportunity to unveil not only environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives, but also features to drive customer acquisition and loyalty among nutrition-conscious shoppers.
These initiatives coincide with a long-term trend toward wellness-motivated spending, particularly among millennial and generation Z customers. Shipt, a delivery business owned by Target, has stated that it will “upgrade” its marketplace to make it simpler for customers to shop for goods based on their dietary needs and preferences.
“Shipt was really the first countrywide grocery delivery business to provide things like, say, keto, like organic,” said Shipt CEO Kamau Witherspoon in an interview. “We’ve seen thousands of consumers save their dietary preferences in their Shipt profile and utilize it as a search for products to create their baskets throughout the last year that the dietary preferences tool has been offered to our customers.”
He said that because this function allows in-store shoppers to access dietary preferences linked to the client’s profile, it has increased their ability to find suitable substitutes for the final consumer. Witherspoon mentioned that the firm is collaborating with the American Heart Association to include research into these features, which will be updated next year.
While the firm is portraying this effort as a method to provide access to healthful meals, the timing definitely works in favor of the grocer, as rising food prices have many consumers purchasing fewer meals from restaurants and instead seeking more economical ready-made options from grocers.
According to the research “Digital Economy Payments: Consumers Buy Into Food Bargains,” which is based on a July survey of a census-balanced panel of over 2,700 U.S. customers, 37% of consumers bought prepared food on their most recent supermarket trip, up 7 points from 30% in November 2021.
