Hungryroot Launches SmartCart™, a New AI Tool to Help People Live Healthily

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Sep 10, 2024, 09:00 ET

Comprised of 10 machine learning models developed entirely by Hungryroot's internal teams, SmartCart™ doubles customer retention, drives hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales, and reduces food waste by 80%

NEW YORK, Sept. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Hungryroot, the leader in AI-driven consumer wellness, is proud to announce the launch of SmartCart™, a first-of-its-kind AI system that transforms the way people eat and live. Comprised of ten machine learning models that integrate into an operations research algorithm, SmartCart™ analyzes millions of data points to recommend healthy groceries, easy recipes, and essential supplements to help you and your family live healthier, more joyful lives.

"SmartCart™ offers a revolutionary way to eat and live," said Ben McKean, Founder and CEO at Hungryroot. "It's like having your own personal assistant for healthy living. It gets to know your goals, lifestyle, and budget, and it relieves the burden of meal planning and shopping for nutritious foods and supplements that help you feel your best."

Customers who use SmartCart™ order twice as often on Hungryroot as customers who shop on their own, demonstrating its ability to help people achieve their health objectives, save time, and discover new foods that bring them joy. 90% of SmartCart™ customers report progress in their health goals since joining the service, and on average, they save 3 hours each week on meal planning, shopping, and cooking. They also discover 3 times more food than shopping on their own.

Since 2019, Hungryroot has been at the forefront of AI innovation. Its original algorithm, known internally as "box fill logic" (BFL), leveraged an operations research algorithm to automatically fill customers' grocery carts based on their preferences. That system was limited in its ability to dynamically scale and use customer ordering behavior to adjust recommendations over time.

SmartCart™ integrates ten machine learning models that each serve a distinct purpose in finding the best foods and supplements to help you meet your needs. One of the models predicts the categories of foods you'll want based on your recent ordering behavior — three smoothies and four dinner servings, for example. Another model, built using Generative AI and an approach similar to ChatGPT, analyzes your recent orders, cross-references data from other users, and applies machine learning to suggest the ideal characteristics of your next order — low sodium, quick-to-prepare meals, or high protein, on-the-go snacks, for example. Given that the factors that matter most vary by person, there's also a model that applies a weight to each of the other models, guaranteeing that the recommendations are both personalized and designed to optimize customer satisfaction. This flexible, customer-centric approach replaces the rigidity of traditional rule-based systems and is cutting-edge in the field of AI. (Hungryroot has already been granted several patents on the system.)

While many companies rely on third-party AI solutions, Hungryroot developed SmartCart™ from scratch using entirely new code written by its in-house team of data scientists. The team is led by Antoine Atallah, who brings over 20 years of AI research, machine learning, data science, computer vision, and software engineering expertise. Atallah was one of three engineers who built the original Facebook advertising algorithm. He then built a similar system at Twitter before leading the core machine learning teams at Apple.

The hype around AI has primarily focused on the infrastructure layer (e.g. Nvidia) and foundational models (e.g. OpenAI). Hungryroot is one of the first companies to build its own models for a specific consumer application. "Most consumer companies are adopting AI developed by others, but at Hungryroot, we're building our own models," added Atallah, Senior Vice President of Data Science. "This gives us a unique advantage and ensures our AI is perfectly attuned to our customers' needs. For example, our sequence predictor system, a key feature of SmartCart™, is a generative AI similar to ChatGPT, but with a focused application on consumer wellness. Critically, this model integrates with a number of other models built specifically for the customer pain points we are solving at Hungryroot."

In addition to providing an enhanced customer experience, SmartCart™ also offers a number of operational benefits. By considering inventory levels, SmartCart™ reduces food waste at Hungryroot facilities by 80% compared to traditional grocers. As a result, Hungryroot was recently recognized as one of the leading companies in the world using AI to combat climate change.

SmartCart™ is now available to all Hungryroot customers and is already responsible for driving hundreds of millions of sales for the company, promising a new era of AI-driven healthy living. Learn more about Hungryroot at: www.hungryroot.com.

About Hungryroot
Hungryroot is an AI-enabled consumer wellness company. Like a personal assistant for healthy living, Hungryroot gets to know your preferences, lifestyle, budget, health objectives, and more, and recommends and delivers healthy groceries, simple recipes, and essential supplements for you and your family. It's the easiest way to eat healthy, achieve your goals, save time, and discover new foods. Founded on the belief that food is the foundation of health, convenience should not mean compromise, and we're all unique in how we eat and live, Hungryroot is building a future in which healthy living is easy and enjoyable. Learn more at www.hungryroot.com.

CONTACT: Emily Goldthwait, [email protected]

SOURCE Hungryroot