Dive Brief:
- Walmart has partnered with BuzzFeed’s Tasty, the world's biggest social food network, to allow shoppers to purchase kitchenware and appliances from the network’s recipe video pages, according to a company blog post. The skillets, pans and other available items are available from “buy” screens at the bottom of each page, and are supplied by either Walmart.com or its Jet.com arm.
- Starting next year, Walmart.com and Jet.com will integrate groceries with Tasty’s 2,000-plus recipe videos. Walmart shoppers will be able to add items for store pickup.
- Tasty is the largest franchise on Facebook, with more than 90 million followers, according to the release, and has garnered more than 65 billion page views.
Dive Insight:
Walmart’s integration with BuzzFeed’s Tasty app, whose recipe videos typically see viewership in the millions, will expose the mega retailer to new customers, particularly among the coveted millennial set.
Shoppable recipes, as they’re called, have become increasingly popular in recent years. In an interview with Business Insider, Sumaiya Balbale, Walmart's vice president of e-commerce, mobile, and digital marketing said the partnership puts the retailer in front of consumers in a space where culinary inspiration often strikes.
Walmart and BuzzFeed, she said, had been working on the deal “for months.”
"Consumers today are shopping very differently," she told the news outlet. "Content and commerce are coming together in more seamless and impactful ways."
The tie-up also comes in response to Amazon’s recent deals with recipe sites. Last month, the e-tailer’s Fresh service partnered with Allrecipes to let users add recipe ingredients to their online shopping carts. This followed earlier partnerships it announced with Fexy Media, owner of Serious Eats, and with EatLove, which develops weekly meal plans and recipes around consumer preferences and dietary restrictions.
Numerous other companies are narrowing the space between culinary content and the point of purchase. Harris Teeter launched a special recipe site this fall that customers can use to create custom shopping lists. The Dinner Daily, meanwhile, creates weekly dinner recipes for budget-conscious shoppers using their preferred grocery stores.
For Walmart, whose e-commerce sales increased 50% in the latest financial quarter, shoppable recipes are just the latest online promotion aimed at reaching more customers. Last week, as Food Dive first reported, Walmart added meal kits from Takeout Kitchen to its website. On Monday, the retailer began adding more kits from third-party providers, and has reportedly sold out of some of them.
