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Personalized Search for Over a Million Recipes and Products

Cooklist is a mobile app that keeps track of bought groceries and recommends recipes based on the purchased items. More than a hundred thousand users of the Cooklist mobile app access millions of recipes using products available in major retailers like Kroger, Walmart, and Target at over 20,000 locations nationwide.

Recombee is helping Cooklist to optimize search results and personalize recipe recommendations for individual users. In addition, Recombee is able to incorporate those ingredients the user already has into the proposed recipes.

Recombee was implemented in the core of the product leading to a 27% increase in click-throughs and a significantly increased number of page views.

27%
Increase in CTR
1,000,000+
Recipes & products

Situation

  • Over 1,000,000 recipes and products.
  • Hundreds of thousands of users.
  • Desire to find the right personalization tool that is able to match recipes with purchased groceries.

Requirements

  • Personalization of recipe recommendations based on user behavior insights and the groceries they bought.
  • An engine that can both personalize the content and optimize the search results.
  • Real-time response in high traffic volumes.

Solution

  • Personalized full-text search based on user interaction data and metadata.
  • Automatic personalized recommendations applied to recipes.
  • An ensemble of collaborative filtering and content-based modelling applied to achieve the optimal click-through rate.

Benefits & Results

  • 27% increase in click-through rate.
  • Over a million of recipes are personalized for users in real-time.
  • A significant increase in page views.

Scenarios

Search Personalization

To personalize searches in the Cooklist app, a combination of search engine and recommender system was used. This solution improves the relevance of search results and helps narrow the individual searches to specific items.

Recombee search personalization also works with synonyms and typos.

Cooklist utilizes default settings using search:personalized logic that considers not only the search query but also personal user preferences.

Recipes You Can Cook Now

The second scenario applied to Cooklist aims to show users recipes that are based on ingredients they have already bought.

In this scenario, Cooklist uses advanced business rules (filters) to recommend only those recipes featuring the desired ingredients.

The user's ingredients are sent to Recombee in the ReQL (Recombee Query Language) filter. The filter is different for each user and Recombee matches them with tailored recipes in real-time.

Similar Recipes

The third scenario recommends alternative recipes to those currently viewed by using recombee:default logic. The items catalog is synced with many different product attributes such as brand, allergen, calories, cuisine, or image.

This scenario uses an ensemble of collaborative filters and content-based recommendations. AI continuously optimizes this ensemble to automatically adapt to incoming data.

"Recombee does a fantastic job of personalizing recipe recommendations and optimizing search results for users of the Cooklist app. Their documentation is good and the support team is super helpful. I highly recommend their service to anyone looking to personalize their service."

Daniel Vitiello
CEO at Cooklist.co
Cooklist

About Cooklist

Cooklist introduces entirely new thinking about the relationship between cooking and grocery shopping. The app connects with the user’s grocery store loyalty card and automatically adds all purchased items to a digital pantry.

Each individual user is shown tailored recipes matched to their grocery purchases. Over 1 million recipes are filtered and matched to the items they have bought.

Cooklist is an early-stage startup that aims to promote a healthier future and is backed by Mercury Fund, TechStars, RevTech, and other top investors.

Visit Cooklist