Food for thought

Collecting behaviour insights into the grocery industry, for reduced waste and a better way to serve customers.

An AI-enabled recipe app that fills knowledge gaps in the grocery industry.

Consumer insights feed markets. The Mother Hubbard app provides a 360-degree view of consumer behaviour within the grocery industry by matching user needs with online recipes. It makes it possible for users can discover new meals for the entire family while reducing both food waste and trips to the supermarket. Straight from their smartphones.

The client approached Sudo Roux with a request: To build Mother Hubbard 2.0. They wanted to build on the success of the app’s predecessor (a 5-year-old pilot that didn’t have the benefit of AI and machine learning) by addressing user feedback and enhancing features. 

Partnering with Sudo Roux to develop a completely revised version of the Mother Hubbard app was a game-changer. Their responsiveness and ability to translate our vision into a functional, user-friendly platform were excellent. They delivered exceptional value, combining fair pricing with high-quality results.

Daniel Alexander-Head

Founder

Taking a bottom-up approach, the Mother Hubbard app pulls together a user’s household needs to deliver relevant recipes. Users simply tap in the ingredients they have in their pantry, the number of people they’re cooking for, and any dietary requirements. And they can choose a recipe and get cooking.

The data collected tells supermarkets, producers and brands what they need to know about their customers. How often do they eat? What’s the most common item they have in their fridge? How many vegetarians are out there? These kinds of insights have the potential to reshape the entire industry. For business benefits and environmental benefits. 

We help grocery manufacturers, producers and retailers grow whilst reducing their environmental footprint by filling the knowledge gaps in consumer drivers and behaviours.

Daniel Alexander-Head

Founder

From an empty database to a well-stocked dashboard.

We had a database to create. Starting from scratch, this was to become the home of every ingredient, online recipe and alternative ingredient on the planet. Or as close as we could get.

The “dirty data” from the original Mother Hubbard app wasn’t usable; it wouldn’t provide a solid database to draw from. So we started small and built the new data set both manually and with generative AI.

We scraped the leading recipe websites to pull everything together. Then we put on our thinking caps – how do we make the most frictionless user experience and yet deliver results that would WOW users. Whilst the app is simple on the surface, below there is a sophisticated network of interrelationships hard at work

As the client is non-technical, a custom-made dashboard meant they could manage and monitor everything from one spot.

  • 15,000+

    ingredients

  • 25,000+

    recipes

  • 75%+

    automation of previously manual work

Human ideas and AI smarts.

OpenAI and ChatGPT integrations cut down the manual work needed to grow the database. Our AI assistants took care of the Extract Transform Load (ETL) process, something that was previously highly time consuming and expensive.

Is a recipe gluten-free, low-calorie, vegan? What can a user do if they don’t have the exact ingredients a recipe is asking for? How do we determine if a recipe can be labelled “family-friendly” and what type of cuisine is it? With AI’s help, we could ensure Mother Hubbard served up relevant, accurate results to its users.

These ingredients had to work for brands as well as people. To allow for future growth, we included brand names as alternative names for some ingredients. 

As we add more and more ingredients/products, whether from recipes or the scanned data of the receipts, it will reduce operational expenditure anywhere in the realm of 10x to 100x.

Daniel Alexander-Head

Founder

Toolbox

A sophisticated technology stack.

  • ChatGPT

  • Automated tagging and website scraping

  • Flutter iOS and Android

  • UI build

  • Firebase

  • App development and analytics

  • Google Analytics

  • User behaviour and app performance monitoring

  • Web Scraper

  • Online recipe scraping

  • BigQuery

  • Data analysis through machine learning

Let’s talk.

Untangle your organisation’s challenge. Re-imagine the customer experience.

It starts with a call to Sudo Roux: 1300 753 499