AlgoCart 2024: A Nutritional Algorithm for Healthier Shopping

Buying food is something that’s changed a lot in the last couple of years, especially since the pandemic. We also became better informed about the negative effects of bad diets and processed foods. 

AlgoCart was created in those contexts to help you to eat better and have an improved shopping experience.

We spoke with Yuval Canfi, Co-Founder and CEO of AlgoCart, to find out more about the company and how it can help people shop for their nutritional needs.

Please tell us a bit about AlgoCart

AlgoCart is an early-stage company and we want to change the way people shop for healthy food with our smart, AI-powered platform. 

About 70% of the world’s population has some sort of nutritional goal, like losing weight or being more heart-healthy. Yet, two out of three people can’t match the food they buy to their personal nutritional situation. You’re given a lot of do’s and don’ts from doctors, friends, and from the internet, but there’s a big gap between that knowledge and the products on the supermarket shelf. 

At present, I can go to an online supermarket and apply a few basic filters such as low fat, low sugar, or low carbs, which is too superficial for most health goals. You can’t filter for more complex things such as low glycaemic index or folic acid.

With AlgoCart, you don’t need to know all of the nutritional details: simply tell us your goal, and we will help you get there. AlgoCart highlights the best products for you, by algorithmically analyzing your goals and the ingredients of all products in a store. Because this is a nutritional algorithm, the AI can take into consideration dozens and dozens of nutritional parameters. 

In many cases, the user doesn’t even need to tell us their exact health goals or dietary needs – our system will identify shopping patterns and make sense of them. For example, if you’ve bought certain items regularly for a long time but suddenly start to buy fewer carbs and fats and more proteins and fibers, our platform can work out your goals and suggest products accordingly.

Who are your main end-users? Is AlgoCart a niche or broad-serving service?

It’s important to note that we’re not selling to customers. We’re a B2B app that sells to the retailer or provider. Yet, our end-user is the customer. We’re there for everybody: not only “healthy shoppers,” but for more than 70% of the world’s population with any type of dietary requirements.

Most people have particular needs when it comes to food: buying fewer processed products for children, providing good nutrition for a breastfeeding mother, losing weight, osteoporosis control, heart disease control. We help customers either by supporting their existing dietary goals or helping them to achieve something they don’t even know how to do.

Is AlgoCart a scalable tool?

We’re not focused on products purely in the health sector. We want the customer to be able to do more with less and maximize the efficiency of the everyday products they buy.

We take the products that customers are already buying in-store and suggest the best ones out of those available. We also optimize substitutes for a product that’s been recommended but not selected by the customer.

Besides AlgoCart, how do you see online food purchases changing in the next years?

The first thing will be an increase in sales touchpoints. We call it “the never-ending shopping journey.” We already have online supermarkets. In a few years, we’ll be adding products from a smart speaker to the shelf.

When going down to the kitchen, you might notice there’s no milk in the refrigerator. So, you’ll add “milk” to a shopping list in a screen placed on the fridge’s door – like in the Samsung Family Hub. On the way to work, you might ask Siri to add some other product to your list. During the day, you’ll have a lot of touchpoints to add stuff to your cart. 

In this never-ending shopping journey, users will need a personalized experience. Because, when shopping from a multitude of touchpoints, you won’t be able to spend much time comparing prices or nutritional facts. The entire experience will have to be tailored to the individual customer, without you even knowing.

What are AlgoCart’s plans for the future?

We’ll be focusing on digital-first but also going into physical stores. We want to cover the entire spectrum of food touchpoint personalization: smart carts, smart speakers, smart fridges, mobiles, and food delivery apps. We’ll be covering every touchpoint between the customer and the food they buy.