Sylvain Perrier:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Sylvain Perrier, and welcome to episode nine of Digital Grocer. This is an amazing experiment right now. I kind of want to call this a little bit of a- a pop up show for a wonderful little podcast. We’re here live, not live for you guys here listening at some point down in- in the future, but we’re here in Vegas on site at, uh, Grocery Shop 2018, it’s the first iteration coming up shop talk, which was in Vegas as well. It’s exciting. And we’re seeing some amazing things in the show. We’re seeing a tremendous amount of innovation through AI technology, a lot of buzz around e-Commerce, and even better than some of the key things that we’re seeing is the collaboration and the conversations about the evolution of just what humans are doing with technology.
And a company that has come to my attention, uh, whether it be here in Las Vegas, uh, or in Chicago, is right out of the UK, which is amazing, right, to see European companies coming into our market, and teaching us their ability to innovate, is a company called Spoon Guru. And I have here someone who’s their co-CEO, and he flew 14 hours to get here-

Markus Stripf:
(laughs).

Sylvain Perrier:
And he’s laughing at me now, he’s gonna have to fly 14 hours back to go home. And so he’s a trooper, which is amazing, his name is Markus Stripf. Markus, welcome to the podcast.

Markus Stripf:
Hi Sylvain.

Sylvain Perrier:
Uh, thank you so much, it real- (laughs), so tell me about Sc- Spoon Guru, like what is it that you guys do, what’s the core of it?

Markus Stripf:
So we’re a UK based startup, we are an AI based food search and discovery platform, and our mission is to take the hassle out of finding the right foods for whatever dietary preference you may have. That’s a problem we are trying to solve-

Sylvain Perrier:
Okay.

Markus Stripf:
Most people have some kind of food preference nowadays, whether it’s for medical reasons, for lifestyle reasons, for religious reasons-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
The majority of us now has some form of food preference-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
And yet as soon as you go on any form of exclusion diet you run into immediate problems. You struggle to find suitable foods for your needs.

Sylvain Perrier:
Right.

Markus Stripf:
And we’re trying to solve that through the application of machine learning and AI.

Sylvain Perrier:
Is it normal today, so I’ll give you an example, right? So a lot of companies that do e-Commerce online, whether it’s a retailer or a service provider, we license data or the retailer owns data, and some of the products that they have are tagged.

Markus Stripf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sylvain Perrier:
So in the United States we’d say FDA tagging, it will say, “This is heart safe, this is gluten free.”

Markus Stripf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sylvain Perrier:
And so does your technology go deeper past that information? Can you- can you explain a little bit about that?

Markus Stripf:
Yeah. So yes, we go much deeper, we basically augment and enhance core metadata that’s listed on products.

Sylvain Perrier:
Okay.

Markus Stripf:
Sometimes consumers find it consuming, they don’t understand necessarily whether- it- it’s just a marketing blurb on the product-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Or whether that’s truly healthy. (laughs).

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
And also people in this day and age, people still have to read labels, it seems a little bit clunky, you know?

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
The whole food search and discovery process is broken, it needs to be simplified, and it needs to be personalized. That’s- that’s our opinion. And we do go way beyond any of the attributes of claims that are contained within a package.

Sylvain Perrier:
That’s amazing.

Markus Stripf:
Uh, so we- in fact we support more than 180 dietary attributes.

Sylvain Perrier:
Wow.

Markus Stripf:
And the retail partners we work with, they basically send us an entire product catalog and we [inaudible] and enhance their product catalog with 180 dietary terms. So we go way beyond whether it’s gluten free or dairy free or vegan or vegetarian, we tell you whether it’s low sugar, low salt, whether it’s, you know, the cholesterol levels. Um, whether it’s kosher or halal, whether it’s, you know, vegetarian- suitable for pescetarians, all of these-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
You know, there’s no way you could put all these 180 food attributes on a- on a physical label, it’s just not going to work.

Sylvain Perrier:
You’re right.

Markus Stripf:
And yet most people love to be able to search at that level of granularity, and that’s what [crosstalk]-

Sylvain Perrier:
Wow, and the genesis of your organization, I’m curious because, you know, being a fellow entrepreneur, I tripped over my inventions. (laughs) So- but I’m interested to understand your story, how did this come about?

Markus Stripf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So [inaudible] co-founders in the company.

Sylvain Perrier:
Okay.

Markus Stripf:
None of us are foodies.

Sylvain Perrier:
(laughs).

Markus Stripf:
Um, which in many ways helped us. We literally stumbled across this problem-

Sylvain Perrier:
Okay.

Markus Stripf:
Food personal circumstances, my wife has got a number of food intolerances and allergies-

Sylvain Perrier:
Oh wow.

Markus Stripf:
And I saw her once again in the supermarket, (laughs) reading the back of a package trying to understand what an [E204] was. And-

Sylvain Perrier:
Right.

Markus Stripf:
And I feel in this day and age this is just crazy-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yeah.

Markus Stripf:
If people can’t find foods, ’cause we knew, I- I knew there’s a wealth of food products out there-

Sylvain Perrier:
Right.

Markus Stripf:
It’s fantastic.

Sylvain Perrier:
Right.

Markus Stripf:
There’s a wide range of- of products out there, and there’s enormous demand from a huge segment of the population.

Sylvain Perrier:
Yeah.

Markus Stripf:
But what seems to be missing is the bit in between.

Sylvain Perrier:
Yeah.

Markus Stripf:
Supply and demand is not, it- it’s not connected.

Sylvain Perrier:
Right.

Markus Stripf:
Well enough. And so I started discussing this over the garden fence, with an old friend and neighbor who’s now the co-founder and CTO of the company-

Sylvain Perrier:
Wow.

Markus Stripf:
And we said, “Look, truly like this is a technology solution that’s crying out to be created.”

Sylvain Perrier:
Right.

Markus Stripf:
And we just decided to apply ourselves to it.

Sylvain Perrier:
That’s amazing.

Markus Stripf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sylvain Perrier:
So you actually came, and- and the reason I say sometimes entrepreneurs trip over themselves, right, when they’re- they’re creating something new, is they may not necessarily understand the problems [inaudible].

Markus Stripf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sylvain Perrier:
And so it becomes this solution that is looking for a problem, right?

Markus Stripf:
Yeah.

Sylvain Perrier:
And so that’s why you see pivots.

Markus Stripf:
Yeah.

Sylvain Perrier:
In the industry. That’s amazing, that you guys do that. So I- how long ago was the- the business created?

Markus Stripf:
So the idea we- so we were incorporated three and a half years ago-

Sylvain Perrier:
Wow.

Markus Stripf:
And we had the idea four years ago, and then we basically, we- you’re absolutely right, what I love about my job and this company is-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
The fact that the problem’s very clearly articulated.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
It didn’t come up with a solution first-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Which we needed to market, we knew that there’s an enormous, uh, consumer problem-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
That could be overcome through the smart application of technology.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
And then we created a product, so we knew- we knew there was an- there was a market ripe for transformation.

Sylvain Perrier:
Absolutely.

Markus Stripf:
So basically the problem found us-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
And then we inve- researched the technology, investigated how we would solve it.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Decided we needed to raise capital, because we didn’t want to put something out in the marketplace that worked a little bit.

Sylvain Perrier:
Okay.

Markus Stripf:
Because again, when you start, we super serve the allergy group, even though we support anybody’s lifestyle preferences-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yeah.

Markus Stripf:
Or food preference-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yep.

Markus Stripf:
But we realized, again that came from my wife, she said, “I don’t want another app that works a little bit.”

Sylvain Perrier:
Right.

Markus Stripf:
“It has to work.”

Sylvain Perrier:
It has to be a rich experience.

Markus Stripf:
And it has to be reliable, and robust-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yeah. 100%.

Markus Stripf:
Because the- there’s zero margin for error.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
So we realized in order to do this absolutely properly we needed startup capital.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
And we hadn’t actually researched the market by that point, but we decided let’s write a business plan, if we manage to raise-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Seed investment we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna resign from our jobs and dedicate ourselves to it, and if you can’t raise money then [inaudible] we stay in our (laughs) well paid jobs and enjoy our corporate careers.

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
Wrote a business plan over Christmas, had no idea how huge the addressable audience is. You know, Nielsen published a study last year that showed 64% of the world’s population has now some form of exclusion diet.

Sylvain Perrier:
That’s [inaudible].

Markus Stripf:
So if you’re not on an exclusion diet yet you’re in the minority, and yet as soon as you decide to res- to restrict certain foodstuffs from your diet, you run into immediate problems.

Sylvain Perrier:
Correct.

Markus Stripf:
So that’s what we were trying to solve. When we saw that, the scale of the opportunity, wrote a business plan and we managed to get seed investment secured within a few weeks.

Sylvain Perrier:
Great.

Markus Stripf:
So, and then we basically resigned, the three of us resigned from our jobs.

Sylvain Perrier:
And- and have you raised more money since your-

Markus Stripf:
Yeah.

Sylvain Perrier:
[crosstalk] initial [crosstalk]-

Markus Stripf:
[crosstalk].

Sylvain Perrier:
That’s great, and how many employees [inaudible]?

Markus Stripf:
We’re now 30 people.

Sylvain Perrier:
Amazing.

Markus Stripf:
Yeah.

Sylvain Perrier:
Amazing, good for you. Now tell me about your UK based retail partners. My understanding is you are working directly with Tesco?

Markus Stripf:
Yeah.

Sylvain Perrier:
And how did that come about?

Markus Stripf:
So our first client happens to be the world’s, uh, second largest supermarket-

Sylvain Perrier:
(laughs).

Markus Stripf:
Which was an incredible coup for us, the stars aligned for us-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
And for them, and they’d just changed their management structure, they’d brought in a new chief digital officer who came from Amazon-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
And he realized, first of all they saw from their own data that consumers have dietary preferences, and that food preferences are now mainstream.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
They saw from their own data that 55% of their search-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Queries had some kind of diet- dietary search term associated with it. They needed to differentiate themselves in the market, and they wanted to provide adequate consumer experiences. So they became aware of us because we also have an app on the marketplace, the food search and discovery app, which allows you to scan the barcodes, search hundreds of thousands of recipes and products. They wanted to be in the app, they wanted to be represented, and they became aware of our technology and we started having conversations around whether it would make sense for them [inaudible] all of their online search, the dietary filters online.

Sylvain Perrier:
Wow.

Markus Stripf:
And they basically kicked the tires on our technology, took us through due diligence because obviously the reputation is-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
Is absolutely enormous. If you get it wrong, especially with allergies-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
If somebody goes into anaphylactic shock or worse, it would be absolutely disastrous. Both from a human perspective and from a corporate perspective-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yeah.

Markus Stripf:
Of course. And so they needed to satisfy themselves that our capability is robust and reliable enough. So they tested us, and were satisfied that it was reliable and robust enough [inaudible] their customers, and we launched in May last year, and we’ve been running their online search ever since. You know, they’ve got 50% of the online market, so in the UK-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
So they’re huge, and that allows us to re- reach millions and millions of customers-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
Through that network.

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
Haven’t had a single reported error. We crunch more than 14 billion data points every month to make sense of unstructured data, so it’s a proper AI [crosstalk]-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
But clearly it works. It works from a technical perspective, but more importantly-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
It also works from a- from an experiential perspective. So the consumer-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yeah.

Markus Stripf:
Experience, the feedback they’ve had has been fantastic, their net promoter scores have improved significantly, the conversion rates [crosstalk]-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Have improved dramatically, and decided to direct impact and the ability to acquire and retain customers. ‘Cause it’s- it’s a no-brainer if you provide a fantastic shopping experience that-

Sylvain Perrier:
Absolutely.

Markus Stripf:
Of course [crosstalk]-

Sylvain Perrier:
Absolutely.

Markus Stripf:
Commercial KPIs.

Sylvain Perrier:
You recently published your numbers.

Markus Stripf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sylvain Perrier:
Can you share that with the audience a little bit, is that possible? Or is that, or-

Markus Stripf:
Numbers around?

Sylvain Perrier:
I think some of the health results, or-

Markus Stripf:
Yes.

Sylvain Perrier:
The provability of your- of the technology-

Markus Stripf:
Yeah. So we’ve published a clinical paper, which we instructed an independent health consultant, a- a registered, uh, doctor in nutrition-

Sylvain Perrier:
Okay.

Markus Stripf:
To assess the quality of our algorithm-

Sylvain Perrier:
Okay.

Markus Stripf:
When it comes to assessing the suitability of specific products for people with an allergy.

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
It was what we wanted to know. How good is our algorithm when it comes to determining the suitability of specific products-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Compared to health professionals.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
We wanted some peace of mind internally, we want to set a KPI which we could track, but also we, you know, when we speak to our partners we wanted to make sure that I’ve got confidence in our capabilities. So the result of that study was that our algorithm actually outperforms health professionals when it comes to understanding whether a specific product is suitable for someone with a nut allergy. Which was an incredible finding. That machine learning now within a relatively short period of time is already more advanced and sophisticated when it comes to interpreting [inaudible] statements often on- on packaging. And there was significant result, and we published it, and our message, you know, our message for the industry, specifically to the health profession is it’s not that the robots are coming, it’s not that the robots are taking over-

Sylvain Perrier:
No.

Markus Stripf:
But embrace technology, and use it in combination with, you know, human domain expertise to provide the best possible solution for the industry, but fundamentally and- for the end consumer.

Sylvain Perrier:
Correct.

Markus Stripf:
Everybody’s better off, you know?

Sylvain Perrier:
Correct.

Markus Stripf:
Holistically the- the two of them are now proven to work-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yeah.

Markus Stripf:
Beautifully [crosstalk]-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
The scale, you know, of machine learning, obviously an algorithm [inaudible] much better than, you know, a human workforce does.

Sylvain Perrier:
That’s true.

Markus Stripf:
The two of them in combination [inaudible] is just fantastic.

Sylvain Perrier:
That’s amazing, and now Tesco’s on board, you have this great technology and these results-

Markus Stripf:
Yeah.

Sylvain Perrier:
Has that scaled beyond Tesco, in Europe, in the UK?

Markus Stripf:
Yes. So when we announced the Tesco partnership that sent ripples across the entire industry, in the UK obviously-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Because they basically went out of the gate first to say consumer demand has changed-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Consumers want personalized, tailored food choices, they want accuracy, transparency and choice, and all the other retailers are starting to respond-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
So we have been off the back of that partnership, we have been able to talk to retailers, leading retailers around the world-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
And we are about to announce three major partnerships with the leading retailer in Australia, the leading retailer in Holland-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
And a significant partnership in the US, and I can’t unfortunately tell you who it is-

Sylvain Perrier:
No problem.

Markus Stripf:
Yeah, ’cause (laughs) in the next two weeks it will be announced, and it’s-

Sylvain Perrier:
Congratulations.

Markus Stripf:
It’s a fantastic partnership.

Sylvain Perrier:
That is amazing. That is amazing. So what’s the future? You- you have this great technology, you have these amazing, and maybe you can’t tell us, you have these, you know, this great tech, amazing partnerships now, you’re global.

Markus Stripf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sylvain Perrier:
Right?

Markus Stripf:
Yeah.

Sylvain Perrier:
And we are in a global village.

Markus Stripf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sylvain Perrier:
So you strike me as the type of individual that is more than 24 months out in your thinking. Can you share with the- the audience a little glimpse of that?

Markus Stripf:
We just want to remove the friction from the whole food search and discovery process-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
And not just online, across all channels, you know-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
The fact that I- I’ve just turned vegan this January, and-

Sylvain Perrier:
Wow.

Markus Stripf:
Walking around here, you know, we in the hotel, I don’t know if you’re staying here, but the rooms are fully digitized, it’s amazing-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
Everything is controllable via tablet.

Sylvain Perrier:
That’s right.

Markus Stripf:
It’s amazing. Can open the blinds, close the blinds, change the lighting in every room. But I still can’t punch in my food preferences in-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Into the tablet to find suitable menu choices here.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
This is just crazy. So we want to- we are going to expand beyond, we’re capturing the- we’re transforming the retail experience around the world, and hoping to be [inaudible] but we really- food is such a broad area-

Sylvain Perrier:
So why wouldn’t Yelp integrate your platform?

Markus Stripf:
Yeah. Why wouldn’t they?

Sylvain Perrier:
I’m just throwing that at you.

Markus Stripf:
Why wouldn’t they? Exactly.

Sylvain Perrier:
(laughs).

Markus Stripf:
They should. Make it easy.

Sylvain Perrier:
And they should.

Markus Stripf:
Make it easy.

Sylvain Perrier:
Right.

Markus Stripf:
Yeah. So food, we’re going to go beyond retail, people need to eat-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yes.

Markus Stripf:
Tou- tourism is an exciting area.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
We continue to go downstream, because we really want to reach as many people as we can, ’cause we wanna see the struggle, uh, to end. So retailers are perfect partners for us, ’cause they, through our retail partners we reach millions and millions of people. But we will also start to go upstream to the consumer package good companies-

Sylvain Perrier:
Yeah, [crosstalk]-

Markus Stripf:
They ne- yeah. ’cause they- they need insights [inaudible] can bring to the table, can help them with new product development. There’s also a- a move towards, uh, direct to consumer-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Strategies for consumer package good companies. So we’re gonna help them reach their audiences. [crosstalk]-

Sylvain Perrier:
Amazing.

Markus Stripf:
That’s where we’re going.

Sylvain Perrier:
Well congratulations on your idea. Now you’re at Grocery Shop.

Markus Stripf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sylvain Perrier:
Tell me what’s exciting, what are you seeing that’s getting you all pumped up?

Markus Stripf:
Uh, I absolutely love the fact that you’ve got large international companies here-

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
Taking startup technology seriously.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
You know, [inaudible] here, all the large international retailers are here, and they’re all happy to investigate, you know, what- what is happening, uh, on the technology side of things. So they realize we need to- we need to move things forward.

Sylvain Perrier:
Correct.

Markus Stripf:
We’ve been stagnant for a little while, we specialize in personalization, I love the fact that that is- seems to be the number one topic.

Sylvain Perrier:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Markus Stripf:
We’re really excited to be here and just to see the- the creativity in general, and that the indus- there seems to be a real appetite for transformation.

Sylvain Perrier:
Absolutely.

Markus Stripf:
And innovation.

Sylvain Perrier:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Markus Stripf:
Thank you.

Sylvain Perrier:
And if people want to get a hold of you, what’s the- the url for your website?

Markus Stripf:
Spoon.guru, you’ll find us, and with, you know, usual, um, social networks. Such as search for Spoon Guru, there’s only one.

Sylvain Perrier:
That’s amazing.

Markus Stripf:
Find us-

Sylvain Perrier:
[crosstalk]. (laughs), literally there is only one, folks, you heard it here.

Markus Stripf:
(laughs).

Sylvain Perrier:
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in to episode nine, stay tuned for episode 10 in the near future. I think Mark and I are going to be doing a full show debrief, and share with you some of the amazing tech that we’ve seen, and maybe, uh, share with you as well some, uh, some of the other cool techs and partners that we’ve talked to here in Mercatus, I know [inaudible] amazing announcements that are going to be coming out soon. And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to visit our website, Mercatus.com, and as well as on Twitter, @Mercatus, Mark is it @Mercatustech?

Mark Fairhurst:
Yes, @Mercatustech.

Sylvain Perrier:
@Mercatustech, thank you so much folks, stay tuned.