What’s In It, a food transparency app as well as a 360 campaign calling consumers to arms, rests upon data insights, was developed leveraging open data, and generates data insights with respect to food.

It all started from Google trends around food transparency, showing that consumers were widely aware of notorious nasty food ingredients but that they wanted to see and judge for themselves.

Then a partnership with Open Food Facts, wherein U Stores helped the open database platform improve its nasty detection accuracy rates by 10%, and could in return use the whole database containing 600,000+ products.

1/Since its creation, U stores have been fighting for food quality, starting with the removal of more than 100 controversial ingredients from over 6000 of their products. But in the wake of numerous food industry scandals, consumers have ended up distrusting the food they eat, whatever food brands or retailers may have been telling them for the past years. Despite all the talking of CSR, a recent study by the World Health Organisation has found that 1 in 5 deaths are caused by the food we eat. Consumers do not take food brands’ and retailers’ words for granted, they want to see for themselves.

2/Find a way for U Stores, 4th largest food retailer in France with 1,500 stores to help French consumers eat better, and leverage their 10 years’ commitment against nasties.

3/Position U as the leading leading trustworthy retailer when it comes to food transparency and better food.

What’s In It, the app that offers consumers to eat well, hunting and removing nasty ingredients (also called controversial substances) from their food. The app has been developed by U Stores with its own customers as well as the whole market in mind, making it functional for all food brands and all retail stores, even at competitors’. The app indexes over 600,000 food products thanks to a partnership with Open Food Facts, the ‘Wikipedia of Food’.

The scan feature immediately gives access to a product ID card, with emphasis on the nasty ingredients contained therein. The search feature surfaces the best products with respect to the quality of their ingredients. The filter feature offers users to exclude nasty ingredients from the products they buy and the food they eat.

First the main Google trends around food transparency were identified so as to create app features (e.g. scan) that would be relevant to consumers. Then a partnership was established with the Wikipedia of food, Open Food Facts, wherein U Stores helped the open database platform improve its nasty detection accuracy rates by 10%, and could in return use the whole database containing 600,000+ products.

• Data interpretation

The data analysis told us the difficulties encountered by french customers on the product information decryption. It confirms also that this issue was transgenerational and cross-segment : Every french customers had the same difficulties. U Stores can now leverage the trending product scans or ingredient searches within the What’s In It app to direct its efforts in the right direction (removing nasty ingredients that constitute primary concerns for consumers).

• Targeting

All consumers interested in eating better (circa 90% of the French population). Our main goal was to ease the access on food data on a global population. It asks us to keep the app as simple as possible. We worked with customer panels to get feedbacks on the tool and adjust the UX of the app.

• Data journey

1 - Google trends analysis on food transparency in France and brand perception

2- Macro-segmentation analysis and definition of personas

3- Workshops with Quality expert from the brand and agency designers to find suitable solutions

>> The idea of “what’s in it”, a scan-oriented app to make the full transparency on food products comes out

• Implementation

1- Focus group with Systeme U customers to co-design the app

>> It comes to our mind that the customers wanted a full transparency on any food products

• Data integration

1- Search for a suitable partner to get the broader range of products

2- Data scientist and designers met Open Food Facts (OFF), an association who built the largest food product database in the world with more than 600,000 products

3- Partnership concluded between U & OFF to mutualize their efforts in food transparency

• Application

1- We created data exchange platform between U and OFF helping each other for a more qualified data on food products

2- U built a Quality SWAT team in charge of data exchange between partners and we built a common database (U & OFF datas together) for the app

• Data enhanced consumer experience

+500,000 downloads on iOS and Android since the launch (7 months)

(94% of satisfied users)

• Data driven behaviour change (based on a customer study on app owner in march 2019)

97% say they have learned new things about the composition of their food

92% say the app has helped improve their food diets

• Business impact

Systeme U Brand perception :

- Social issue engagement of the brand : 26% (+1.6pt)

- U product regarding quality : 42% (+0.9pt)

- U product regarding wellness & healthiness : 34% (+1.5pt)

U stores Market share in progress on second semester 2018 :+0.14%

Progress on sales for the U brand products (compared to the same period in 2017) :

- U Soda without aspartame : +16% oct 2018 / +10% nov 2018 / +7% dec 2018 + / +9% jan 2019

- U chocolate spread without palm oil : +5% oct 2018 / +9% nov 2018 / +3% dec 2018 / + 10% jan 2019

- U organic chocolate powder :+13% oct 2018 / +14% nov 2018 / +13% dec 2018 / +14% jan 2019

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