A product, moreover, lacking the single most important ingredient: users.
So while that might work fine if you're always eating US pre-packaged meals and foodstuffs, anyone who falls outside that — say people who prefer to prepare their own meals using fresh ingredients, or users outside the US — will find they have to manually create food items in the app, including inputting exact levels of nutrients (grams of protein, carbs, fat etc).
Blue Apron is a company that puts together various meals each week, and sends the perfect portions of each ingredient to users for their own cooking and learning pleasure.
The company plans on using the influx of cash to accelerate the development and release of sensors that will detect peanuts and milk, allowing consumers to test food for hidden ingredients that the user could be allergic too.
Energy drink manufacturers say it is their proprietary formulas, rather than specific ingredients, that provide users with physical and mental benefits.
Enter Kraft Recipe Makers, sauces to which users add ingredients like beef, chicken or fish.
Ingredient #2 – the overall user experience (U/X) must be intuitive and drop-dead easy a la Apple.
Its "personalization quiz" asks about users' favorite ingredients, allergies, the size of their family, weight loss goals, schedule and more.
In general, Borthwick says that Betaworks is concerned more with high engagement users than with pure numbers, and all those apps have that dedicated, impassioned user base ingredient.
It follows on the trend of startups like Plated or Blue Apron, both of which ship fresh ingredients and recipes to users to be cooked at home.
