Food and drug retailer Albertson's Inc. has struck a deal with Meals.com Inc. to post meal-planning items and more than 10,000 recipes on albertsons.com.
Displayed in the Recipe Center of Albertson's informational site, the content includes recipes sorted by special diets, cooking methods and cuisine. It also incorporates meal-planning tools such as My Meal Plans, My Grocery List and My Recipe Box.
The initiative targets “golden moms” — the heaviest spenders in stores who are the most time-pressed and therefore need meal-planning ideas.
“By giving customers different meal ideas, they're encouraging them to buy new and different products,” said Peter Barbaresi, executive vice president at Meals.com.
“By generating trial of new products, be it private-label or new branded products, they're also stimulating repeat usage and potential lift in basket size [at Albertson's grocery stores],” Barbaresi said.
Toward that goal, the recipes link to the Web sites of more than 40 packaged goods marketers, including Kraft, Nestle, Chicken of the Sea and Land O' Lakes. These companies are clients of Meals.com, Bellevue, WA, an arm of Coinstar.
“The hope for them is that getting new items distributed at a retailer like Albertson's gets the respective manufacturer's product and brand important exposure to the retailer's customers who go online,” Barbaresi said.
Based in Boise, ID, Albertson's has more than 2,500 stores in 36 states. It does not sell online.
