Online meal planning and shopping platform Cherrypick – which allows users to create weekly meal plans from thousands of recipes, and automatically generate shopping lists at supermarkets online – is introducing paid-for membership tiers in an effort to cover its costs.
“We must find a new income stream to be sustainable,” said Cherrypick – formerly Lollipop - CEO Tom Foster-Carter in a communication to users.
Cherrypick allows its more than 330,000 users to browse nearly 1,000 recipes and order the ingredients to make them in within minutes. The app partners with Sainsbury’s and Tesco for products and fulfilment – so baskets built on the app can be quickly bought at the supermarket’s online store. Many ‘Cherrypickers’ use the platform as a meal-planning and shopping list creation tool, and using it in physical stores, which is supported at Sainsbury’s, Tesco as well as Asda.
“Our income is currently from supermarket commissions and advertising but grocery margins are very tight and insufficient to cover our costs,” Foster-Carter added. “This is a big decision but it allows us to build a robust business so we can help even more households in the years to come.”
The platform will soon launch Cherrypick Plus and Pro, promising paying subscribers “super-exciting features, alongside some big name chefs, coming later this year”.
The company surveyed users about the changes, and said it received “overwhelming support”.
“It’s absolutely vital to us at Cherrypick that those who can’t afford it can still shop with us, so there will always be a free tier with plenty of functionality. However if you are able to afford it and value what we do then it would be amazing if you could consider upgrading to one of our paid tiers,” Foster-Carter wrote to users in an email communication this week.
The paid-for tiers – which Foster-Carter called a “next chapter” for the business - come after a major rebrand in January, and a pivot in the focus of the app – from primarily a tool to save users time to one that will help improve their health and is positive for the planet.
At the time the app said its analysis of more than 100,000 orders found users cut their ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption by 26% compared with before using the app. UPFs make up 29% of a Cherrypick user’s diet, roughly half the national average of 55% to 60%. As well as reducing UPF intake, Cherrypick says it has helped users reduce their ready meal consumption, with more than half of users (53%) reporting they eat fewer ready meals since before they started using the app. Three-quarters (74%) cook five or more meals from scratch a week, compared with 47% before. Overall, eight in 10 users (82%) say they are generally eating more healthily than they did prior to using the app.
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