IGA To Expand Family Meals Made Easy Recipe Platform

Grocery shoppers desire healthy, quick meals as their schedules become busier than ever, according to the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association's (IDDBA) Guiding Trends for 2023. Independent grocers have the opportunity to meet the needs of busy families looking for convenience by delivering easy, delicious meal solutions and meal planning options.

Looking ahead to 2024, the Independent Grocers Alliance (IGA) will expand our meal planning resources, with more meal-focused signage, promotions, display opportunities for your store, and engaging, easier-to-find online recipe content from our partner brands. 

Family Meals Made Easy Recipes

Earlier this week, IGA launched an enhanced Family Meals Made Easy recipe platform on IGA.com, powered by Grocery Shopii, the industry’s most advanced shoppable recipe technology for retailers. The new platform will provide curated recipes that make meal planning more accessible and convenient for shoppers, and more impactful for IGA’s independent grocery retailers who will soon be able to share the shoppable content across onto their owned media platforms.

At the same time, the platform will enable IGA to better meet the objectives of its Red Oval partners, a select group of CPG companies that partner with IGA to help their independent grocery retailers increase sales with tailored marketing campaigns for shoppers.

The Family Meals Made Easy recipe platform is a new digital program added to a suite of existing marketing tools IGA offers independent retailers to highlight ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat offerings in store. The new, enhanced digital recipe platform incorporates a number of innovative solutions designed to make shoppers’ meal planning experience faster, smarter, and more fun, including:

• Curated seasonal recipe content featuring the nation’s top brands and recipe influencers
• Nutritional and serving size information
• Shopping list functions for in-store shopping

Content Sharing Via Media Channels

The recipe content will be used across IGA-owned media channels, including IGA.com, the Recipe Club newsletter, the IGA National Digital Ad, and social media. The platform will also enable the 2,000-plus IGA U.S. member locations to share recipe content on their social media and other owned media channels.

“Online recipes are increasingly important for at-home meal-planning and grocery-shopping, with more than half of shoppers using online recipes more now than last year. Recipes are among the highest performing content a brand can share online,” IGA VP Brand Development Michael La Kier said. “The new Family Meals Made Easy platform will transform recipe content into more engaging moments that translate into increased shopper satisfaction and sales for CPGs and our independent retailers, alike.”

The launch of the Family Meals Made Easy platform on IGA.com is Phase I of a broader plan that will ultimately enable members of the Independent Grocers Alliance to host the same recipes on their own websites, where shoppers can use the platform to meal plan and, in the case of ecommerce sites, complete purchases.

“The end goal is to empower our independent grocery retailers with a new solution that generates engaging content for shoppers and more revenue for the retailer,” La Kier said. “This Family Meals Made Easy platform is one of many new ways we’re working with CPG partners to attract shoppers and increase sales at independent grocery retailers, which represent over one-third of the grocery industry with more than $250 billion dollars.”

IGA retailers, stay tuned next week for an eNews highlighting holiday recipes you can share to your social media sites with the click of a button!