Powering Smart Food Discovery with Nutrition Intelligence

Little Helps by Tesco

Tesco faced the challenge of fulfilling its “Little Helps” corporate vision while managing a vast, unstructured product database that hindered customer health goals. By integrating sophisticated data enrichment, they transformed a fragmented inventory into a transparent, navigable ecosystem for diverse dietary needs.

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“We want to make it easy for customers to shop with us online and help them make the right food choices. Adding the Spoon Guru technology to Tesco.com is another help for customers… it makes a big difference to those with specific diets and tastes”

Alessandra Belinni

CCO, Tesco

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The Challenge: Overcoming Friction in Online Shopping

With a vision to become the UK’s healthiest grocery retailer, Tesco launched the “Little Helps” initiative to support sustainable health changes. However, the retailer struggled with “data friction” caused by a massive, unstructured product database that lacked the transparency required for specific dietary preferences. 

This inability to scale personalisation meant customers with complex needs, such as vegan or gluten-free diets, faced significant hurdles in finding relevant food choices, threatening brand loyalty in a hyper-competitive landscape.

The Solution: Enhance Clarity Through Data Enrichment 

Recognising the need for high-fidelity data, Tesco partnered with Spoon Guru to deploy our “API-first” Nutrition Intelligence. We processed Tesco’s inventory through our “Human-in-the-loop” model – combining proprietary AI with the scientific rigour of Registered Nutritionists – to accurately assign 100+ Product TAGs^® to every SKU. 

This evidence-based approach transformed messy back-end data into a structured library of dietary attributes, establishing a foundation of trust and precision that automated systems alone could not achieve.

The Application: Seamless Integration of Smart Food Discovery

With Spoon Guru’s Data Enrichment Solution implemented, Tesco were able to enhance their existing search and filter capabilities across their digital ecosystem. Tesco shoppers can now tailor their shopping experience to specific individual or household needs instantly through sophisticated free-text search and refined dietary filters.

This was further strengthened by the addition of a “Smart Swaps” feature, which proactively suggests healthier alternatives, ultimately allowing Tesco to move beyond simple filtering to provide active, intelligent health guidance at the point of purchase.

The Impact:
Driving Commercial Growth

Increased Product Coverage:
Massive increase in Vegan and Gluten-Free product visibility: 

• Vegan SKUs: 162 → 16,000+ 
• Gluten-Free SKUs: 327 → 24,000+

Basket Conversion:
Experienced up to a 500% increase in conversion rates for major dietary search terms like “vegan” and “organic”

Revenue Growth:
Attained a 10% increase in revenue specifically from dietary-related free-text searches

Customer Loyalty:
Cemented Tesco’s position as a destination for safe, relevant, and easy food discovery