Year in Review – Product 2019

GreenChoice had quite the year in 2019. We made big strides in building your trusted food discovery and insights platform. In doing so, we began to manifest our mission – empowering thousands of shoppers to buy food that is healthy for them and the planet. We could not be more excited to continue building our product and Community in 2020.

After raising pre-seed funding in early 2019, we scaled our proprietary GreenScore® System – which aggregates and analyzes evidence-based data on diet, health, and sustainability from 100+ sources – to evaluate over 90,000 food and beverage products sold across thousands of U.S. retail locations. In June ’19, we released the GreenChoice – Food Assistant – our grocery shopping companion app that simplifies and tracks healthy and sustainable food choices. Thanks to local press coverage by The Boston Globe, Natural Awakenings Boston, StartHub Boston, and Brandeis University, the app was downloaded by over a few thousand organic users in Greater Boston, as well as a few other U.S. metros (insights coming soon in our 2019 by the Numbers recap).

We have learned a tremendous amount from our early-users, and we are deeply grateful for the support, patience, and passion shared with us by our growing Community. Help us improve GreenChoice in 2020 by taking our 5 question survey!

*We capitalize Community because it is only through GreenChoice’s collective Community consciousness that we will improve our personal, societal, and planetary health.

Platform benefits & features

We love our Community, so when you told us in 2018 you wanted a grocery shopping companion that guides you to make the right food choices for you and the planet – we dedicated 2019 to building exactly that.

1. Make informed food choices with the product GreenScore®

It’s confusing to know what food products are healthy and meets your needs, add in the aspiration to buy products that reflect your personal values and it just gets harder. It takes a lot of work to be an informed consumer – nutrition science is ever-evolving, product labels are often misleading, ingredients are hidden, some brands are more transparent than others – even if we had the time to do hours of research every day most of us are bound to get overwhelmed by the plethora of competing information, only to make choices that don’t always reflect our values. I know I did (and still do sometimes).

We developed and launched the product GreenScore®, an unbiased food rating system that evaluates food & beverage products across dimensions of health and sustainability.

GreenChoice – Food Assistant lets you search, browse, or scan products to see their GreenScore® along with easy-to-understand insights that break down the nutritional value, processing, food safety, and environmental impact of over 90,000 food and beverage products in the U.S.

2. Get personalized recommendations & dietary conflict warnings

We all have our own values, dietary preferences, and needs. As someone who has a serious food allergy, is trying to avoid added sugar and wants to eat a more plant-based diet, I know how hard it can be to search through the 20,000+ product options at the average grocery store. Convenience is critical when it comes to making healthy and sustainable food choices, so we’re working to make it as easy as possible to find the right food products for you.

• Values-Based Recommendations We created the first of its kind “values-based product recommendation engine” enabling you to weight the four values categories of our GreenScore® (nutrition, processing, food safety, environment) to get personalized product recommendations based on the values you care about most when shopping for groceries.

• Dietary Filters & Warnings We also built into GreenChoice the ability for you to set your dietary preferences (diets and allergies) in order to filter out the noise and see personalized dietary warnings if a product conflicts with your preferences.

3. Search & discover products across retailers

You told us you shop at different grocery stores because while one store may be convenient another may have great prices and yet another may have better product options. It turns out you’re not alone, the average U.S. household shops for groceries at four different retailers every month (FMI, 2019).

• Store Agnostic Product Discovery. You can search and browse products sold by different retailers or filter your results by specific stores – making GreenChoice the only grocery app you need to discover the best products for you! In 2019, we scaled the GreenChoice food database to cover products sold by eight major grocery retailers in 15 U.S. states, and we’re expanding to more soon.

• Product Price Comparison. Price is a major consideration for many of us when shopping for groceries. In fact, urban American’s second-largest expense is food (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019). Using GreenChoice you can compare product prices across GreenChoice’s listed local and online grocery stores to make the best choices within your budget. We are always adding retailers as we speak and prioritize

• Grocery Shopping Lists. Create generic or store-specific shopping lists and compare your lists across different retailers to find the best store and price for your shopping. At the store? Use your list as a checklist and leave the paper at home!

4. Track your nutrition & sustainability and earn rewards

There are a handful of calorie trackers and food diary apps on the market, which enable us to track the basic nutrient profile of our diet with tedious daily entry; you told us you wanted a passive way to track your progress and get feedback on your grocery purchases.

• Nutrition & Sustainability Tracking. GreenChoice partnered with the industry leader in grocery receipt scanning technology, enabling you to easily track your Personal GreenScore® as well as other nutrition and sustainability stats. Each time you scan your grocery receipt you also receive a personalized product suggestion based on what you bought in order to help you improve your next shopping trip.

• Healthy & Sustainable Shopping Rewarded. Before launching GreenChoice this past summer, we partnered with local businesses and retailers to reward you for making healthy and sustainable food choices. It’s simple – products with higher GreenScores® earn more points. You can redeem your GS Points for all kinds of rewards – gift cards to your favorite grocery store, free personal training, yoga classes, fitness apparel, and more!

Our 2020 vision

Here is a sneak peek at some of what’s coming to the GreenChoice Community in the year ahead!

• New Product Search Filtering & Sorting. Thanks to your requests, you’ll soon be able to filter products based on dietary preferences, nutrients, ingredients, and sustainability. Plus product sorting based on GreenScore® and price!

• Improved Nutrition & Sustainability Stats. You’ll be able to track your weekly nutrients, food additives, product mix, carbon footprint, water footprint and more!

• Online Grocery Ordering. Order your GreenChoice grocery list for delivery or pickup from online grocers like AmazonFresh and Instacart, without ever leaving the GreenChoice app! This also means you’ll be able to track your nutrition and sustainability stats without scanning receipts.

• Discover Small Food Brands. Stay tuned for our new brand discovery pilot where we bring to you up-and-coming food brands not yet available in traditional grocery stores!

• Increased Product & Store Coverage. Expect to see a growing number of food & beverage products and grocery retailers from new parts of the country listed on GreenChoice in the coming months.

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GreenChoice, PBC has evaluated and rated more than 340,000 food & beverage products across hundreds of attributes related to diet, health, and sustainability. Easily find the best products for you, the planet, & your budget. Let’s make 2020 a year of personal health and sustainability!

Download the free GreenChoice app for Apple iOS or Android!