[caption id="attachment_1817" align="aligncenter" width="640"]
Wellington Click Suite , an 18 year veteran in theinteractive space, “uses our skills for our clients during the day,” says managing director,Emily Loughnan.
“We use our skills for our own purposes by night,” though strictly speaking, its
The NZ$5.29 app recently went to the top of Apple’s food and recipe apps (beating Jamie Oliverand Nigella Lawson among others!), and Loughnan takes great delight in tracking its metrics, pluscomments about FF&T through different social media. It’s about now that thoughts of walkingthe walk and talking the talk filter through the subconscious.
This included the investment of $50 on Facebook advertising over a month. “That allowed us totest a whole lot of ads,” Loughnan says. “We could see in realtime what worked, what was makinga difference.”
FF&T grew out of a Karen Grice idea to set up a kiosk in a supermarket that had recipes. Thechallenge of being reliant on one of two supermarket chains in New Zealand showed that the businessmodel couldn’t work.
“But we did find that there were a very high percentage of people with mobile broadband whosearched for a recipe while they were in the supermarket,” Loughnan says. “Other research showedthat most New Zealanders have five to seven dishes that they cook on a regular basis.” “So weknew people had a limited repertoire, but were searching for new ideas”
The Click Suite goal was to inspire, extend and collaborate with makers of local produce.
The app is a collaboration with some of these; for example Silver Fern Farms lamb and venisonproducts.
“In the minds of consumers, we wanted something useful in the ‘what’s for dinnertonight?’ scheme of things,” she says. “We’ve answered that, and given brands an opportunityto be in an app space, at a fraction of the price of doing their own, and give them some cut throughto the consumer.”
The app itself provides a number of routes to solution for the ‘what’s for dinner’question.
Consumers may start with a main ingredient, and can click through to various recipes for saychicken. Along the way a consumer might have an ingredient such as saffron quickly explained.
Alternatively, a consumer may be interested in a particular style of food such as a salad, a soupor barbeque food.
At the same time as they’re browsing, consumers can add products required for a recipe to theirshopping list (as part of the app), which in turn can be texted or emailed to a friend if sodesired.
However, the killer feature of FF&T, and where none of the global competition has yet gone,is the seasonal approach to providing recipes. The classic hockey stick sales growth graph is proofthat the approach is working.
“Normally when people use a recipe app, they use it a bit, but after a while don’t go back toit,” Loughnan says. “But FF&T is used really regularly.”
Part of the reason for this is each season, several new recipes are provided. Currently there are150 recipes, “which is cheap for a whole cook book with updates.”
Loughnan says that Click Suite went through the same process it applies to outside clients usingthe digital media company’s services.
This included an initial briefing and research as well as testing throughout development usingreal consumers.
Click Suite also made a mock up of what the app could look like on an iPhone (without doing anycoding), in order to find out peoples’ priorities for functionality.
“That way, we didn’t build functions that weren’t required.”
Loughnan’s clear that FF&T isn’t for every home cook.
“It’s for people who have a high value mobile device, are often busy, and want tastyweeknight meals,” she says. “They’re also more likely to spend more on good qualityingredients.”
The app must be doing something right as there were over 12,000 access to it last month alone.
FF&T’s up for three awards in the upcoming TVNZ Marketing Awards. It is a finalist in thebest new emerging business, best technology and best marketing awards.
It also has an exciting international expansion plan underway; bringing local seasonal food ideasto regions all around the world. But that’s another story ...
If they win, expect this to be part of the ongoing story as well.
Find out more at www.FastFreshandTasty.co.nz