K-Ruoka App

Disclaimer: This project was done under the leadership of Kesko’s team, in collaboration with a multivendor design and development team.

Covid made people stay home and created a habit for delivered groceries, even post-pandemic. As of then, the number of people looking to order their groceries online has skyrocketed. Kesko, one of Finland’s largest grocery conglomerates, set out to meet this quickly growing demand. With a legacy app built under a different set of circumstances, Kesko needed to figure out the best way to serve this new and quickly growing customership.

Kesko’s old application was built around a linear shopping experience. Users were required to create a shopping list to even browse a store’s selection. This meant that the threshold for getting inspired to cook something, or even simply find out what might be in stock, was far too high. The goal now was to build an app that enables users to easily browse the selection, get inspired with recipes, and shop seamlessly online or in-store. Together with its partners, Kesko set out to redefine what a digital grocery shopping experience could look like, at its most ambitious and very best.  

We approached the challenge by diving deep into the experience of a Kesko customer. We discovered that from the customer’s point of view, the K-Ruoka app functions as the door to the world of K-Ruoka, not unlike the physical door in-store. Understanding this, the team decided to build the app as a digital extension of the physical stores – making it a pocket-sized grocery shop for Kesko’s customers. 

To do this, we aligned the app with a user’s favorite, local grocery store. By maintaining a connection with local shopkeepers and products, we were able to deliver an omnichannel and store-specific experience to our customers. Kesko had two primary objectives for the new experience: personalization and ease of use, making the app feel like a personal conversation with a local shopkeeper. With this in mind, we approached the app as not just a shopping tool, but a gateway to Kesko’s world: building toward a frictionless customer journey with valuable content and services at every step.

The K-Ruoka app is a better grocery store, in your pocket. Featuring a recipe bank, personalized wellbeing metrics, and newly minted loyalty benefits – the app provides a holistic journey into inspiration, health, and the practicalities of running your household.

Inspiration & recipes
K-Ruoka is home to one of Finland’s largest and most trusted recipe banks, featuring thousands of professionally crafted and tested recipes. The app allows users to not only explore recipes, but to directly purchase the necessary ingredients with a few clicks. Users can build personalized libraries with their favorite recipes, and get automatic recommendations based on preferences. 

In the You profile of the app, users can easily access all information related with their customership: benefits, consumer behavior, spend, orders, receipts, and more. Another popular feature we added was My Year Wrapped. Similar to Spotify’s Year Wrapped feature, the K-Ruoka app shows each user their most loved items from the year based off of their purchase history. This feature has made the app go viral, with people screenshotting and sharing their Year Wrapped across different social media platforms.

Personalized wellbeing metrics
K-Hyvinvointi is a wellness feature that helps enhance personal wellbeing by focusing on the nutritional elements of grocery shopping. Doubling down on Kesko’s goals around personalization, the tool allows people to make more informed choices to meet their healthty nutrition goals. 

In collaboration with the private medical company Aava, we built a nutritional index that calculates your overall nutritional intake based on purchase history. Users are able to configure their household size, dietary restrictions, and which ingredients should be avoided. The app splits food into different categories and shows how your purchases measure with a recommended diet, along with detailed information around different foods and food groups. For example, by informing you that while your sodium levels are great, you seem to have a deficiency in fruits. From there, users are easily able to track progress and adjust their intake accordingly. 

This tool is entirely configurable: users can opt out of any given food item or category, adjust their household demographics to account for children and adults separately, and indicate which area they would like to put extra attention to. With this information, Kesko can make personalized offers to users based on not just habits, but also goals.

Benefits and bonuses
The K-Plussa loyalty program has also received a major facelift with the new app. The program now adapts directly to the purchase behavior of the customer. Meaning, the more you purchase and use your Plussa-card, the more relevant and personalized your offers are. The card has also been digitized. Users can now access and use the card directly from the app, both online and in-store.

We also built out a new notification center where customers are able to see announcements from Kesko as well as their favorite stores. The notification center enables stores to better communicate with their customers and get time-sensitive information out easily and effectively. A direct and immediate channel of communication between stores and their customers has been transformative for so many shops.

The K-Ruoka app’s transformation has delivered outstanding results. Over one million people have downloaded the app, with user engagement increasing 158% in weekly active users, year-over-year. Mobile e-commerce orders have grown by 80% compared to the previous year. And 25% of all of K-Ruoka store sales have proven to be digitally influenced thanks to the app.

The app’s success also extends beyond quantitative metrics. Kesko has seen better customer loyalty and satisfaction levels, with regular users tending to spend more in K-stores. The app has maintained a top five app store position in its category after shooting up from 2.2 stars to a whopping 4.4, and direct customer feedback shows an overall positive trend.

--> Download the app in App Store 

• Client: Kesko
• Design: Kesko, Reaktor, Futurice, Qvik, DK&A
• Development: Kesko, Reaktor, Futurice, Qvik, 8-bit-sheep, Infinite Apps ja Acelvia