Benzinga | Nov 30, 2021 04:42PM EST

Walmart Canada to Acquire Toronto Start-up Foodmaestro; Terms Not Disclosed

Walmart Canada is excited to announce plans to acquire Foodmaestro, a Toronto-based digital start-up that will offer customers more choice, transparency and personalized content when they shop online.

Foodmaestro is a Toronto-based data platform serving retailers and consumer package goods companies across Europe and North America with strong capability to turn substantial amounts of data into usable attributes. The platform delivers transparency and rich digital experiences for customers focused on health and diet and offers customized content activation, such as meal planning.

The integration is part of enhancing Walmart Canada's e-commerce experience as it transforms to be the best and first omnichannel retailer for Canadian families. This acquisition would allow Walmart Canada to offer more personalization capability for its customers, such as highlighting safe products for those with food allergies or healthier options for people living with diabetes.

"We are very excited to welcome Foodmaestro to the Walmart Canada family," said Horacio Barbeito, President and CEO, Walmart Canada. "Together we will continue elevating the online experience for our customers by sharing knowledge, investing in resources, people and product transparency. This enhancement to our online experience will allow our customers to make healthier personalized choices, which helps them live better."

Foodmaestro's digital platform processes over 14 million product attributes, 300,000 search requests and 6 million product validations in real-time each day. The service helps retailers who want to differentiate customer experience and deepen relationships with customers through enriched dietary information. Foodmaestro also enables its clients to provide their customers with greater product transparency and trusted information-beyond the label, through SmartLabel.

"Having spent the past several years pioneering digital transparency and helping shoppers around the world to find the right foods, we are thrilled to have been invited to join a family as prestigious as Walmart," said Jaed Khan, Founder and CEO, Foodmaestro. "We have worked with Walmart for almost four years now and this investment signals, Walmart's, continued commitment and increased focus to help provide consumers with the transparency they need to make informed decisions about the products they buy. We are tremendously excited about the future."

Acquiring Foodmaestro will deepen Walmart Canadas's talent bench by bringing in the Foodmaestro experts, including engineers and health and wellness talent.

"The acquisition of this talented team of experts from Foodmaestro is a big part of our transformation at Walmart Canada," said John Bayliss, Executive Vice President, Chief Transformation Officer. "I am energized by what the future brings with our talented team of engineers and health and wellness resources working together to make the online experience even better for our customers."

This is Walmart Canada's first acquisition since the pandemic. It demonstrates the retailer's commitment to innovation and continuing to transform the experience for its customers.