Tasteline.com: stretching your brand and becoming more relevant to your customers

For more than 10 years Tasteline.com has helped the Swedish people with recipes and inspiration when it comes to food and food experiences. Their vision has been to be the complete food site for inspiration for food, beverages and health. “Christmas delights, how to make your own dumplings, the menu of the week, how to make a tasteful dinner in 15 minutes” et cetera are all typical content of the Web site.

Tasteline.com is a strong brand in Sweden and they realised that there was a great potential for brand extensions into related businesses. The retail food industry in Sweden has yearly revenue of approximately SEK 300 billion, and is definitely the biggest category. At the same time, e-commerce was growing, and food had by far the fastest growth. Obviously there was a promising opportunity there.

They chose to develop and launch a home delivery service of food called “Tasteline Matkasse.” This means Tasteline Food Box. The food box consists of food and recipes for five dinners for four people. It is a subscription offer, and the food box is delivered every second week.

By doing this they not only connected even better with the consumer and hence could strengthen the brand, but they also took control of a larger part of the value chain. And they could fulfill their vision in a broader perspective.

Consumer research confirmed that this would be a great idea and that Tasteline was looked upon as a credible and trustworthy food deliverer. By bringing the inspiration and recipes — and food — into the heart of Swedish homes, into the kitchens, they could reposition their brand to become even stronger.

The major challenges connected to such a project were obviously to connect with business partners that made the food supply and delivery service at the quality level necessary. IT and CRM were also vital to succeed. Tasteline handled this very well by cooperating with a professional partner.

Businesswise, Tasteline has managed to capitalise both on their brand and their target groups, and they have developed their business model. From a consumer perspective Tasteline Matkasse has given them more value and helped them solve an everyday challenge — both when it comes to deciding what to cook for dinner and to saving time by skipping the tiring trip to the food store right after work every day.

After just one year Tasteline Matkasse has become number 2 in the market of home delivery of food, and the revenues and growth are promising.

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