BTA2024 award-winning products announced

Nichirei acquires all shares of MeNew, integrates their automatic menu creation applications, and promotes data service business based on food preference analysis.

From the Editor

1Nichirei Corporation, a leading frozen food company, has acquired MeNew Corporation, which has developed MeNew, an automatic menu planning application for up to one week that won the grand prize in the breastfeeding and meal category of the TP2T Award Japan 2020. The two companies announced that they will integrate their respective menu planning applications and promote a data service business based on analysis of food preferences. The application "me:new" will continue to exist. Let's take a look at the details from the press release.

- The following is content from the press release -

Notice of Integration of Automatic Menu Generation App

~Promoting data service business based on analysis of food preferences~.

 (Head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Kenya Ohgushi; hereinafter "Nichirei") acquired all shares of MeNew Corporation (Head office: Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture; Representative Director: Nobuyuki Miyake; hereinafter "MeNew") on August 31, 2021. As a result, effective November 1, 2021, Nichirei will integrate its "conomeal kichen" automatic menu generation application with the "me:new" automatic menu generation application operated by me:new, and will promote a data service business based on analysis of food preferences. The company will promote its data service business based on analysis of food preferences.

 Changes in work styles, the active role of women, and the development of a super-aged society have increased consumer needs to reduce the time spent on meal preparation in the home. At the same time, there is a growing need for healthy meals that take into consideration nutritional balance and food allergies, and many consumers are having difficulty preparing daily menus.
 To help solve these issues, Nichirei launched "conomeal kichen," a smartphone application that automatically generates and suggests menus based on users' food preferences, as one of its new businesses in November 2020. Users will no longer have to worry about menu planning, and will be able to enjoy meals with sophisticated recipes while reducing the burden of household chores through planned and efficient shopping and cooking based on the menu.
 On the other hand, "me:new" is also an application that automatically generates menu plans and has been available since January 2014. Both apps have many things in common: 1) AI (artificial intelligence) analyzes users' food preferences, 2) suggests menu items consisting of staples, main dishes, and side dishes, and 3) suggests menu items not for a single day but for multiple days (up to one week for me:new) at a time.
 Nichirei has decided to integrate "me:new" and "conomeal kichen", which have a lot of knowledge and commonalities, in order to strengthen the menu suggestion service based on food preferences. As a result of this integration, "conomeal kichen" will terminate its service at the end of October 2021, and "me:new" will continue to offer this service.

 Nichirei provides value through frozen foods that combine taste and convenience, as well as cold storage logistics services that are part of the food infrastructure. As food needs become increasingly diverse and personalized, Nichirei and Meenu will not only strengthen the provision of value through products and logistics services, but will also actively engage in the provision of new value in the form of data services based on research into food preferences and deliciousness. Nichirei and Meenu will not only strengthen value provision through products and logistics services, but will also actively work to provide new value in the form of a data service business based on research into food preferences and taste.