Ricardo Larrivee no longer needs a surname. On the other hand, these days he is launching the personalized recommendation of recipes and foods, a digital service powered by artificial intelligence which, he hopes, will allow him to see his first name more present everywhere in Canada, in French and in English.
Presented Sunday evening on the show Everybody talks about it from ICI Radio-Canada Télé, My Ricardo+ is a new service in both languages offered in exchange for a subscription fee of $3 per month. For the SME Ricardo, this novelty ticks several boxes in the development of its commercial activities.
It’s a way of trying to seduce English-speaking Internet users living outside Quebec. This allows it to strengthen its collaboration with the Canadian grocer Sobeys, owner of the IGA brand. “A tool like this in English is more efficient for us than producing a magazine”, illustrates the digital director of Ricardo, Julie Laporte.
My Ricardo+ offers its subscribers to obtain personalized recommendations, group their favorite recipes, create menus and a weekly grocery list, all without advertising displays. This should support a little more the imposing presence of Ricardo in the Quebec Web. Ricardocuisine.com was recognized a few years ago to be the most visited Quebec website in the province during the weekend.
Subscription receipts will swell the income of the media portion of the small culinary empire, which currently represents about half of its turnover. The other half includes the sale of books and cookware.
Between threat and opportunity
The success of Ricardo relies on its brand, whose notoriety is partly indebted to an impeccable Web strategy. Anyone in Quebec looking for a recipe on the Web will see the Ricardo site appear very early in their search results.
The arrival of the generative artificial intelligence ChatGPT can threaten a site like that of Ricardo. The AI developed in California provides all the recipes in the world on demand. It does much more, which led Microsoft to quickly integrate it into its Bing search engine.
This combination of AI and search is chilling many digital companies, including Google. The transformative potential of ChatGPT on the current web advertising business model is not marginal.
This does not worry the head of the digital strategy of Ricardo. “ChatGPT can create recipes, but we have an advantage: our recipes are tested in the kitchen, something that ChatGPT and our competitors do not do,” she says. “AI for us is not a threat. We see it as a potential tool that we can develop. »
The service My Ricardo+ was created jointly by digital agency Turbulent and AI experts Moov AI. Everything is one hundred percent Quebec in this project, notes the co-founder and vice-president of science of Moov AI, Olivier Blais. “It’s not just a recommendation engine. A lot of energy has been put into creating a really useful solution. »
ChatGPT can create recipes, but we have an advantage: our recipes are tested in the kitchen, something ChatGPT and our competitors do not do.
For example, it can reduce a typical family’s grocery bill by “10-15%”. Not insignificant detail in this era of sharply rising food costs…
It could go further, adds Olivier Blais. Recommendations could take into account the weather. It’s raining ? No barbecue. It’s cold ? Here’s a nice hot soup… “In AI, the next evolution will be to provide more accurate recommendations from diverse data,” he says.
Julie Laporte adds that a dialogue tool capable of guiding Internet users would help Ricardo better respond to the many comments left on its website. “It doesn’t show, but we are still a small business,” recalls Mme The door. A company that knows the recipe…