How will online grocery evolve? Chicory COO and Co-founder Joey Petracca discusses contextual commerce, AI’s role, and the future shopper journey.
As digital grocery experiences become increasingly integral to shopping, the demand for seamless, intuitive, and contextually relevant content reshapes the consumer journey. Few understand this transformation better than Joey Petracca, COO and Co-founder of Chicory—a company sitting at the unique crossroads of food media, commerce, and technology. In this candid and insightful conversation, Petracca breaks down how shoppability is evolving beyond basic personalization into moments of true utility, where the right content meets the right intent.
With Chicory powering contextual commerce across thousands of food websites, Petracca offers a behind-the-scenes look at how their platform connects unstructured recipe content to structured retail data, enabling consumers to build grocery lists or check out in just a few clicks. He also shares his perspective on the rising influence of retail media networks, the critical role AI and machine learning play in ingredient mapping and product recommendations, and why the future of commerce media lies in turning everyday digital interactions into meaningful shopping experiences.
If you’re curious about where grocery tech is headed—or how brands, publishers, and retailers can better meet consumers in the moments that matter—this interview is a must-read.
Full interview;
As consumer habits shift toward convenience and personalization, how do you see the role of shoppable content evolving in the digital grocery journey?
It’s all about making the consumer journey as easy and seamless as possible.
And look, that doesn’t necessarily mean what we’ve all come to think of as personalization, which is using all this data to target the right consumer. We believe in contextual relevancy and finding that moment online when a consumer is in the right mindset—when you know they’re looking to buy or create a list.
And that’s the moment where shoppable content comes into play.
In some ways, we’ve oversaturated the media with shoppability.
We’ve put shoppable links and experiences on everything because we want our ads to go somewhere meaningful. We want our ads to go to an interesting landing page with a measurable call to action, even if it’s just a purchase intent or an add-to-cart action. As marketers, we crave the ability to quantify success very tactically.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re providing the consumer utility. We need to step back and ask, “When does this make sense?”
For us, it’s in moments when the consumer prepares to shop and decides what to buy. If you’re on a retailer’s website, you’re ready to buy, but those aren’t the only moments.
It’s not when you’re browsing a news website or even, honestly, on Facebook. Sure, as a marketer, you might have incredible behavioral data about that person and understand that they might be generally in the market soon to buy your product, but at that moment, right when you show an ad to them, are they in a shopping mindset? If the answer is no, we shouldn’t utilize these shopping experiences.
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Chicory sits at the intersection of food media, commerce, and tech—what unique challenges and opportunities does that convergence bring?
One of the biggest challenges about working in all three areas is that we’re tied to different trends.
Take food media as an example. Food media is changing rapidly. Ten years ago, when we started the business, people visited websites. They went to food blogs to get recipe content and food inspiration. That’s changed dramatically, particularly since COVID. The rise of social content and influencers who monetize through their websites but primarily on social platforms has really changed how consumers engage with content. AI is having a similar effect on how consumers discover new content and new food. And that’s an example of our business model that has to evolve. We have to meet where consumers are going.
It’s the same thesis about how content and commerce need to connect to provide utility to consumers, retailers, and brands, but ultimately, we’ve got to expand where we are. But that also provides a lot of opportunities for us. And one of the biggest ones is that we get to see the entire ecosystem.
Our technologies are on thousands of sites, so we can see things like cooking and food trends. We can access millions of consumers making purchase decisions every day, and they’re not just doing it in a single retailer, and they’re not just doing it with a single brand. It truly has this network effect where we’re able to get a lot of insights and data that we’re ultimately able to use to inform and help our clients market better to consumers.
What’s your take on the future of commerce media in CPG? Do you see retail media networks or recipe platforms leading the charge?
The future of commerce media in CPG is 100% tied to whatever retail media ultimately becomes. What I mean by that is that I think the opportunity with retail media is that it can turn any moment online into an extension of the store. We use the term shopability, shoppable links, or commerce, but when we talk about commerce media, you’re offering the ability for a consumer to move down the funnel much faster.
But that only works if the consumer feels like they’re in a place that is an extension of the store. When it comes to retail media data and measurement, and these commerce tools that ultimately retail media groups have to build, maintain, and support, that is the future.
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Can you walk us through the data infrastructure behind Chicory’s contextual commerce engine—how do you ensure relevancy and scale?
For us, the technology and the data infrastructure start with understanding contextual relevancy.
How do you understand the difference between boneless chicken breast and boneless skinless chicken breast diced into pieces, which are both called for in a recipe?
It sounds easy, but it’s a fairly complicated problem.
We’ve evolved and really invested in ensuring contextual relevancy. Previously, machine learning was a big part of this, and now AI, but ultimately, we’re making sure that we’re using the latest cutting-edge technology.
So, for example, we just updated our entire foodonomy, which is based on the identification of ingredients and food and different recipe categories, with generative AI, which has become much better at understanding content.
It still needs a lot of hand-holding and training, especially in particular categories, like food, recipes, and grocery shopping, but it’s a powerful tool.
I think ultimately, that’s how you scale: You use the latest and greatest technology. You’re always pushing forward and trying to understand, “Can this be better or more relevant?” Retailers have also evolved a lot, which has made this a lot easier.
You know, the APIs and capabilities that our retail partners continue to release improve the consumer experience.
Again, that’s really what this is all about: making sure that the consumer can seamlessly transition from content to commerce, with the right relevant product being marketed to them and ultimately the right product in their basket, whether they want to buy in-store or online.
What role does AI or machine learning play in powering product recommendations and shopper behavior insights at Chicory?
They’re both foundational to what we do at Chicory and have been since the beginning. The problem that we ultimately solve is a data challenge. You have all of this unstructured data across the internet in the form of recipe and ingredient data, which is all unstructured. And then you have this very structured data from the grocery store, right?
They use these incredibly complex files for weekly deals and product information.
That might not have been online 30 years ago, but they’ve always had rich, structured data. And so, how do you match all of this unstructured data on the internet to all this structured data available from these retailers?
Some of these APIs are getting better, but some might not have access to all that structured data and what you’d want. The secret has always been machine learning and AI, which has advanced greatly because of generative AI.
When we first started the business, we had to create models and train all the data ourselves. My cofounder and I would spend our weekends training data for eight, nine, or ten hours a day. We would train hundreds or thousands of ingredient lines, map them to structured ingredient data in our taxonomy, and then map them to product data at the retailer.
Now, you still have to train, model, and have quality control, but all of that can be automated and much simpler to utilize.
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How do you approach integration with retailers and CPG brands from a technical and operational standpoint?
It starts with having a robust technical team, which we do. We have incredibly talented engineers and product managers who understand the space and have extensive experience.
We’ve worked with a bunch of retailers, and we’re the first people to get access to their APIs. And we’re the ones that have to test and break things and work very closely with the retailers’ teams. So, ultimately, it’s about being a partner to the retailer. And both sides understand nothing’s going to be perfect. We’re going to have to work through things together. There might be use cases that neither of us expects will come up. And with our strongest partnerships, that’s absolutely where we see that.
There’s no secret technical sauce other than to hire great people and operate with empathy when it comes to those partners. And they’ll operate with empathy with you, and you’ll figure out how to tackle challenging technical problems together because it truly is a team effort with two different businesses.
If you could fast-forward three years, what capabilities or consumer experiences do you hope Chicory will have helped pioneer across the grocery tech space?
For us, it’s really that idea about extending the retailer experience outside of the website. I won’t say that websites won’t exist in three years. But look, they’re challenged, right? Social platforms are challenging the open web and websites. AI, such as Google’s Gemini, is challenging the open web. They’re challenging search engine marketing and how discoverable websites are.
And while websites aren’t going anywhere, it will be harder and harder to get people to visit and stay on a single webpage when these platforms and other areas across the internet are also places where consumers are going.
For us, it’s about unlocking that secret, whether it’s a recipe, a shopping list, a meal plan, or whatever it ultimately is. If a consumer is in a place in their journey where they’re trying to figure out what they are going to make for dinner this weekend or pick up in—store, the retailer experience should extend into those moments. Right now, it doesn’t happen in a great way.
It’s a display ad with a shoppable link on it. It’s not integrated or contextually relevant. So, for us, it’s working hand in hand with the retailers, our brand partner, and our publishing partners to ensure that it truly is a seamless commerce experience and an extension of what the consumer would experience on the retailer’s website, but in another location.
