How Cooklist brought their catalog to life in unexpected ways with Vantage Discovery

‍Highlights

• Cooklist integrated Vantage Discovery to elevate their search and discovery functionality, transitioning from basic keyword searches to context-aware, semantic search capabilities.
• The integration seamlessly connects digital meal planning with physical grocery shopping, enabling users to find recipes and ingredients tailored to their needs.
• With Vantage Discovery, Cooklist offers advanced recipe-to-cart technology, streamlining the shopper journey from “search and select” to “review and accept.”

Key Stats

• +13% increase in product saves per recipe search, reflecting greater shopper satisfaction and interest.
• +11% increase in conversions as determined by recipe cooks per user, demonstrating higher user engagement and activity.
• +9% increase in average order values as determined by item counts per shopping list and basket sizes.
• Improved shopper experience resulting from enhanced context-aware searches that enabled unique queries like “recipes for a 6-year-old’s birthday party.”
• Reduced zero results queries and eliminated gaps in long-tail natural language queries.

Overview

Imagine stepping into a bustling marketplace—not the kind where each aisle feels endless and overwhelming, but one where every stall seems curated just for you. This is the transformation shoppers experience when search evolves beyond basic keywords. Instead of guessing the exact terms to use, they find a journey that anticipates their needs, understands their preferences, and reveals possibilities they never knew existed.

For brands and marketplaces, this isn’t about simply keeping pace—it’s about reimagining what it means to connect with shoppers. Instead of relying on transactional search results, today, they need to create a space where every interaction feels personalized, intuitive, and purposeful.

This is the power behind Cooklist’s success. A digital platform that helps users plan meals, manage ingredients, and seamlessly shop for groceries, Cooklist needed more than a search function. They needed a discovery experience—one that could intuitively match users with the right recipes and products, cutting through complexity with clarity and precision.

By integrating Vantage Discovery’s advanced query understanding, Cooklist transformed their search and discovery. Shoppers could now explore groceries by recipe, uncover relevant meal ideas, and even find items across major retailers like Walmart, Kroger, and Target—all in one place. This semantic approach elevated engagement, improved satisfaction, and deepened shopper loyalty.

Goals

Cooklist aims to transform the grocery shopping experience from “search and select” to “review and accept” using advanced recipe-to-cart technology. Their goal is to streamline how users find and purchase ingredients, connecting digital and physical shopping seamlessly.

They chose Vantage Discovery to help them boost conversion rates, user engagement, and brand visibility while positioning Cooklist as a leader in the grocery tech sector.

Challenges

Cooklist’s key challenge was maintaining scale through strong user retention and engagement. With a database and Recombee for recommendations, their search functionality previously struggled with personalized results. This led to missed opportunities and poor user experiences.

The shift to Vantage Discovery allowed Cooklist to provide intuitive, context-aware search results for even the most specific queries, improving user engagement and retention.

After uploading their catalog to Vantage Discovery, the benefits were immediate.

As the graphic below shows, this statement is not hyperbole. Because none of the descriptions in Cooklist’s vast catalog had enough of a match with the long natural-language query, their algorithm was not able to provide any results. But thanks to Vantage Discovery, Cooklist is now able to generate dozens of highly relevant results once that exact same catalog is accessed through the simple Vantage Discovery API.

What’s more? Cooklist is able to leverage out of the box discovery functionality from the Vantage platform to help their users find even more relevant results, either through traditional filter categories or through purely semantic connections.

Results

Since integrating Vantage Discovery, Cooklist has seen significant improvements in both user engagement and search relevancy. Key metrics include:

• 13% increase in average saves per recipe search, indicating growing user interest in the enhanced functionality.

• 11% increase in engagement, based on recipe cooks per user.

• 9% increase in average order values, based on average item counts per shopping list.

Additionally, the ability to provide contextually relevant search results—like “recipes for a 6-year-old’s birthday party”—has enhanced Cooklist’s user experience, contributing to greater customer satisfaction.

"Vantage takes in the broader context of query, which feels almost human... searches like 'recipes for a 6 year old's birthday party' just weren't possible before." — Brandon Warman, Co-founder & COO, Cooklist