Online Shopping List Startup Whisk.com Wins AB InBev’s Beer Garage Hackathon

BIRMINGHAM, U.K. - March 11, 2015 - PRLog -- Four members of the startup team at digital shopping list and recipe app, Whisk.com, beat off tough competition to be crowned champions of AB InBev’s Beer Hackathon in London. As the winning prize, the Whisk team takes home tickets to the Wimbledon Championships this summer.

Tasked with designing a new technology concept that inspires people to try beer with food, the team created a weather-centric weekly beer email tool called Beermail.io.

The Whisk team, comprising of CEO and founder Nick Holzherr, designer Marc Kimmel, and developers Viktor Taranenko and Jack Wearden, combined eight APIs (application program interfaces) to build the winning feature from concept to completion in 24 hours.

“Sunny with a chance of beer….” The hackathon-winning Beermail.io delivers a seven-day weather forecast algorithmically paired with recipes that complement the weather and beers that match the flavour profiles of recipes. Cold and sunny? Beermail.io sends users a recommended recipe for Curried Butternut Squash Soup paired with Leffe Blond. Mild and foggy? The tool recommends Shakshuka (a Middle Eastern, quiche-like dish) paired with Hoegaarden.

The clever email subscription service also provides subscribers with personalized store discounts for beer.

Nick Holzherr said:  “This has been a fantastic weekend and we are delighted to have won the Beer Garage Hackathon. The Whisk team combined eight different APIs to develop the Beermail.io concept into a product over a weekend, proving that technology, good food and beer pair together perfectly. The AB InBev created one of the best hackathons we’ve seen -- from the people that attended, the food, the event space to the hackathon’s guiding concept, of course”.

Whisk.com, where the team works when not at hackathons, makes the journey from online recipe inspiration to real-life supermarket and grocery shopping a whole lot easier. With the click of a button, Whisk uses complex matching algorithms to turn any recipe into digital grocery shopping lists that can be viewed anytime, anywhere.

Based in Birmingham, UK, Whisk.com is a small startup making a big impact on how people discover new recipes and shop for food. In less than two years, Whisk has partnered with UK’s leading supermarkets Tesco, Ocado, Waitrose and Asda, while delivering class-leading technology to the web’s leading recipe sites.

About Whisk.com

Whisk.com is a free shopping list app that makes the journey from online recipe inspiration and meal planning to real-life shopping a whole lot easier.

Whisk works with leading recipe publishers to link shoppers to more than 300,000 recipes. Alongside these online recipes, Whisk seamlessly displays a "Create a Smart Shopping List" button that allows people to quickly create a digital shopping list from any recipe.

The WhiskAds’ advertising platform makes the content from more than 300,000 recipes connected and transactional. WhiskAds intelligently places relevant ads across the shopper’s path to purchase, giving brands the ability to showcase branded products next to recipe ingredients.

Whisk accolades include a Cisco British Innovation Gateway award, The Grocer’s "Top New Talent" award and the PPA Digital “Newcomer of the Year” award. Whisk has been featured in leading publications including Wired, The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, BBC, Internet Retailing, Food Manufacturer and The Next Web.

The Whisk app was recently featured as one of the "Best New Apps" in the Apple App Stores food and drink category. Whisk’s free supermarket shopping list app is currently available for download on the Apple iTunes and Android App Stores. It is also available as browser plug-in.

Whisk was launched in January 2013 and was founded by Nick Holzherr, who raised funding for the venture after pitching the business to Lord Sugar as a finalist on the 2012 BBC TV series The Apprentice. Whisk is headquartered in Birmingham, United Kingdom.

For more information on Whisk, please visit https://whisk.com or become a fan on Facebook.