ZipList’s Grocery List & Recipe Search App Gets Overhauled

Foodies rejoice! ZipList, makers of online and mobile shopping lists and a recipe search service, is out now with a completely revamped iPhone application. The updated app syncs with ZipList.com and its 40 parter sites, including MarthaStewart.com, Women’s Day, $5 Dinners and more, to keep your mobile shopping list up-to-date with your latest recipe finds from across the Web.

With the new app, the user interface has been redesigned for easier in-store use. You can now easily navigate the app with one hand, and find recipes that have are uniquely targeted towards your own personal likes and interests while shopping.

Although there are other shopping lists apps out there, for foodies and home chefs, the standout feature for ZipList’s app is the recipe search and recommendations feature. Thanks to ZipList’s use of natural language processing, the app is smart enough to know the difference between an ingredient you need to buy for your recipe (e.g., a cut of meat or produce item) versus a staple ingredient you probably have on hand back home (e.g., salt).

The idea to update the app came from extensive customer feedback and research, says Nick Dellis, VP of Business Development and Marketing at ZipList. The company found that people would see an item on sale in the store – for example, chicken breasts – and would want to be able to quickly find a recipe they could use for that night’s dinner. This functionality is now integrated into the mobile app so customers can stand in the middle of the grocery aisle and search for a recipe they like.

What’s different about ZipList is that the service learns from you the more you use it. It begins to understand what sorts of recipes you like and who your favorite chefs are, based on your behavior, the ingredients you purchase, the prep and cook time of the meals you choose and more. If you never add recipes with meat to your shopping list, for example, ZipList learns that you’re probably a vegetarian, and will stop suggesting recipes for meat dishes.

The new app also has an improved store locator functionality that includes access to 150,000 stores across the U.S. (and others, via crowd-sourcing). After adding a store, you can now re-order the aisles, which is a bit time-consuming, but worth doing if you’re a regular ZipList user.

ZipList includes standard shopping list features like sharing, barcode scanning, checklists and more.  The updated app is now available in iTunes as a free download.

To date, ZipList has raised $4.5 million in funding from Softbank and Martha Stewart Omnimedia.