MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO – Walmart Canada announced plans to acquire Toronto-based Foodmaestro, a digital start-up that offers a mobile app product finder that helps consumers find foods that match their dietary needs. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.

The service helps retailers and consumer package goods companies provide their customers with greater product transparency through enriched dietary information. The platform also offers customized features such as meal planning. Foodmaestro’s digital platform processes more than 14 million product attributes, 300,000 search requests and 6 million product validations in real-time each day.

The company also enables retailers and CPGs to provide product transparency through SmartLabel.

“We are very excited to welcome Foodmaestro to the Walmart Canada family,” said Horacio Barbeito, president and chief executive officer, Walmart Canada. “Together we will continue elevating the online experience for our customers by sharing knowledge, investing in resources, people and product transparency. This enhancement to our online experience will allow our customers to make healthier personalized choices, which helps them live better.”

Walmart Canada believes the acquisition of Foodmaestro will enhance Walmart Canada’s e-commerce experience by offering consumers more personalization capability, such as highlighting safe products for those with food allergies or healthier options for people living with diabetes.

“Having spent the past several years pioneering digital transparency and helping shoppers around the world to find the right foods, we are thrilled to have been invited to join a family as prestigious as Walmart,” said Jaed Khan, founder and CEO, Foodmaestro. “We have worked with Walmart for almost four years now and this investment signals Walmart’s continued commitment and increased focus to help provide consumers with the transparency they need to make informed decisions about the products they buy. We are tremendously excited about the future.”

Walmart Canada also expects to deepen the company’s talent pool by bringing in the Foodmaestro engineers and health and wellness expertise. This is Walmart Canada’s first acquisition since the pandemic.

“The acquisition of this talented team of experts from Foodmaestro is a big part of our transformation at Walmart Canada,” said John Bayliss, executive vice president, chief transformation officer. “I am energized by what the future brings with our talented team of engineers and health and wellness resources working together to make the online experience even better for our customers.”