Over 200,000 Canadian families already use the service every week to plan their meals and grocery shopping. Based on their lifestyle preferences or personal dietary needs, and the number of people in their household, a new meal plan is generated each week that takes advantage of locally-available fresh products and flyer specials at local supermarkets. It is estimated that this program helps Canadians save up to $17 million per month on grocery bills from their favourite supermarkets, based on an average monthly savings between $50 and $85 per four person household.

“[SOSCuisine.com] is a great website if you’re looking to cut your grocery expenses and eat well at the same time,” says Renee, who signed up nine months ago. “It doesn’t cost a penny and... our family cut our grocery bill by more than half by subscribing to this incredible service.”

The printer-friendly shopping list links all special price items to the weekly flyers from local grocery stores. “The list of participating stores keeps getting longer,” says Duane Seon, Director of Product Marketing and Product Management at SOS Cuisine. “We have big chain supermarkets in our Smart Shopping System, and now we’re starting to include smaller neighbourhood merchants and grocery stores all across Canada.” Seon says that SOS Cuisine is always looking for ways to provide its members with an intuitive system that caters to their needs, knows where they like to shop and shows them the best deals to save money when they go shopping.

Wide variety of Meal Plans

Users from a beginner level to experienced chefs can subscribe for free to a variety of tailored menus such as Budget, Cook for one, Cook for kids, Eat Local, Express, Gourmet, Halal, No Fish or seafood, Pesco-Vegetarian, Semi-Vegetarian, Vegetarian and Bone-Healthy. These are available for 1 to 6 people, and follow the latest recommendations from Health Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating.

SOS Cuisine will also soon begin offering personalized meal plans for a variety of ‘moments in life’, for example pregnancy, and medical conditions, such as type 2 Diabetes.  “We’re doing our best to cater to everyone’s budget and dietary needs” says Seon. “We want our members to feel that whatever their preferences, SOS Cuisine will come to their rescue.”

Recipes and Meal Plans that tell you the truth

Pierre Lamontagne, Vice-President of R&D and Business Development, says that in order to offer this service, and have it accepted by Health Professionals, SOS Cuisine needed to innovate and build from scratch a very reliable system that would provide accurate and complete information – both cost-wise and nutrition-wise – without hiding anything from the user. “After 5 years of hard work, we are very happy with what we achieved.”

“First, we developed about 1,200 original recipes that focus on fresh, unprocessed ingredients, and we tested each recipe to make sure they would work for everybody every time. They come with a selector of servings that automatically calculates the right quantity of ingredients for 1 to 8 persons.”

“Then, we programmed all of Health Canada’s rules and criteria, exactly as they appear in the official regulations, to automatically calculate the complete nutritional information for each recipe. While other websites display partial or inaccurate nutritional information to make their recipes look healthier by hiding less attractive points, SOS Cuisine is the only website that includes the Nutrition Facts table, the servings from Canada’s Food Guide as well as all of the Nutrient Content and Health claims allowed by Health Canada. ”

“Finally, we developed a way to calculate the cost per serving accurately, i.e. by comparing supermarket specials on the same basis – edible weight – for items sold differently, e.g. size 113 oranges at $1,99 for 5 units in one store, and size 88 oranges at $5,99 per 5-lb bag in another.”

Time savings

Besides the Recipes and Grocery List, a step-by-step 'how-to' guide is also provided to the users of the service, allowing them to minimize the time spent in the kitchen, typically less than 30 minutes per meal. It reminds them what to do, and when to do it when during the week, for example to take the frozen chicken out of the freezer the night before it is featured on the menu.