American Bakery Chain-Store, Panera, Seeks Food Transparency Using AR
American bakery Chain-store, Panera, is launching an augmented reality (AR) ad unit that allows users to share the AR experience from the ad, across social media platforms (Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook) giving users the ability to “play” with, and share, their food.
This is one of the first implementations of AR in the food industry, with the aim of advancing transparency in their menus and providing a better customer experience.
With the program, customers will be easily able to go through eg. a wrap’s nutritional facts and ingredients. A spokesperson for Panera said “the user taps to place a Panera wrap anywhere in front of them, with interactive buttons that animate in the menu-item name, nutritional information, and all ingredients,”.
Using AR makes it easy for customers to assess a food selection, through navigable visual inspection and helps the brand push to an overall category innovation.
The ad utilizes the OS-level ARKit and ARCore augmented reality frameworks in iOS and Android devices, so that no app needs to be downloaded.
