Pinterest announced a new partnership with grocery giant Albertsons, in which the platform will collaborate with Albertsons on new technology integrations, mainly for in-app grocery shopping, directly from Pin listings.
According to Pinterest:

New multi-year deal brings innovative AI and API technology to help grocery shoppers plan inspired fresh meals, tapping into Pinterest's growing creator ecosystem, forward-looking trends, and new formats like Idea Pins, the company's multi-page video format.

The center of attention would be placed on providing a possibility of new shopping that could come from pins: allowing for ordering within several taps ingredients for any recipe, besides creating more new interactive tablescapes of the product, to further display the use of its ingredients by Pinners.

Additionally, Albertsons is partnering with Pinterest on a new Pinterest Ambassador program to train selected Albertsons employees as dedicated Pin creators:

"Associates, many of whom have spent their professional lives around food, will inspire and engage customers, leveraging their store's "fresh" food inventory and Pinterest search trends with the Idea Pins format. This program will allow ACI's workforce to use Pinterest's creation tools in an exclusive way to reflect their knowledge, inspiration and pride."

That will shine a better light on Pinterest to in-store shoppers, thus creating an integrated program that connects the stores back to the social app.

Albertsons operates over 2,200 supermarkets in 34 states and houses flagship brands like Albertsons, Safeway, Randalls and United Supermarkets under its retail chain. Importantly, Albertsons also offers grocery delivery services in 11 of the top 15 US markets and with recent growth in eCommerce due to the pandemic, this integration may even be more valuable now than ever.

During the pandemic, Pinterest user activity, including spending, increased, and recipes and food Pins were always a top category.
Then there's the meal kit delivery services that grew with HelloFresh, so look where this partnership goes; this gives users more choices with their food delivery option and the simplicity of kit meal approach.
If Pinterest captures this opportunity now, then it might become an app that is even more of a necessity for more of its users, and where 93% of all food and beverage weekly pinners use the platform for discovering new products, a huge opportunity may be opened-up both for Pinterest and brand owners.

It's actually a good integration, lots of sense, and therefore may set the table open for new usage pathways while further blurring online with offline behaviors.

And if Pinterest can become the grocery shopping app for more people, that could drive major value for the company.

There are a lot of pieces that come together in this integration, and if Pinterest gets it right, all CPG brands need to pay attention.