Merry X-Smash and a Happy New Year!

That’s it! Our last workweek of the year is just about done (although not our last shop – eek), and what a week it’s been. All we wanted for Christmas was a brilliant launch, but we’ve been treated to an early present in the form of some fantastic coverage too – the ultimate icing on top of an already rather delicious Christmas cake.

As you probably know, last week we decided to uncover how the nation manages to get Christmas dinner on the table by carrying out exclusive research among 2,000 Brits. Shopping and food are our bread and butter after all, so we felt we should know all there is to know about one of the biggest dinners of the year – arguments and all! Turns out we weren’t the only ones to be interested in the UK’s debauched Christmas day tradition; the papers especially seemed to love that fact that 12% of us are ‘out of it’ by the time dinner is served – and coverage just kept sprouting up all over the place! We even made it to the front page – take a look:

Daily Star – Merry X-Smash! 6 million boozy Brits will hit the bottle early on Christmas Day

The Mirror – One in ten Brits admit they are drunk on Christmas Day before dinner is even served

Retail Thinking – Festive food shopping ‘most stressful’ trip of the year

This latest wave of national and trade coverage rounds off what has been a quite remarkable 2016 for Ubamarket. This time last year our app was still being built by the magical elves at DMI; since launching to market in the second half of the year we have already been featured in the press no fewer than 50 times. Viva the Retail Revolution!

We hope you have had an equally as fantastic year and that your Christmas dinner this year consists of more pigs in blankets than booze-soaked Barneys. Either way, it’s all part of the fun and we are ready to embrace it in all its glory – safely in the knowledge that we have done our bit when it comes to making things that little bit easier. Time to don our Christmas jumpers, relax, and gobble up as much turkey as possible before we get ready for next year – when we expect more of the same… only bigger and better, of course. Because 2017 will be the year we take over more supermarkets across the land to revolutionise the way we all shop for food.

Bring it on and see you then.

Merry X-Smash everyone!

Drunkenness, Barneys & Turkey Massacres – Ubamarket Reveals the 12 Truths of Christmas Dinner

Christmas is just nine sleeps away and we can’t wait… especially for the main event: DINNER!

Christmas is all about indulging after all, but what really goes on behind closed doors? What are the nation’s favourite and least favourite bits of the festive feast? Who does the shopping? Who does the cooking? And who is just too drunk to help out? Well, we asked 2,000 UK adults about their experiences and traditions on the big day so we could unveil the truths behind the much-loved Christmas dinner.

Click below to see our new infographic – The 12 Truths of Christmas Dinner:

When it comes down to business – the food – pigs in blankets rolled in as a national treasure, smothered in nothing less than the defining factor of all festive feasts – gravy – a make-or-break component of the meal according to 44% of the nation. We clearly love our Christmas dinner and the fact that 10 million turkeys are killed in the UK for Christmas each year (a downright turkey massacre) will not stop us from gobbling up as much of the big bird as possible.

In fact, quite a few of us get a little over excited when it comes to gobbling as much as possible, with 15% of people – the equivalent of nearly 8 million Brits – saying they over do it so much in the eating and drinking department that they have actually been sick on Christmas day. Meanwhile, 12% of Brits (especially men) saying they are drunk before the dinner is even served.

The excessive amount of booze chugged down might be a result of the stress that surrounds the Christmas dinner itself.  When it comes to cooking the roast to end all roasts, a third of men step up to the task (33%); however, double the amount of men (15%) than women (7%) also admitted to lying in order to get out of doing the Christmas food shop. To be fair, 35% of Brits did say that the Christmas food shop was the most stressful trip to the supermarket ALL YEAR (obviously they haven’t discovered Ubamarket yet). Not to mention the 28% of us who have had to make a last-minute trip to the shops to buy forgotten ingredients. It’s no wonder then that 16% of those quizzed said they had had an argument with a partner or family member over the Christmas dinner.

Drunkenness, food comas and shopping mayhem are all par for the course at this time of the year – but this festive season we hope to help you out just a little with those forgotten sprouts and stressful supermarket queues… even if we can’t do anything about the family feuds and Boxing Day hangovers!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Ubamarket – It’s Many Things to Many People!

As you know, Ubamarket has been getting some well-deserved attention from the press lately. The Daily Mail called us a “supermarket satnav”; a name that nicely highlights our app’s ability to guide you smoothly around the store with minimal fuss! Many retail magazines, meanwhile, have preferred to focus on Ubamarket as a revolutionary scan-as-you-go shopping app.

However, while these are certainly a couple of our sexier features, there are many more features to Ubamarket than the fact it can locate and scan the items on your shopping list. So we thought it was time to give a shout out to all the other great Ubamarket features that might not be as glam, but work just as hard to make your life easier. The beauty of Ubamarket is, after all, that it isn’t just designed to work in multiple stores, but that it is basically a one-stop-shop for all your food purchasing needs (well almost; sadly we can’t carry it home for you).

Besides our brilliant relationship with HTEC’s point of sale technology – enabling you to cut queue times and get rid of that dreaded unidentified item in bagging area lady – Ubamarket also has many more features including the ability to memorise all your favourite recipes! Yep, with its ability to save multiple shopping lists you can save your weekly shop and ensure that you never try to make risotto without the wine or lasagne without béchamel (those really are the best bits). It even remembers what you bought previously so you don’t end up doubling up on items you already have sat in your cupboard or fridge!

If you are anything like us, you might find that you have the ability to walk into a store with the intention of buying bread and milk, and you somehow come out with £100 worth of snacks. Ouch! Fear not though; our spend tracking should help even the most reckless supermarket shopper keep on top of how much they are spending. Just seeing those numbers go up really does help.  Furthermore, its Automatic Loyalty point collection should also help you save a couple more bucks. So while the satnav and scan-as-you-go feature might be the stars of the show, all Ubamarket’s other great features working behind the scenes are what really make Ubamarket one hell of an app!

2016 – The Year of the Retail Revolution

There’s only four weeks left of 2016 and it’s been a momentous year so far for the team at Ubamarket, as we’ve gone from a big idea to a fully-fledged app at the wheel of a retail revolution – proof that mighty oaks do grow from tiny acorns! However, the past few weeks have quite possibly been the biggest in our four-year history, as we were officially unleashed on the public at Warner’s Budgens in Moreton-in-Marsh with a rapturous reception from trade, national, and broadcast press – not to mention a crowd of ‘appy shoppers’. After the Daily Mail published a mammoth review on all things Ubamarket, plus coverage in The Sunday Telegraph, on Which?, and in The Grocer to name a few, you’d been pushed to pick up a paper or click on a news story without seeing our brand new retail app taking up the column inches.

Our broadcast game has also been strong with countless interviews with the Beeb, no less! That’s right, Will Broome has been riding the airwaves with Anna King for BBC Radio Gloucestershire; Malcolm Boyden for BBC Hereford & Worcester; and he’s been interviewed for You & Yours on BBC Radio 4!

And, as Christmas is just around the corner, even more journalists have been tapping up our app as a great way to shop smarter in the busy holiday season.

Here are some of our latest and greatest coverage hits:

Daily Mail

The Sunday Telegraph

BBC Radio 4

The Grocer

BBC Radio Gloucestershire

BBC Hereford & Worcester

BBC West of England

Irish Examiner

Which?

Talking Retail

Retail Week

Essential Retail

Retail Systems

South West Business

Wilts & Gloucestershire Standard

Evesham Journal

BT

Yahoo! News

SBTV

Although the countdown to Christmas is nearly upon us, there’s still plenty of time to cram in a few extra interviews, one of which is with Good Housekeeping!

So before we settle our brains for a long winter’s nap, we’ll be keeping you up to speed on all the latest coverage hits fresh off the press, plus all the rather clever ways that Ubamarket can save you time and money in the supermarket over the next few weeks.