- Yoti joins Zizzi, Whitworth’s, YO! Sushi & Simply Cook and 44 other high-street food brands to help 13 to 24-year-olds save up to 25% on balanced food options
- Backed by Impact on Urban Health (formerly Guys & St Thomas’ Hospital Charity) and Paul Lindley, Founder of Ella’s Kitchen
- Launching with charity partner FareShare to donate meals to food banks
20th May 2021 – SMASH is the food discovery app to inspire young people to “save money and stay healthy” and enables the UK’s 9 million 13 to 24-year-olds to eat well and save up to 25% at the places they buy food and love to eat. It will use age verification from Yoti to help young people join and prove their age in seconds using Yoti age estimation or the digital ID app on their phone. It’s a modern privacy preserving solution to outdated online age verification methods that traditionally rely on credit cards or unverified tick boxes.
Backed by Impact on Urban Health, and developed with the support of youth advisors from Jamie Oliver’s Bite Back 2030, SMASH has launched with 123 products from 44 food brands – including high street favourites such as Zizzi, Wahaca, Tortilla and YO! Sushi to snack time favourite Whitworth’s, Ugly Drinks and plant-based champions, Meatless Farm and The Coconut Collaborative. All the products listed on SMASH meet a nutritional framework developed by nutritionist, Jenny Rosborough, inspired by Public Health England’s calorie targets for grocery items through to everyday meals and restaurant occasions, as well as upper limits for saturated fat, sugar and salt.
People use Yoti to sign up and prove their age in two secure ways. Using age estimation, people can pass an age threshold without owning an ID, they simply look into the camera. The system has been designed to deliver accurate results for people of all ages and skin tones, providing results within an average of under 1.5 years in the 13-24 age brackets. It’s private, people don’t need to register or sign in and images are deleted by Yoti after use. It’s being used by leading e-commerce sites and social platforms, delivering over 380 million age checks in 2020.
For those SMASHers who are closer to 24, SMASH will direct users to verify their eligibility by using the free Yoti or Post Office EasyID app – a safe place to store personal details, encrypted and under the owner’s control. When proving age, people securely share just their age without revealing everything. It’s a smarter, modern way to prove age that protects privacy, promotes personal data security and tackles ID fraud with verified information. Over 2 million people have downloaded Yoti in the UK which is accepted at 12,000 convenience stores, online and more.
Young people can either access discounts through scanning a QR code on the go, downloading online codes for food delivered to their door, or downloading and printing coupons ahead of time to use as cash in major supermarkets.
Founded by Chris Holmes, a former director at KFC, where he set up the Colonel’s Club loyalty scheme and Ask Italian, where he was Managing Director, SMASH was born out of the idea of creating a “young person’s railcard” for better food. Chris comments: “Our intention with SMASH is to help young people to live healthier lives – it’s literally written into our articles of association! We want to do that by creating a wave of demand for healthier food and by partnering with forward thinking retailers who share our passion to be part of the solution to reframing today’s food environment.
“In Yoti we have a solution that gives us, our retailer partners, and the young people we serve, the trust that they can safely and securely be a part of SMASH. However in the Yoti team we also have new friends who care deeply about our collective mission to promote the health and wellbeing of the UK’s young people. Here’s to helping them Save Money And Stay Healthy!”
Yoti CEO Robin Tombs said: “We’re proud to support SMASH with our age verification technology, they clearly share our passion for innovation and making a positive impact on society. Yoti is committed to making it easier for young people to prove their age across the UK, while protecting their privacy and stopping fraudsters in their tracks.”
About Smash
Launched May 2021, SMASH is a food discovery app to inspire young people to “save money and stay healthy”. The free app available on iOS and Android enables the UK’s 9 million 13 to 24-year-olds to eat well and save up to 25% at the places they buy food and love to eat. Backed by investors such as Impact on Urban Health and developed with youth advisors from Jamie Oliver’s Bite Back 2030, SMASH offers discounts on 123 products from 44 food brands, including high street restaurants such as Zizzi, Wahaca, Tortilla and YO! Sushi to snack time favourite Whitworth’s. All products listed on SMASH meet a nutritional framework developed by nutritionist Jenny Rosborough and are inspired by Public Health England’s calorie targets for grocery items and everyday meals. Users can either access discounts through scanning a QR code on the go, downloading online codes for food delivered to their door, or downloading and printing coupons ahead of time to use as cash in major supermarkets. SMASH worked with I-AM to create the SMASH app prototype, logo and initial branding to ensure it was a success. SMASH works with Don’t Panic for creative and independent media agency, Yonder, for its media buying. Find out more about SMASH by visiting: smash-app.co.uk .
About Yoti
Yoti is a global digital ID and credential management platform that allows organisations to verify identities and trusted credentials online and in person. Yoti’s products span identity verification, age assurance, document e-signing, access management and authentication. Over 10 million people have downloaded the free Yoti app globally, with over 2m downloads from the UK. Yoti is available in English, Spanish, French, German and Polish. In the UK, Yoti is the digital identity partner for Post Office and the Scottish Improvement Service. Yoti is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2013 for ID Verification Services. Yoti is ISAE 3000 (SOC 2), Type 2 certified for its technical and organisational security processes and is a Secured by Design (Official Police Security Initiative) member company.
Media contacts
Mark Hindle for Yoti: press@yoti.com