Earlier this month, supermarket giant Tesco held a hackathon at their HQ with the aim of improving customers' retail experience and making the task more enjoyable. 

The winner, TescoFoodie, delivered across the board. It is a recipe app built by a team from global management consultancy, Kurt Salmon, and mobile integration specialists Mobispoke, with support from IBM and a Tesco store manager. Rather than just providing a selection of recipes, the app learns about its user's preferences and delivers much more... 

Utilising live product data from Tesco, the app will only show recipes for dishes that have all their ingredients in-stock at your local store to prevent frustration and disappointment. To speed the shopping process up even further, the app uses location data to guide the customer exactly where they need to go in each individual store. 

If this wasn't enough, TescoFoodie also allows users to share their creations through the @TescoFoodie twitter account to add a social element to the application. This raises awareness, leads to further uptake, and ultimately leads to more sales for Tesco.

Tesco has struggled financially and just last month posted the biggest loss in UK retail history of £6.4 billion. In order to boost their slumping sales, innovation such as that shown by TescoFoodie to re-engage with customers and offer "1:1 Retailing" will be vital over the coming years.

Mike Dennis, retail analyst at City firm Cantor FitzGerald, has went on record to say Tesco should consider closing 200 underperforming supermarkets/superstores and focus on growing the more profitable remaining 700 stores. That's quite a chunk of stores, and at a rate which the company can't afford to repeat. 

Do you think retail app innovation will help Tesco to recover? Let us know in the comments.