Health Hackathon powered by Tesco Labs
Date
12 September 2025
17.00 - 19.00
Organizer
Venture Scout
Location
Event Space
The Health Hackathon powered by Tesco Labs
This September, we’re running a health-themed 48-hour hackathon. The event will take place from 12-14th of September, and we’re hoping for lots of developers, designers and marketers to take part over the weekend and come up with the best health-themed innovation. We’re extremely excited about the event and the opportunity to work with you to innovate and improve our service for customers.
What we are looking for
We are looking for ideas on how we can:
• help customers to easily make healthier food choices in store and online
• share with customers their data to help them understand their own behaviour and increase their awareness about healthy food and healthy living
• show customers how they compare with others like them, others near them, their friends and family, or wider regional or national averages
• help customers connect with other customers to share stories, tips, advice etc
• educate customers about healthy living and healthy food in an innovative way
• help customers track/share/find out more about what they’re buying and eating
• explore how the ‘internet of things’ might help our customers live healthier lives
Exciting partners and prizes
Several companies (including Verizon, Motorola, Intel, P&G, Johnson and Johnson, Danone and Coca Cola) have lent their support to the Hackathon by either acting as judges or mentors to the participants, or through donations of prizes, catering supplies or tech kit.
There are lots of prizes up for grabs, plus the winners will get to take part in a real-life Supermarket Sweep.
Data
We’re very pleased to be able to provide you with access to a sample of anonymised, relevant data so that you can make your hacks the best they can be. To get hold of this data, please contact [email protected]
Why is Health and Wellbeing important to Tesco?
We're facing one of the biggest challenges on the planet: the global obesity crisis. How can we, as one of the world's biggest food providers, work with you to help and encourage everyone to lead healthier lives? Please join us for a 48-hour hackathon to explore this together.
Health and Wellbeing is an increasingly important, mainstream and emotional issue for consumers,and is considered to be a mixture of avoiding bad habits, leading an active lifestyle and eating the right food.
• The vast majority of consumers says that they know what it takes to be healthy, but there is a big gap between what they know to be important, and what they actually do – the knowing - doing gap
• More than half (54%) of UK consumers say they want supermarkets to be doing more to improve the health of the nation, ahead of Government (51%), Doctors (47%) and local Councils (35%)
As a major retailer we at Tesco have a responsibility to help people make healthier choices. We have publicly pledged to help tackle the global obesity crisis by encouraging our colleagues and customers to live healthily. It’s all part of using our scale for good, and creating a better life for all.
Our strengths
Tesco has several unique strengths in this space:
• business breadth – we have a wide range of health-related products and services we can offer to customers
• data – we have access to a vast quantity of information about our products and our customers
• multichannel focus – our business is focused on making shopping easy for customers however, whenever and wherever they want
Our ambition
Our aim is to “make it easy for our customers and their families to live healthier lives”. We believe our focus should begin and remain rooted in food. This is because food, in particular fresh food, is central to customers’ perception of healthy living, and how they currently see Tesco as a supermarket. However, it will evolve to include an active lifestyle and bad habit avoidance.
Schedule:
Day 1:
17.00-17.15: Welcome, agenda for the day
17.15-17.30: Setting the scene - Tesco
17.30- 18.00: Anyone can pitch their idea in 60 secs
18.00-19.30: Participants move around and discuss the ideas. Meanwhile dinner is served
19.30-19.45: Participants vote for which team they would like to join
19.45-20.00: Best ten teams are formed
20.00-21.00: Ice breaking exercise
Day 2:
09.00-09.30: Breakfast served
09.30-09.45: Welcome, agenda for the day
09.45-10.15: “Think Big” Session to spark further innovation and develop better propositions. Plus kill or pivot worse ideas. Mentors circulate and help the teams
11.15-13.00: Meet the customers: 10 customers come in and meet the teams to get rapid feedback from real potential clients and validate propositions
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00-18.00: Teams work away and mentors move around and coach the teams
17.00-18.00: Check point that all teams have settled on idea and started coding
18.00-19.00: Dinner & networking
19.00-?: Teams work away and can stay overnight if they want
Day 3:
09.00-09.15: Breakfast served
09.15-09.30: Welcome, agenda for the day and kick-off
09.30-10.00: Pitch training: What does a great 3 min pitch look like, by VentureScout?
10.00-13.00: Teams work away and mentors move around and coach the teams
13.00-13.30: Lunch
13.30-16.00: Teams prepare their pitches and test them on mentors. Coders finalize products and demos.
16.00-17.30: Teams present their projects and make demos if possible (3min) to guests and judging panel. 3 min Q&A for each team
17.30-17.45: Judges vote
17.45-18.00: Judges announce the winner. Prize is handed over. Closure
18.00-19.00: Drinks and snacks
#healthhackathon
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