Patent ID: 8626608

Claim:
A recommender system adapted to provide recommendations on a group of consumable items comprising: (a) a first routine of the recommender system that collects at least a set of ratings for a set of consumable items using one or more electronic data collection devices from a group of participants who are participating in an item sampling event in which at least some of the set of consumable items are sampled during said item sampling event; (b) a second routine running on the one or more electronic data collection devices or on one or more computing systems that calculates correlations based on said set of ratings between at least one of 1) said group of participants and other persons rating said set of consumable items or related items; or 2) said set of items including at least item scores and participant scores; and (c) a third routine of the recommender system that presents recommendations on consumable items to at least some of said group of participants based on said correlations.