Woolworths has introduced My Woolies Chef, an AI-powered food assistant designed to help customers answer one of the most common daily questions: “What’s for dinner tonight?”
Built into the Woolworths app, My Woolies Chef uses conversational AI to help customers find meal ideas, plan with less effort and shop ingredients more seamlessly.
Drawing from 20 years’ worth of trusted Woolworths TASTE recipes, the tool allows customers to engage with the tool to receive relevant recipe suggestions based on ingredients, preferences, household needs or occasions.
The tool will be available to a small cohort of existing MyDifference loyalty programme members from September 2026 as part of an ongoing beta testing phase, with the intention of rolling it out more broadly in early 2027.
Unlike general-purpose AI tools, My Woolies Chef is built specifically around the Woolworths food ecosystem. The assistant combines local recipe content, product information and shopping functionality to deliver recommendations that are relevant to the South African customer context and directly connected to the Woolworths shopping experience.
My Woolies Chef uses generative and conversational AI to interpret what customers are asking for and return relevant suggestions from thousands of well-loved Woolworths TASTE recipes. Unlike a traditional search function requiring customers to browse individual products, categories or recipes, the tool is designed to understand the context behind a request.
The system has been trained to interpret natural language prompts related to meal planning, cooking preferences and household needs, allowing customers to interact with the platform in a more intuitive and conversational way. A customer can, for example, ask for a quick family dinner using ingredients they already have, a vegetarian meal for two, lunchbox ideas that can be prepped ahead, or a menu that feels easy but impressive for guests.
Recommendations are generated using trusted Woolworths TASTE recipe content and are designed to reflect locally available ingredients, seasonal relevance and practical cooking considerations for South African households.
Jose Rodrigues, group data and AI officer at Woolworths, says: “Conversational AI allows customers to engage with Woolworths’ food content and digital shopping experience in a more intuitive way. Instead of navigating multiple searches, they can describe what they need in everyday language and receive suggestions that are relevant to the context of their request. Our focus is on developing the technology responsibly, testing it through a phased rollout and improving the experience through customer feedback.”
Woolworths will use the beta phase to evaluate customer behaviour, refine recommendation quality and improve overall user experience ahead of a broader rollout. Feedback from participating customers will play an important role in shaping future functionality and enhancements.