Woolworths has built an AI assistant that wants to answer the most tiring question of the day: what's for dinner? Called My Woolies Chef, it lives inside the Woolworths app, takes a plain-language prompt, and suggests recipes based on what you have, what you like, or the occasion. Pick one, and it loads the ingredients straight into a Woolies Dash basket.
Built on 20 years of recipes
The tool leans on the Woolworths TASTE recipe archive, more than two decades of local cooking content, and is designed to understand the context of a request rather than just match keywords. It uses conversational AI built into the app to help shoppers find meal ideas and plan with ease. The company's group data and AI officer, Jose Rodrigues, says the approach lets shoppers describe what they need in everyday language and get suggestions that fit the context, instead of running multiple searches. Woolworths Food CEO Chan Pillay says the point is practical, making everyday decisions easier, "not technology for technology's sake". That recipe library is Woolworths' angle: where Checkers' Pixie leans on shopping-habit data and Pick n Pay's Penny starts with open conversation, Woolworths is betting on what it already owns. Over time, the company says the assistant could go further, building smarter shopping lists and offering budget-minded suggestions.
Late to a fast-moving race
It arrives last, and not quite yet. Checkers switched on Pixie in its Sixty60 app in April, pitching it as a "trusted personal butler with a PhD in shopping", and now says 98% of its top loyalty subscribers have used it; Pick n Pay's Penny went live in its asap! app on 6 July. My Woolies Chef, by contrast, only opens to a small group of MyDifference members in September, with a wider rollout planned for early 2027. Woolworths also hasn't said which AI models power the tool, or whether it was built in-house or with a partner.
The bet is that a genuinely different approach, grounded in recipes rather than shopping data, is worth the wait. Whether South African shoppers agree, once all three assistants are live, is the question the next few months will answer.
