10 July 2023

PAK’nSAVE Thames team members Charian, left, and Nerissa with their Savey Meal-bot creations

Households across the country have been reaching for their devices to try out PAK’nSAVE’s Savey Meal-bot, an innovative recipe tool that uses AI to create recipes out of food Kiwis already have at home, so nothing has to go to waste.

PAK’nSAVE Senior Marketing Manager Lauren Ness says: “We’re always looking for ways to save customers money and we heard the average household throws away about $1500* worth of food every year, so we’re super excited the Savey Meal-bot can not only save New Zealanders money - it can also help reduce food waste too.

“Since we launched it in June, the online recipe tool is proving to be both popular and practical, attracting more than 33,000 people who’ve been plugging their ingredients into the Bot and cooking up all sorts of delicious meals,” Lauren says.

By far the most popular ingredient people have been plugging in are potatoes, closely followed by carrots, cheese, onion, pasta, rice and broccoli.

Kiwis have also been putting in some less obvious ingredients to make a meal with and still getting some stellar suggestions like Kewpie Chicken Rice, featuring the ingredients of Kewpie Mayo, chicken, rice and soy sauce, and Smarties Surprise Tart, with flour, butter, sugar and Smarties.

The Savey Meal-bot generates an easy-to-make recipe that uses ingredients that might otherwise be thrown away, along with a few basic pantry staples that most people have at home. Simply add a minimum of three ingredients into the Savey Meal-bot to generate a recipe.

We asked the awesome PAK’nSAVE Thames team to trial the Savey Meal-bot before we shared it with Aotearoa - check out how they got on in the video.

PAK’nSAVE Thames owner operator Matthew Heap says: “Everything we do, we do to save you money, we do this here in the store to ensure that nothing goes to waste.

“Bananas that are ripening in-store go into our freshly baked banana bread, if an egg breaks in a carton, the rest of the eggs from the carton goes to the bakery, and unsold hot cooked chickens are shredded as toppings for pizzas. Anything that’s close to its best before date goes to the store’s local food rescue so that it can be shared with those in the community who need it most.

“It’s great to see what we’re doing instore helps our customers, our community and the environment, and now, we have a new Savey Meal-Bot recipe tool which builds on all of that great work,” Matt says.

Head to the saveymeal-bot.co.nz to try it out, it’s heaps of fun and savey too!

*According to a Kantar New Zealand Food Waste Survey, conducted by Rabbobank and KiwiHarvest in April 2022, New Zealand households throw out around $1500 worth of food each year. The food isn’t off, it’s just forgotten about in the fridge, or people aren’t sure what to do with it.

Savey Meal-bot uses a generative artificial intelligence to create recipes and PAK’nSAVE makes no representations as to the accuracy of the recipe content. See saveymeal-bot.co.nz for terms of use.