Can AI assist restaurant owners in creating appealing new menus to attract customers, or is this a recipe for failure?
"We asked [popular AI chatbot] ChatGPT to create a recipe for the best pizza in Dubai," says Spartak Arutyunyan, head of menu development for Dodo Pizza's Dubai branch.
"It generated a recipe that we launched, and it turned out to be a huge success—it's still on the menu."
With 90% of Dubai's three million residents being immigrants, "there are so many cultures here," explains Mr. Arutyunyan. "Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Arabs, and Europeans."
He requested ChatGPT to design a pizza that captures this cultural diversity. The result was a topping featuring Arab shawarma chicken, Indian grilled paneer cheese, Middle Eastern Za'atar herbs, and tahini sauce.
Dodo Pizza’s customers have clearly embraced it. “As a chef, I would never combine these ingredients on a pizza, but the blend of flavors was surprisingly good,” says Mr. Arutyunyan.
However, not all AI-generated pizzas made the cut; some unusual combinations, like strawberries with pasta and blueberries with breakfast cereal, were left off the menu.
Far away in the US, Venecia Willis conducted a similar AI experiment at Velvet Taco in Dallas, where she serves as culinary director.
She became "really curious" about AI and decided to let ChatGPT create one of their tacos of the week.
For the prompts, Ms. Willis instructed it to "use about eight ingredients, with only one tortilla and one protein."
Some of the recipe suggestions were less than appetizing.
"There were some strange combinations, and I thought, I'm not sure if red curry, coconut tofu, and pineapple will taste good together," says Ms. Willis.
However, she prepared three of the more promising recipes and ultimately selected a prawns and steak taco for public sale, which sold 22,000 units in just a week.
“I think AI is a valuable tool when you're experiencing a creative block; it can help spark new ideas—‘that combination might actually work, let’s try it.’ The AI suggests things I might not have considered.”
Nonetheless, Ms. Willis emphasizes that she “wouldn’t completely rely on AI. There needs to be a human touch to validate recipes.”
Not everyone in the food industry is enthusiastic about AI. London-based cocktail creator Julian de Feral avoids it because he finds it “counter-intuitive,” believing its choices lack common sense.
AI chatbots are “not magic,” cautions Emily Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. She explains that they learn from the information available online.
“If you can get ChatGPT to generate something resembling a recipe, it’s because there are existing recipes on the internet,” she notes.
She adds that the AI could pull recipes from someone's blog, potentially reducing their readership and income from subscriptions or advertising.
However, Prof. Bender acknowledges that more advanced AI could be useful for recipe creation in the future. She suggests that AI might categorize ingredients as sweet or acidic, identify combinations that are said to pair well, and generate numerous detailed recipes. "But you need a well-defined research question to get that kind of benefit," she emphasizes.
Meanwhile, UK supermarket chain Waitrose is leveraging AI to identify emerging food trends on social media. Currently trending items include “smash burgers”—crispy burgers made by pressing ground beef onto a hot pan—and “crookies,” which are croissants filled with cookie dough and chocolate chips.
"We noticed smash burgers trending across social media," says Lizzie Haywood, Waitrose's innovations manager. “The opening of three or four dedicated smash burger restaurants in the UK aligns perfectly with our launch of smash burgers.”
Regarding crookies, she mentions that AI detected an 80 to 90% increase in their social media mentions compared to last year, allowing them to launch the product in trial stores within three months.
In Singapore, Italian expat Stefano Cantù has developed an AI-powered app that suggests recipes based on the ingredients you have in your fridge and cupboards. He named the app “ChefGPT” as a nod to its ChatGPT foundation.
"I'm Italian, so I love to cook," says Mr. Cantù, who works at a software company. He conceived the idea “over a weekend” after seeking recipe suggestions from ChatGPT.
The app features drop-down menus and toggles, allowing users to specify the kitchen tools they have and whether they’re in a hurry or not very experienced at cooking. The AI then generates a recipe along with a picture of the dish.
Mr. Cantù reports that he gained 30,000 users within just a week and a half of launching last year. However, he soon received a “quite big bill” from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
He now pays OpenAI a regular fee for using its AI technology. Mr. Cantù explains that this is typical for startups that build apps using another company’s technology.
He is also working to find “the right balance between advertising and subscriptions, and the appropriate level of usage for free users,” while figuring out how to “monetize free users without selling their data.”
Back in Dubai, Spartak Arutyunyan from Dodo Pizza suggests that AI should be viewed as a fun tool rather than the foundation of an entire menu.
Still, Dodo Pizza is empowering customers in Dubai who order through its app to experiment with AI to create unique pizza toppings. The company plans to extend this AI feature to its other locations worldwide.
Reference: Padraig B. (29 Aug, 2024) Are AI-Generated Recipes Difficult to Digest?
Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl7y71krnjvo Are AI-created recipes hard to swallow?
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