Woolworths has announced My Woolies Chef, an AI-powered food assistant for the Woolworths app that suggests meals and builds shopping baskets – joining a suddenly crowded field in South African grocery retail, though customers will wait months to use it.

The tool, unveiled on Monday, will be made available to a small group of MyDifference loyalty programme members from September as part of a beta-testing phase, with a broader roll-out planned for early 2027.

The timing is telling: Pick n Pay switched on Penny, a Gemini-powered conversational shopping assistant in its asap! app, on 6 July, while Shoprite on Monday released the first adoption data for Pixie, the AI assistant it launched in Checkers Sixty60 in April – claiming 98% of Xtra Savings Plus subscribers have used it.

With both rivals shipping working products, Woolworths is evidently keen to be seen in the game, even if its own assistant is still months from customers’ hands.

My Woolies Chef uses generative and conversational AI to interpret natural-language requests – a quick family dinner using ingredients already in the fridge, a vegetarian meal for two or lunchbox ideas that can be prepped ahead – and returns suggestions drawn from 20 years of Woolworths Taste recipes. Once a recipe is chosen, customers can click through to an automatically populated basket on Woolies Dash, the retailer’s on-demand delivery service, adjusting ingredients according to what they already have at home.

Beta phase

Where Pixie leans on Xtra Savings loyalty data to predict replenishment and Penny starts with open-ended conversation, My Woolies Chef is anchored in two decades of proprietary local recipe content.

“Conversational AI allows customers to engage with Woolworths’ food content and digital shopping experience in a more intuitive way,” said Woolworths group data and AI officer Jose Rodrigues in a statement. “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.”

Read: Meet Penny, Pick n Pay’s new AI shopping companion

Woolworths said it will use the beta phase to evaluate customer behaviour and refine recommendation quality ahead of the wider launch. The company did not disclose which underlying AI models power the assistant or whether it is being built in-house or with a technology partner.