The Chatbot That Turns A Chef’s Breaktimes into Breakthroughs
Signature dishes can make a restaurant’s reputation – and a chef’s career. But creating a new bestseller takes more than just passion.
Finding emerging diner trends, trying innovative techniques and discovering new uses of ingredients can take months of work, but with chefs already working 12-14 hours a day, that’s time most of them don’t have.
As a leading maker of professional restaurant ingredients, Unilever Food Solutions (UFS) wanted to help chefs create successful dishes, while also creating new relationships and getting its products into more hands – and more restaurants.
But how do you reach chefs whose spare time consists of 5-minute breaks spent messaging with friends? We decided to create a new, helpful friend.
Chef Nas: The AI-powered Chatbot
Now, finding inspiration is just a quick chat away
Chef Nas is a Facebook Messenger-based chatbot that chefs can interact with to quickly find inspiration during their short breaks at work.
Using natural-language processing and AI to understand each chef’s specific cuisine-based needs through chat, Chef Nas profiles each chef, and serves up the relevant content from UFS’s extensive database of diner and food trends, preparation tips and recipes – and offers samples of recommended UFS ingredients, so chefs can quickly get cooking.
With over 1.3 billion smartphone users in APAC—76% of whom use messaging apps—using a chatbot enables a seamless experience and reduces barriers to conversions, recipe discovery and product knowledge.
In just 5 minutes—about the length of their cigarette break—chefs can receive the information and order the product samples they need, without the time-consuming process of using traditional methods.
Chef Nas: The Chatbot
“Nas” comes from the popular Arabic name “Nasir”, which means “helper” and “one who helps someone achieve victory or success”.
From inspiration to finished dishes
in a 5-minute chat
With a database of insights and knowledge gained from industry data and food professionals, Chef Nas can dish out more than 500 intelligently curated conversations around culinary trends, and answer more than 200 predicted questions about recipes, ingredients and preparation. Even when Chef Nas is stumped, he’s smart enough to reach out to UFS’s panel of chefs and product experts, who can resolve chefs’ toughest queries in less than an hour.
Recipe and Product Discovery
Based on a chef’s profile, Chef Nas suggests curated recipes, tips, articles and product samples via chat which chefs can then share to fellow chefs and staff.
Timely Tips and Trends
When new trends are spotted, Chef Nas sends push notifications to chefs such as the latest food trends related to their cuisine, and what their diners are looking for.
Exclusive Promotions
Chat friends of Chef Nas get access to special promotions like discounts and ingredient giveaways chosen to help them perfect their dish.
Order Free Samples
Relevant to the recommended content, Chef Nas also offers free UFS product samples which will be delivered within 2–4 days of request.
Talk to a Chef
While Chef Nas is available 24/7 to help chefs, the chatbot is supported by a panel of real chefs and UFS product experts who can give Chef Nas the answers in less than 24 hours.
Successfully launched in Malaysia, and coming soon to Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore
Launched on August 13, 2019 at the Future of Food event in KL, Malaysia, Chef Nas has already clocked over 24,000 minutes of chat in just three months - the equivalent of 16 days of non-stop conversation - engaging over 12,000 new users with over 16,000 unique conversations.
Greeted with acclaim by both chefs and restaurant owners, feedback is currently being gathered to further optimise the chatbot before it launches in Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia on locally popular messaging platforms in 2020.
