Skip to main content

Whole Foods’ Messenger chatbot lets you discover recipes using emojis

What to do with food emojis? That age-old question humans have grappled with since the dawn of the iPhone. In terms of our everyday cellular discourse, is there any use for them other than to express our appetite or sexual urges?

Whole Foods thinks it has the answer with its new chatbot for Facebook Messenger that lets you incorporate emojis into your quest to discover tantalizing, and healthy, new recipes.

Recommended Videos

All you have to do to interact with the culinary AI is seek out Whole Foods on Facebook and begin a Messenger conversation, or search for the company on Messenger itself.

The bot initiates the chat by explaining that it can “help you find some delicious recipes.” There’s no mention of emojis when you start, but don’t resort to boring old text. Take our word for it, you can break out those little icons to your heart’s content.

For example, if you were to enter everyone’s favorite food emoji (after the eggplant, and peach icon, ahem) the taco, the bot would hit you back with a slideshow of links to — yes, you guessed it — taco recipes. All the links navigate to the Whole Foods website, where you can also add the items you need to a shopping list if you have an account.

Whole Foods claims that you can add text to modify recipes in accordance with any special diets you may have, seeing as there’s no emoji for “vegan,” unless you get really creative. Therefore, maybe it’s best not to ditch text altogether just yet — even if Facebook itself thinks you inevitably will at some point in the not too distant future. Unless, of course, like us, your diet consists of just pizza, and hot dogs — foods that can be expressed purely through emojis.

Whole Foods envisions the chatbot as a tool to enhance your in-store shopping experience. “Our goal is to make recipe discovery easy and to help our customers … find new ways to experience the foods they love,” Jeff Jenkins, global executive, digital strategy and marketing at Whole Foods Market, told VentureBeat. “Whole Foods Market customers are always looking for inspiration no matter whether they are at home, on the run or walking down our aisles.”

If, however, you prefer to spend your days on your couch playing video games, there’s always the Pizza Hut chatbot instead.

Saqib Shah
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Saqib Shah is a Twitter addict and film fan with an obsessive interest in pop culture trends. In his spare time he can be…
How to deactivate your Instagram account (or delete it)
A person holding a phone with the Instagram app open on it.

Oh, social media. Sometimes it’s just too much, folks.

If you’re finding yourself in a position where shutting down your Instagram account for a period of time sounds good, the people at Meta have made it pretty simple to deactivate it. It’s also quite easy to completely delete your Instagram, although we wouldn’t recommend this latter option if you plan on returning to the platform at a later date.

Read more
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Incogni: Recover your privacy and remove personal information from the internet
Incogni remove your personal data from brokers and more

Everything you do while online is tracked digitally. Often connected to your email address or an issued IP, trackers can easily identify financial details, sensitive information like your social security number, demographics, contact details, like a phone number or address, and much more. In many ways, this information is tied to a digital profile and then collated, recorded, and shared via data brokers. There are many ways this information can be scooped up and just as many ways, this information can be shared and connected back to you and your family. The unfortunate reality is that, for most of us, we no longer have any true privacy.

The problem is exacerbated even more if you regularly use social media, share content or images online, or engage in discussions on places like Reddit or community boards. It's also scary to think about because even though we know this information is being collected, we don't necessarily know how much is available, who has it, or even what that digital profile looks like.

Read more