Thirty recipes.
One tired Sunday.
Choose, choose, choose.
You publish more than thirty recipes every week across nine different plans, and that generosity is real. But it lands on a person at the end of a Sunday, and a list is not a decision. This is a concept for the ten minutes before someone gives up and picks the same four things again.
“30+ recipes to choose from every week.”
My Food Bag · myfoodbag.co.nz, July 2026The Sunday-night scroll
Someone opens the app to choose next week. There are thirty-plus recipes, a gluten-free kid, netball on Tuesday, someone home late on Wednesday, and about four minutes of patience left. So they pick the same familiar things, and the interesting half of your range never gets seen.
Your own site offers nine plan types — including a Gluten Free plan supported by Coeliac New Zealand and a Diabetes Plan supported by Diabetes NZ. You already hold the facts that would narrow thirty recipes to five. They are just not being used to do it.
What happens now
A grid of thirty. The customer does the filtering you could have done, and defaults to what they chose last week.
What it costs
Your best new recipes go unseen, and a week that felt like homework is the week before someone pauses.
What the concept does
Narrows thirty to five against what this household actually said, and stops. They still choose.
Be relevant — right thing, right moment · Be respectful — short, skippable, quiet by design · Be measurable — real impact, on the record · Be Aotearoa — built here, for how Kiwis actually wait
Every waiting moment in a meal kit week
Six waits in a household week. Choosing, the days before, the van, the bench, and the week you nearly pause.
Thirty options get narrowed to five against what this household actually said, and the choice stays theirs.
A substitution gets explained before it turns up in the box, with the reason attached.
An afternoon spent waiting turns into forty minutes you can plan around.
The box arrives already sequenced against the week, so nobody stands in front of a fridge deciding.
The dead minutes at the stove get used for the next decision, while the customer is already in the kitchen.
Pausing is made easy and honest, which is the difference between a skipped week and a cancelled subscription.
Four steps, every time.
- The signalSomething in your own systems says a person is now waiting, and roughly how long for.
- The predictionHow long this one will really take — not the average, this one.
- The valueSomething worth their attention goes into that window: an answer, a credit, a thing prepared while they wait.
- The exchangeThey get value. You get a customer who stayed, and one optional answer you have always wanted.
This is the reward layer, running for real on this page. Drag to scratch it. Nothing is collected, nothing is sent — it is here so the idea is something you do, not something you read.
US retailers lose an estimated $37.7 billion a year to customers who abandon because of long queues, split roughly $15.8b to competitors and $21.9b abandoned outright (Adyen with 451 Research). The New York State Department of Labor reported a 48% reduction in hang-ups after introducing virtual queuing. Theme parks moving to virtual queues reported a 36% lift in per-capita spending, because guests spent the wait somewhere that sold something. A Seattle-Tacoma Airport study found 63% of passengers said they shopped or ate more because they saved time in the security queue.
Every figure on this page carries its source. Overseas figures are shown as overseas figures — we have not found a published New Zealand equivalent, and we will not invent one.
One week. Four different households.
The same thirty recipes, narrowed four ways. Nothing here orders anything, and nothing swaps a recipe the customer chose — the shortlist is a suggestion with its reasoning attached.
A template sends the same thing to everyone and changes the name. What matters here is the case that should get something different — or nothing at all.
The rules beside each draft are placeholders. A pilot replaces them with your actual policies. We have not seen those, and this concept does not guess at them.
The checks that run before a shortlist reaches anyone
Food is where personalisation touches health, money and children in the same breath, so the guards matter more than the cleverness.
Drafts are held against the Fair Trading Act 1986, the Privacy Act 2020, the therapeutic-claim provisions of the Medicines Act 1981, and the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007.
Press run to see what it catches — and what it refuses to produce at all.
One room. Your people, your agents, every action on the record.
Every concept on this page would run inside a private room like this: your team and the agents in the same space, drafts appearing with receipts, a named person saying yes. It runs on infrastructure you approve — and what is said in the room stays in it.
receipt sources: your rate card · rules: yours · held for approval
Client information stays in your room. Six months later, “where did this come from?” is one line, not a search.
Yours
Runs where you approve — your own room, your own record. Nothing in it leaves it.
On the record
Every agent action lands as a line a person can read — not a log only a vendor can open.
People decide
Drafts wait for a named person. The room shows who said yes, and when.
This panel is a concept picture, not a live room — a pilot stands up the real one, on infrastructure you approve.
The week, before anything reaches a customer
Illustrative and fictional. No production access is requested by this concept.
| Household | Count | Prepared | Waiting on | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 people, 5 nights, one gluten free | — | Five narrowed, reasons attached | Customer to choose | Awaiting choice |
| 1 person, 3 nights | — | Three narrowed for leftovers | Customer to choose | Awaiting choice |
| Two weeks skipped | — | One question drafted, no discount | CX sign-off | Awaiting approval |
| On the Diabetes Plan | — | Nothing narrowed | A person | Held — no shortlist |
| Restriction looks inferred | — | Nothing narrowed | Confirm the fact first | Held — no shortlist |
| Delivery address unverified | — | Shortlist held | Address check | Parked |
Counts are deliberately blank. This concept has no My Food Bag data and does not estimate how many households anything affects.
Every draft carries its own working.
Not a log somebody has to go and find. The provenance travels with the work — what it read, which rules it held, who must approve it, and what it refused to do.
This matters most on the day someone asks why it said what it said.
- Artefact
- Weekly shortlist — 4 people, 5 nights, one gluten-free eater
- Read
- Published plan types, recipe counts and surcharge facts from myfoodbag.co.nz · household fields: people, nights, stated dietary needs, plan type, skipped-week count. No payment data. No health records.
- Rules held
- Fair Trading Act 1986 · Privacy Act 2020 · Medicines Act 1981 therapeutic-claim provisions · Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007
- Refused
- No order was placed. No nutritional or medical claim was made. No shortlist was drafted for a household on the Diabetes Plan, or where a dietary restriction appeared inferred rather than stated.
- Approver
- A named person. Unsent until then.
- Prepared
- —
- Reference
- —
What this will never do
It does not send. It prepares, and a named person sends. It does not publish to any channel, commit spend, move money, or make a decision that belongs to a person. It does not pretend to be a person — every draft says it was prepared by a machine and approved by a human.
No production access is requested by this concept.
Scope
One moment: the weekly choose, narrowed for opted-in households on the standard plans. Six weeks. Not the Diabetes Plan, not pricing, not the recipe range itself, not delivery.
Access
Your published recipe metadata and plan definitions, plus the field names for stated dietary needs, household size, nights per week and skipped weeks. No payment data. No health information. No customer records leave your systems.
Scorecard
Shortlists where the customer chose at least one of the five. New recipes tried that would not otherwise have been seen. Held cases a person agreed should have been held. And whether a CX lead would put their name to the reason attached to each recipe.
Fail any line of the scorecard and we change the design or stop.
What a pilot actually asks of you.
Written out in full, because the honest version of this is short and most of it is your time, not your money.
One named person
The approver. Every draft stops with them and nothing reaches a customer until they say so. Expect about two hours a week — reading drafts, not managing a project.
One situation, not the business
One moment: the weekly choose, narrowed for opted-in households on the standard plans. Six weeks. Not the Diabetes Plan, not pricing, not the recipe range itself, not delivery.
Read-only access, nothing that writes
Your published recipe metadata and plan definitions, plus the field names for stated dietary needs, household size, nights per week and skipped weeks. No payment data. No health information. No customer records leave your systems. No production credentials, no write permissions, no access to anything the pilot does not need.
Your actual rules
The policies, limits and words the drafts must be held against. Every rule on this page is a placeholder standing in for yours. An afternoon with whoever owns them is usually enough.
Six weeks, then a real decision
Scored on: Shortlists where the customer chose at least one of the five. New recipes tried that would not otherwise have been seen. Held cases a person agreed should have been held. And whether a CX lead would put their name to the reason attached to each recipe. Fail any line of that and we change the design or stop. You keep everything drafted either way.
A fixed fee, agreed in writing first
No number is published on this page, because it depends on which situation you pick. Whatever it is, it is agreed before any work starts and it does not move.
Run the pilot.
Say yes to the six weeks above, and add anything you would change first. Nothing here is fixed — most pilots move a line or two before they start, and the notes below are how that happens.
Opens your mail app to assembl@assembl.co.nz with your notes in it. Nothing is collected by this page.
- Six weeks, one situation, scored against a written line
- Read-only access, nothing production
- A named approver — nothing sends without them
- A fixed fee, agreed in writing before anything starts
- Stop any time. You keep what was drafted
Pick a verb.
Not “book a demo”. Any of these is a real next step, and the last one is a perfectly good answer.
What is the one constraint we have got wrong?
Every concept is built from the outside. There is always something about how My Food Bag actually runs that we could not see. One line is enough.
Opens your mail app to assembl@assembl.co.nz. Nothing is collected by this page.