This Bot Will Help You Decide What’s for Dinner.
If you’ve ever tried cooking dinner for a group, you know that coming up with something that everyone likes can be a daunting task. Dinner at my house usually means that one person comes up with three dishes that they like, and then another person (or people, depending on the night) choose which they would prefer from those options.
This is not a perfect solution. Sure, there are times when person number two ends up with a dinner they don’t really like, but it’s a quick and dirty way to make a dinner decision that everyone contributes to.
Food Network added a new feature to its Facebook bot this week called Meal Match. The press release they sent me joked that users could “swipe their fingers right at their dinner decisions.” At first I laughed at the idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I think it is really brilliant.
To play, you just need to Like the Food Network on Facebook (if you do, click Unsubscribe if you don’t want to see their daily posts) and then send a message to the page saying “Play Meal Match”. The bot will respond and launch the game.
With Meal Match, you select a category and then send the game to your lunchtime friends (the submission must be in the Messenger app, not the Facebook desktop website). For example, I chose Autumn Weekday Dinners as my category, but there are also options like Easy Slow Recipes and Top 50 Recipes.
You will be shown 10 recipes, and you can put each one “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”. Your dinner guests will get the same experience. After you have answered everything, you will receive the results that will be sent to you and you will find out how many matches the group had. So, while you may not have offered tacos on your own, playing can help you find that everyone in the family would be happy to have their lunch.
It’s not perfect. I can’t eat seafood and some of the options I was given were things I literally couldn’t eat for dinner. If everyone else loved shrimp and grits, I wouldn’t do it anyway. I wish there was a way to set multiple preferences in the game, or even create a digital version of my Pick from Three plan, except for 10.
That said, if you’re trying to come up with a dinner solution for your family or group backdoor, this can be a quick and dirty way to potentially simplify things.