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Behind the Work in association withThe Immortal Awards
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Why Deliveroo Released a One-Star Cookbook

05/01/2023
Advertising Agency
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
578
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The ‿ and us team share how they created a cookbook filled with disastrously delivered food to showcase Deliveroo UAE’s commitment to quality, writes LBB’s Nisna Mahtani


Ordering food to your door has always been a luxury that people look forward to. Encouraged by the pandemic, it's now, more than ever, that people are seeking convenience in the form of restaurant-quality food being delivered to their doorstep. But it doesn’t always go to plan, as the ‘One Star Cookbook’ showcased.

In this campaign, food delivery company Deliveroo UAE showcases its pride in quality deliveries by collating an entire cookbook of badly delivered food disasters. Highlighting the company’s commitment to customers, the hilarious book is filled with dropped dinners, forgotten rice, cola-marinated chicken and many other food fatalities. It's safe to say this coffee table book certainly brings the laughs.

With so many hilarious combinations, it’s no surprise that the ‘recipe’ book has had many interested readers who have signed up to receive one of the 30,000 copies, with some even willing to pay to get hold of one! Gaining such a positive response, there’s talk of a bigger release and perhaps even a second issue. It makes us think of all the delivery fails we could contribute…

Speaking about the process behind the campaign, the ‿ and us team told LBB’s Nisna Mahtani about how vital it is to get a delivery right and some of the most outrageous food delivery stories they heard of.




LBB> When did you first see an opportunity to create the ‘One Star Cookbook’?


‿ and us> We were briefed to help promote Deliveroo UAE’s commitment to delivering service quality and training — and therefore their commitment to bringing food of the best quality possible. Like any food aggregator, Deliveroo doesn’t make the food, their offering centres around collating the best places, offering an easy UX, and of course the delivery of the food. In this brief, we wanted to show it’s not just a game of who has the most or best restaurants or best app, it’s about who can bring food with the best service and quality. We, therefore, knew strategically we wanted to highlight the importance of the ‘delivery’ in this campaign.

When we looked at the whole offering of ‘food delivery’, we landed on a very simple insight: no matter what, a dish is only as good as how it's delivered.

It doesn’t matter how good the chef is, the restaurant, the ingredients or the artistry and cookery of a dish — if it is delivered badly, it’s ruined. 

In short, the delivery itself is a vitally important ingredient in the dish.

We then researched stories of delivery disasters and some of the horror stories of what people received, mostly resulting in numerous one-star reviews found all over the internet.

Bumped, smashed, dropped, late — there are dozens of ways to ruin a dish in transit. And then what arrives is often a new magical creation — dishes mixed in the bag, or soggy from an open drink, or cold, or smashed up. We realised there’s a whole world of deliveries out there which made new unique dishes, which we decided was amazing fertile territory for a unique, eye catching, tongue-in-cheek cookbook and campaign.


LBB> How did the client react to the idea of creating 36 unique dishes that you’d never actually get on Deliveroo?


‿ and us> The reaction was great, and we had such support from them. We positioned each of the 36 unique dishes as a vivid reminder of what Deliveroo UAE is working tirelessly to avoid each day through its commitment to quality and training. So, it was seen by all as a new arresting angle to highlight an important point we needed to highlight – the importance of delivery and Deliveroo’s commitment to avoiding delivery disasters. We all liked the direction of showcasing not the dishes Deliveroo work hard to deliver, but those they work hard to avoid… this was an interesting angle.


LBB> Why did you decide on this tongue-in-cheek approach to the campaign and how did it align with the brand?


‿ and us> Well firstly we know no one is perfect, including us, so it always needed a tongue-in-cheek approach. All the dishes we picked for our book were reviews exclusively not associated with Deliveroo – it was always meant to be a bit of fun, and we were particularly careful not to call out any other specific company. 

Secondly, the writing of the book needed to be entertaining – and so we packed it full of witty dish titles borrowing from deliberately pretentious culinary world dish naming tropes… and filled the recipes with dry humour to make for an entertaining read cover-to-cover. 

Finally, we set about making a real cookbook people would see was totally legitimate – with such effort and craft we wanted people to say ‘wow they actually made a real high-end cookbook for this’ so the seriousness and detail of the production also added to the humour and the strength of the idea – and has since proven to have got people to take note.




LBB> What was the process of collecting all of the different reviews and recipes for the book?


‿ and us> Well, it was a process. Weeks of trawling sites researching and collecting one-star reviews and then shortlisting potentials. It was important to imagine the dish coming together from the reviews, but of course, often the reviews only mentioned the damage or end state the dish arrived in… rather than a full description of the dish itself. So, we had to fill in the blanks about the original dishes themselves and also develop a backstory on how the dish likely ended up in the condition it arrived in. We read some anonymous driver reviews to provide further inspiration, and the rest was letting our imaginations run free with what the disaster was likely caused by, and what our new creations should be called.

Each disaster makes a new unique dish, often a combination of different dishes mixed in the bag or singular dishes damaged or cold etc. We had so many ideas for our new dishes, but then we had to discount a lot of dish ideas cold-heartedly. Firstly, we made sure to cover several different types of delivery disasters across the 36 dishes and secondly, we made sure the dishes we chose were going to be easy to understand when photographed. Once we landed on the right concepts for all 36, we wrote the unique recipes in full – as any dish would be in any high-end cookbook. Of course, the only difference being there was a delivery mistake central to the recipe.


LBB> The front cover of the book features a list of all the recipes in a monochrome design. Can you talk us through the creation process and how you landed on this format?


‿ and us> As the research and writing and photography of the book was a process, so was the design. We made sure the whole book had a beautiful aesthetic and this included the paper stocks we chose for the different interior pages and the cover design. We wanted a tactile feel and a rich touch to the hand. The canvas texture and the binding choice really helped us with this. For the cover design, we aimed to celebrate the book’s concept in as simple, bold, and eye-catching a way as possible. 

After much thought and many options, in the end, we thought there was no simpler way to be true to the idea than showcasing a list of our dishes on the front cover for all to see, along with a large title design. It just made sense to put our dishes proudly front and centre, strip away any fluff and leave it bare like this. The screen print chosen for the cover allowed the type to really integrate nicely with the canvas but also lift off the surface visually at the same time.


LBB> The photography in the book showcases each dish as weird and wonderful in its own way. What was the process of shooting the images to create the book?


‿ and us> We wanted this book to be as authentic and entertaining as possible. The kind of cookbook that people would treasure, keep picking up and spend time exploring.

The humour in this book is making a silly idea serious and legitimate. Therefore this book needed the same care, craft and level as a real high-end cookbook. This meant we needed not just a great idea but great writing, and knockout photography.

We wanted the images to at first glance look like a beautifully shot dish like you would find in any high-end cookbook. It’s only on second glance that you realise they are all delivery disasters. From that moment on everyone is looking at each image to see the disaster in it. We wanted dishes to be as eye catching as possible and many were discarded because we felt from an art direction point of view, they wouldn’t communicate or look interesting enough. For example, showing a ‘cold’ dish is not as fun to look at as a pink doughnut floating inside a soup, or a fish dish that bursts into paper bags.

For us to make joke dishes, the idea was stronger again by using a world class food photographer and food stylist who usually work on beautiful food photography. We saw our goal as making a cookbook for dishes from a Michelin chef – beautiful, and while we are showing disaster dishes, we still wanted them to look as appetising and delicious as possible. 

We searched long and wide for the right photographer to bring the dishes to life, and we ended up seeing the book and meeting Magali Polverino and food stylist Loli Braga Menendez. With their flair and visual sensibility, we took the dishes to another level. It was a lot of fun collaborating on art direction ideas, and when it came to the shoot we were blown away by the results.




LBB> We noticed this says ‘Issue One’, will there be a second instalment?


‿ and us> We left the door open with this, and the response has been truly great, so never say never!


LBB> Is there a particular recipe which you genuinely couldn’t believe when you saw the review? 


‿ and us> Well to be honest they all have their charm. It’s hard to single out a specific recipe. Often it is the most simple put-down which reminds us all of the state of the dish, which hits hardest. Some examples are; a moussaka where ‘the driver didn’t take care to keep it horizontal’; a pie which ‘looked like it had been sat on’; a fish dish where the ‘packaging was open on the inside of the bag’; pasta with ‘chocolate mousse in pasta sauce’; and ice cream which ‘arrived already melted and slushy’.

However, there are two reviews (not the end dishes) that stand out for the callousness of being on a different level. Firstly, this review; ‘A courier spilled dessert on the ground, scooped it back into containers with his bare hands and delivered it. He was caught on CCTV as the paper bag split’. The second review; ‘The driver literally knocked on my door and threw bags of food on my steps, making cold food fall out of the boxes inside the bag’.

These take the biscuit, forgive the pun.


LBB> How did people react to the cookbook? What were some of the comments you received?


‿ and us> We have been bowled over by the response to this book, with so many people requesting a copy and many prepared to pay for it. Our main goal was to highlight through PR the issue of delivery quality, as our reach will always be bigger through social media spreading the idea and therefore our mission further. People love the insight, the dish ideas and the overall gall of the whole piece, plus the craft in the writing, photography and design. Making and publishing a real high-end cookbook to bring to life this concept and make our point, was universally appreciated. Generally, the reaction has made us think about a bigger release.


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