Above: Favour team in uniform. From left to right: Founder Nick Gilbert, Allen He and Jose Abril.

As Kiwi households gear up for Christmas, a homegrown app is offering a new way to plan festive meals without the stress.

Favour is a free New Zealand–built app that turns any recipe (from a handwritten family favourite to a TikTok clip) into a fully-costed shopping cart in seconds.

The app currently partners with Woolworths and is also developing a New World integration, set to launch early next year.

Designed to remove the cost and complexity of traditional meal kits, Favour gives home cooks flexibility at one of the busiest times of year. Instead of juggling multiple recipes, guessing quantities or overspending, users can plan an entire Christmas menu in minutes.

All the benefits of a meal kit

Founder Nick Gilbert says the idea came from frustration with existing meal solutions. “Everyone loves the idea of meal kits, but when it comes to the actual process, there are so many things wrong,” he says, citing high prices, rigid menus and wasted food.

Favour works by analysing recipes from almost any source (cookbooks, screenshots, food blogs or creators), and automatically combining ingredients into a single, costed shopping list using real-time supermarket prices.

“It’s all the benefits of a meal kit, but at half the price,” Gilbert says. For Christmas, that means families can cook their own traditions without being locked into preselected meals or delivery dates.

The go-to meal-planning platform

The technology was originally built by developer Dave Hancock as a personal project. When Gilbert saw the prototype, he says: “I saw it and thought, ‘This is amazing.’” He later acquired the technology and brought Hancock on as an advisor.

Gilbert says his experience reflects a wider market issue. “New Zealand has the highest meal-kit penetration in the world, with 7% of households using one each year.” Yet many still do a full supermarket shop on top, which is something that becomes even more costly at Christmas.

For Gilbert, dinner is about connection. “It’s the one time everyone sits down and actually has a conversation.” Favour aims to make those moments easier, more relaxed and more personal, especially during the festive season, he says.

The app also supports food brands, including Whittaker’s, by sharing anonymised insights from more than 35,000 users. “We’re telling them what they should be making based on recipe trends and what flavour profiles people are craving,” Gilbert says, helping keep the app free.

Looking ahead, Gilbert wants Favour to become the go-to meal-planning platform in New Zealand and Australia. “If we can offer a better experience at half the price, we could reach well beyond the 7% of households currently using meal kits,” he says.