Deliveroo's 'One-Star Cookbook' Helps You Recreate Meals Ruined in Transit

We’ve all experienced a delivery order from hell. Something arrives cold, leaks through the delivery bag, or gets smushed into the container—it happens to all of us. This prompted Deliveroo UAE to create a cookbook based on an overlooked but important ingredient: presentation. But not the perfect displays—the screwups.

“One-Star Cookbook” contains 36 “recipes” from actual one-star reviews left online … but not from Deliveroo, according to a sticker on the book.

How does a sidewalk-smashed avocado strawberry milkshake toast sound? Does a three-hour-late Neapolitan ice cream surprise, or a black forest gateaux served in Thai green curry whet your whistle?

“It literally 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,” says Fadi Yaish, founder and CCO of And Us, the agency that created the cookbook. “Each dish was designed and written with the same level of detail as any high-end cookbook, where each dish can be recreated with the delivery mistake central to the recipe.”

The cookbooks are promoted via social media, food influencers, bloggers, a custom website and a 60-second video highlighting special screwups.

And it’s free! The cookbook can be ordered online, free of charge. Users can sign up online to be alerted when the next printing is complete. Some 3,000 copies were already produced.

“We weren’t sure of the appetite—forgive the pun—for such a book, but it is clear now with thousands of people asking for a copy, and prepared to pay for it, that we could have sold it,” Yaish tells Muse.

Now go create a happy accident!

CREDITS

Agency: and_us
Client: Deliveroo UAE
Head of Marketing: George Schempers
CEO and CCO: Fadi Yaish
Project manager: Lama Halimeh
Project coordinator: Lama Halimen
Executive Creative Director: Jamie Kennaway
Senior Art Director: Saymon Medeiros
Design: Ryan Atkinson, Thomas Larthe
Executive Creative Tech Director: Diogo Borges
Typesetting: Ryan Atkinson, Atkinson Co.
Senior Copywritter: Jamie Kennaway
Copy Revisor: Lakshmy N.
Producer: Serra Chehade
Motion Graphic: Alaa Oudah
Photography: Magali Polverino
Photography assistant: Lourdes Avellaneda
Art direction: Pato Katz
Art assistants: Michu Barisch/ Esteban Perera
Food stylist: Loli Braga Menendez
Food stylist assistant: Agus Salatino
Studio manager: Candela Cortes