The nugget of this idea (sorry) started during COVID. Chick-fil-A Operators, the local owners who run each restaurant, were stuck at home like everybody else, so they started filming themselves cooking with their kids, turning menu favorites into family dinners. People wanted the recipes.
Four years later, Chick-fil-A wanted to turn that into something real. Families weren't sitting down together the way they used to. Fewer were eating inside Chick-fil-A, with more using the drive-thru and delivery, and one study behind their family work found parents and kids get about 37 minutes of real time together on a weekday. In November 2024, Chick-fil-A launched Play, a free app built to give families more of that time, with no ads.
They wanted Recipe Remix there on day one: real parents and kids teaching other families how to cook together, step by step.
Here's the tricky part. Play was the no-ad zone, and this was the one show on it with Chick-fil-A food in every episode. The second it felt like a commercial, it stopped being family time. The families had to be the show, and the food had to be the excuse to be together.
The brief asked us to build it for a 10-year-old, so that's who we built it for. A kitchen that feels like play without ever looking like a toy. Real families instead of hosts. Banter that matters as much as the recipe. And a format that repeats without getting repetitive, so a kid who watched one episode knows exactly where they are in the next.
We pitched it as A-Mazing Meals.
And launched as Recipe Remix.
We built a fully working kitchen, then kept simplifying it until it felt like Chick-fil-A's and nobody else's. We cast real families, not actors. Three cameras stayed on the parents and kids so we never missed a real moment, with a fourth overhead for the step-by-steps. The food was styled to look like something you'd actually make on a Tuesday night.
Each episode ran a few minutes as a full show, then got cut down into short, bite-sized step videos so a family could follow along at their own counter, one step at a time. One shoot, built to be watched on the couch and then used in the kitchen.
I'd learned this rhythm making two seasons of Athlete's Cookbook for Nike. Real people, real food, real personality. This time the talent was seven to eleven years old, which is a whole different kind of fun. Kids don't fake it, which is the entire reason you cast them.
Recipe Remix launched with the app in November 2024. Chick-fil-A's head of brand strategy described it as more than a cooking show, an interactive series families follow along with and make together. It came back for a second season. The recipes still live on Chick-fil-A's site, and they were still featuring our episodes in their summer 2026 push.
Then it grew past the app. In 2026, Recipe Remix became part of Chick-fil-A's new Kid's Meal advertising, sending families from the drive-thru straight into the kitchen. What started as ten recipe videos is now something kids pull out of the bag.