Groceries Go Bad Before Anyone Plans Dinner
37 posts across 13 communities in the last 30 days; 35% from r/SideProject.
“Thank you so much for the feedback. Hope it saves you some time this week, would love to hear how it holds up on a real run!. 😉 Thank you again [re: I got tired of recipe apps that tell you to buy "0.3 jars of mayo" or "1.5 eggs" and leave you guessing what a week of groceries…”
“This is exactly the problem I have every morning standing in the kitchen trying to remember what I needed to buy”
“That resolved the issue. Thank you for working on that. So a suggestion. on websites i would default to only the sidebar. the bottom bar makes it feel like a mobile app tacked on and it's clunky. a sidebar-only website version is best imo.”
Home cooks are overwhelmed by food waste, forgotten groceries, and the daily 'what's for dinner' dilemma. They seek simple, intuitive tools to track inventory, plan meals, and reduce food spoilage, but often find existing solutions lacking or inaccessible. The core pain is a lack of easy, affordable solutions for managing kitchen resources.
SOURCES (60)
“I’m supporting the development of Vorrat im Blick as an AI assistant working with the product owner. It’s a free browser app for tracking food quantities and storage locations, with search and CSV backup/restore. Data stays in your browser; there’s no account or device sync.…”
“I cook a lot, and I’ve paid for more recipe apps than I’d like to admit. They all had the same problems for me: • They feel dated. Clunky screens, tiny buttons, ads everywhere. • Cook mode is an afterthought. The screen goes dark mid-recipe, and you’re tapping it with buttery knuckles or raw chicken juice to find your place. • I’m always switching apps. The recipe’s in one app, the conversion’s in Google, the timer’s on my phone, the random questions I have go to Siri, the grocery list’s in Note”
“Planning my weekly menus based on what’s in my freezer [re: What's the most surprisingly useful thing you've used ChatGPT for?]”
“We started doing solids (puree and smooth textures for now) and it feels chaotic to decide what to introduce when. Especially because I want to keep an eye on nutrients. I looked for apps that could help but a lot of them have quite pricey subscriptions and I am not sure if they really have what I am looking for. I am willing to pay, just want to know before if it is worth it (and not every app has a trial period). Ideally, I want something that has the following features: Keeping track of intro”
“Summary A weekly visual meal planner : a 7 day grid (lunch / dinner) where recipes are dragged into slots, the pantry is checked per meal, and the ingredients that are missing end up in the shopping list (internal or Bring!) with one tap. EverShelf already has a meal plan ( meal plan , the dashboard recipe mealplan banner , MEAL PLAN ENABLED ) and a Mealie import ( mealie usable , mealieLoadCache() ). What is missing is the week : planning is a weekly act, and today the app cannot show Tuesday.”
“I was thinking a food scanner - you take photos and it works out what you’ve used and gives you diet advice [re: would you use an AI that runs your home (Claude connectors but for the physical home)?]”
“Ooo the app’s super cool!! For the cupboard, we can integrate sensors in a pantry liner to track weight of the items. This can be put in the bottom of cupboards and it can use rfid tags for keeping track of things and how much of something is left and exactly how much we need to order im a mechanical engineer so think this can be built in a way where it can look discreet too [re: would you use an AI that runs your home (Claude connectors but for the physical home)?]”
“Thank you so much for trying DinnerTrue! I really appreciate your feedback. 😊 The suggestion about excluding ingredients you don't like is very helpful. I'll also look into the search speed. Were you using a phone or computer? Thanks again! [re: Looking for feedback on DinnerTrue — a new website for finding dinner ideas]”
“Hi everyone, I'm Tony, I'm 14 and I live in Athens. Planning a week of food at home always takes more effort than it should: picking meals, checking what's already in the fridge, writing the list, keeping an eye on the money. So while learning to code, I've been building Grocery Brain, a free web app that does it. An AI coding assistant writes most of the code; I decide what the app does, test it and work through feedback from the people using it. What it does today: - Plans your”
“Hey r/SideProject , I’ve been working on wotoEAT since April and it’s finally at a point where I’m happy showing it to people. It’s built around one question: what should I cook with what I have? You set your filters (cuisine, flavour, prep time, ingredients you want in it), and it suggests one actual dish at a time. Nothing repeats within the same day. The video goes through one full loop. I ask for something Chinese and spicy with tofu, get Ma Po Tofu, open the recipe (anything already in my p”
“Thank you so much for the feedback. Hope it saves you some time this week, would love to hear how it holds up on a real run!. 😉 Thank you again [re: I got tired of recipe apps that tell you to buy "0.3 jars of mayo" or "1.5 eggs" and leave you guessing what a week of groceries actually costs at the till.]”
“That's clever, the aisle sorting alone would save me so much time wandering around store like a lost tourist [re: I got tired of recipe apps that tell you to buy "0.3 jars of mayo" or "1.5 eggs" and leave you guessing what a week of groceries actually costs at the till.]”
“usage alone can hide over ordering, so the cheap next step is logging what you throw out at close for two weeks. then you can set a par level per ingredient instead of guessing from sales, and the weekend bump mostly sorts itself out. do you count leftovers at close or only when you place the order [re: Got tired of fighting Excel over inventory, so I built my own setup]”
“Hey thanks for the kind words! I’ve been using PTP for a couple weeks now and it’s def made grocery shopping and weekly menu curation much better for my family. And my wife has been providing constructive feedback that I’m actively implementing. And my kids like the funny menu names. I think I may add a way to make the menu colorful or add character stickers next. Would love to hear your feedback!”
“This is exactly the problem I have every morning standing in the kitchen trying to remember what I needed to buy”
“Since it has multi-language support, test whether aloo, bhindi or jeera match the same recipes as potato, okra or cumin. Indian home cooks often switch between both, and a missed synonym reads as an empty pantry. Going by its rules, r/recipes allows a post about it only with the moderators' approval first ("Do not blatantly advertise on this sub without permission from the mods."), on its conditions: "- No YouTube channels, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter anything like it”
“For BioNavs, I'd put "estimated from your description" beside the score and identify missing details that could change it. A 73/100 looks precise even when someone only enters "pasta with sauce"; showing what the app assumed would make the number easier to interpret. Does BioNavs ask a clarifying question when a meal description is vague?”
“You can add anything you want to it. You can copy and paste the information into the page. Since mine is linked to Claude though I usually send it the link or recipe and it adds it with all the details, faster than manually adding.”
“I have a separate relational database for ingredients. It’s used to track if the item is in stock and also used to spit out a shopping list based on the recipes picked for meal planning. Having the relational database just gives you some more options.”
“Love the idea. I can imagine the data matching is challenging. I second the idea of Jev or something similar helping. So want this to work for my Blue Bell ice cream habit. Search wasn’t coming up with any Blue Bell at Albertsons. How does it handle sale prices where you have to scan a card or coupon (digital or otherwise)? Kroger and Albertsons (and I can imagine others) are bad about that tactic.”
“That resolved the issue. Thank you for working on that. So a suggestion. on websites i would default to only the sidebar. the bottom bar makes it feel like a mobile app tacked on and it's clunky. a sidebar-only website version is best imo.”
“100% this. Frustrating that instead of contributing to existing long running projects we end up with something completely new that is trying to catch up on features and likely less stable.”
“Mealime was a meal planning app that helped with discovery, organization, and shopping lists. It was nice because it Just Worked, and the pro version paid for itself the first time you went shopping with it. But Albertson's bought it and are forcing a watered down version into their shopping app.”
“That’s an amazing point! Right now, the app doesn't have a specific pickup window or a 'sealed/unopened' toggle yet, but you hit the nail on the head—especially regarding trust with pantry items. Thank you so much for the feedback; I'll definitely add both features in an upcoming update! 🙏”
“CookTrace is a self-hosted recipe manager, pantry and shopping list, an alternative to Mealie, Tandoor and Paprika. AGPL-3.0, single Docker container, native Android app and a Wear OS app, no telemetry and no cloud sync. Your recipes are a SQLite file on your own machine. Part of the TraceApps family: NutriTrace (nutrition), CookTrace (recipes / pantry / shopping), LiftTrace (strength / lifting), NoteTrace (notes / tasks / reminders). New here? It keeps your recipes and cooks them with you. Impo”
Super interesting!! Love the idea and sharing with wife…. On the video creation, would you share the prompt? Thank you!
“I have an ingredient one and embed a filtered view into each recipe card. I have a tab to "Add to grocery list" and "On Deck." It makes planning so much easier. I select my weekly recipe and go into each card and in the embedded view I select the ingredients I need. I used to do it manually and it would take an hour and half sifting through recipes and make my shopping list. Now it is about a 5-10 minute process.”
My GF and I both work full time, and we kept eating out way more than we wanted (we both have a few extra pounds to show for it). I enjoy cooking,…
“What it does: 1 sentence at a time, in type big enough to read from far away "You'll need" panel with only the ingredients the current sentence mentions timer for timed steps leave it alone while a timer runs and the countdown fills the screen a "Before you start" list for things the recipe assumes are done keeps the screen awake It's free, no account, nothing to install. Would love to hear if you try it! Sample recipe: https://kitchen-mode.com/#try submitted by”
“Hello, is it possible to release a lighter version of openCook with only the shopping list and the sync + self hosted server?”
“i do this exact thing with my food logging where i just want to say it out loud and have it figure out the rest. typed my scrambled eggs and toast this morning and it parsed it way faster than i expected. the one spot it tripped me up was adding black coffee, it logged it under lunch instead of breakfast because i didnt specify the meal right away. maybe a quick undo or drag between meals would help for the absentminded types like me my project is a small budget tracker thats still pretty rough”
“I'm sick of opening a recipe and scrolling past 2,000 words of someone's childhood memories, 12 ads, and 4 popups before I find the ingredient list. I want an app where you paste the link and get a clean recipe card: ingredients, steps, done. Scale the servings, auto-build a grocery list, cook mode. Tweak anything (add more garlic), add your own recipes, or snap a photo of a handwritten family recipe card. One-time purchase, no subscription, works offline. If you use Paprika or something”
“I'm sick of opening a recipe and scrolling past 2,000 words of someone's childhood memories, 12 ads, and 4 popups before I find the ingredient list. The app: paste the link, get a clean recipe card — ingredients, steps, done. Scale servings, auto grocery list, cook mode. Tweak anything (add more garlic), add your own recipes, or snap a photo of a handwritten family recipe card. One-time purchase, no subscription, works offline. If you use Paprika or something similar — what would it take”
“Yeah, it is clunky tbh. but it does work. That was the motivation behind the web UI. I also stuck a basic MCP in front of it, we sometimes use AI to help plan out meals for the week, etc.Why keep it simple when you can massively over engineer it ;)”
“There are probably a million recipe managers so here is what motivated me to make my own: The workflow is 1) Create a recipe via ChatGPT/Claude integration (MCP) then 2) one click from a recipe you can add those ingredients to a shopping list then 3) one click add the recipe to a weekly menu that I can have fun creating with my kids and printing out and posting to the fridge. My kids can pick what they want for the night No manual entry. Just ask your LLM to "adjust this recipe to account f”
“Great job! It feels like I need this app for my supermarket that just introduced electronic price tags and dynamic pricing :)”
“pretty much. describe the dish and any specifics you remember, it generates ingredients and steps. you edit after to match how you make it.”
“Yes, the appeal makes sense when your hands are covered in food and the phone's across the kitchen. A spoken 'step four' after a command would be a small but useful detail, so you know where you landed without looking at the screen.”
“I shared PerunForce here earlier. I’m back with a more specific update: handling meals you don’t eat all at once. A meal now stays together as a group, but you can still open it and edit individual ingredients. You can adjust the portion and carry leftovers to another meal instead of entering everything again. Saved recipes can also be logged by portion or finished-dish weight. The design question is how much detail to show: a compact meal card is easier to scan, but ingredient-level control mat”
“Does anyone know if you can filter by vegetarian? I'd love to use this but we don't eat meat”
“the many states thing is the strongest idea in here and it is also where i would go looking for your next bug. if i modify a recipe mid cook, drop the cucumber, swap penne for spaghetti, which state does the pantry deduction read from, the saved recipe or the session one? if it ever reads the saved version the pantry goes quietly wrong and nobody notices for a week, because the numbers still look plausible. a stock count that is confidently off by a little is worse for a pantry app than one that”
“How does it handle vague measurements like “one onion” or “salt to taste”? Also, does it know whether a weight is for the raw or cooked ingredient? I’d want it to flag anything it isn’t sure about before using it to balance the rest of the plan.”
“letting the recipe creator set the waste ratio is smart but that feels like the field most people will skip or just guess on. do u default it to something per ingredient type or is the recipe blocked till they fill it in”
“It subtracts automatically with the possibility for the user to correct the application. The thing is - recipes are made by users (also) and creator decides how much "waste" and how much "edible" parts of the ingredients there are in the recipe so that deep fry meal wont scale up linearly and other types of usages are counted differently. P.S. Most of the typos and bugs I posted with these screenshots and recordings are already fixed. Rounding, translation keys, wrong unit fo”
“thresholds pushing stuff onto the shopping list is smart. does cooking a recipe subtract the amounts from the pantry automatically or do u still adjust by hand after, cause thats the exact step where everyone i know quits. and how granular are the units, like does 200g come off a 500g bag or is it just have it / dont have it”
“I'm using both manual and barcode which is why I need to manually go through all the ingredients currently. After initial pantry creation you can set tresholds for ingredient and when thr amount drops below, it gets sent straight to the shopping list. From there you can go the same route ad at thr beginning - manual or barcode.”
“the pantry part is the hard bit honestly, everything else is downstream of it being accurate. how are testers getting stuff in right now, typing each item or barcode scan? every pantry app ive tried dies around week two cause nobody keeps updating it after they use half an onion. im building something in the same lane so genuinely curious what ur seeing on that”
“The real-world grocery-run test is the right approach. I’d log the failure modes separately: barcode not found, nutrition data missing, serving-size mismatch, and a recommendation that conflicts with the user’s selected goal. A quick “why this was flagged” view plus an easy correction flow would make it much easier to trust the result, especially when a product has several serving sizes or a health goal is borderline. It could also be useful to save the corrected item so the same product does no”
“That's awesome. I'd definitely appreciate your perspective as a food delivery person and for your own personal shopping. This is exactly why I'd like your help to test it. Things like fresh produce are the kind of edge cases I need real feedback on. Do you mind if we move to DMs so I can give you more details?”
“This is interesting, I do food delivery so I see how people struggle with reading labels in the store all the time. Would be useful for my own shopping too since I try to watch what I eat but labels are confusing. How does it handle products without barcode, like fresh produce from the bins”