Update: A new site!
I am moving this from my site to its own! Visit the new site at ipadmealplanner.com.
I have been thinking about an app for meal planning for a couple weeks. I was watching/helping my wife plan a trip to the store and it dawned on me that planning meals should be easier. We generally know what we want, but at the end of a day filled with work, chasing kids and everything else, we tend to go for whatever we can think of. Often its the same rotation of tacos, pizza and ummmmm… We struggle to keep the menu interesting AND affordable.This weekend I figured I would start designing the idea. I am looking for a developer(s) that wants to program this idea! If you are interested in the idea. Let me know.
What the meal planner app will do…
This app would allow someone to quickly plan meals for a specific number of days, optimizing the menu to take advantage of “double dipping.” For example tonight’s roasted turkey becomes tomorrows turkey sandwiches for lunch, and might become a turkey casserole three days from now.
Additionally the app would allow you to import/add your family favorites to the app, rate the meals you have tried (moving your favorites into a heavier rotation) allow for particular meals to be set to repeat (weekly/monthly) or be marked for special days (birthdays or holidays).
The app would also feature meal ideas that match your preferences (much like Netflix recommends movies) and allow food makers (like Bertolli in my example) or sellers (local grocery stores) to advertise ideas and provide deals.
In addition to the meal planner allowing you to quickly make meal plans it would then generate the shopping list you need for your trip to the store and provide the recipes (or more likely the link to them – instead of having all the data stored in the app, it seems that scrapping sites for ideas and providing links would allow for a broader selection).
Finally it seems that this app would be a natural app for social sharing. Posting comments, pictures and reviews on your Facebook page or to the site where the recipe came from would be key.
Love love love this idea!!!
Hurry!
My wife was just asking me for this on the iPad. She still writes on a calendar. Please release soon.
i wanted to get a meal planner app, which would do the following
currently i use “Tesco Groceries” app but this does not have meal planning or Nutritional planning. or using existing ingredients like the left over feature in epicurious app.
here are the features (apologies i copied the features from the website)
find the recipe. add all the ingredients to your basket and have them delivered to your door.
you can shop for groceries just as you would online: start a brand new order or just add an item you’ve forgotten. Switch between your computer and your iPad as you add to your order. You can start a shop on one and finish on the other.
havnt tried importing reciepes from other websites.
Hello David,
Is it also possible to add a little prediction into the grocery part of the app, I mean, say over a period of time, the users would have a fairly comprehensive list of the the grocery they buy, then depending on the frequency of how they buy each item , the app would predict say when sugar may run out.
Say for example I order 500 gms of sugar every month, and 10 gms of saffron once in 3 months, but I buy based on when These items are about to finish.
But the app keeps a track, of when and how much each item is bought and has a suggested list of ingredients that the user may need to add to his grocery list. This suggestion may appear after the user compiles the grocery list, and the suggestion comes up as “have you forgotten sugar”
May be this feature is better part of a grocery iq type of app, but such features would make it complete end to end solution, I;e it starts from recipes, makes a meal plan, gets ingredients to a grocery list, and reminds the user when their items may run out.
Further it would nice to see some nutrition planning as well.
So meal planning can be based on dietary requirements of different people, say children need more proteins, older women need more calcium.
But the challenge will be to get recipes which have nutritional info tied to them.
This looks amazing and I have been searching for something like this!
This sounds exactly what I’m hunting for!
I love your idea and can’t wait to use it. If it could work with grocery iq app for your grocery list that would be even better. I like how it constantly syncs over multiple devices and it would be great if your meal planner had that capability as well. That way you could plan meals on the phone or iPad.
Love this concept! All of your ideas are great, I even left suggestions on the poll daddy page. My only other suggestion has to do with the use of ads by grocers or food companies. If there is an offer to be had and the user accepts it, somehow that would reflect on the shopping list, the same with any other coupons that are used. So if the offer/coupon is buy one get one free, only good on a certain size or can be doubled, etc…those details would be reflected on the shopping list for those items and automatically calculated into a cost estimate if the user has imported price info on items.
It would also be great if any specials or coupons could be loaded directly to the store card or auto populated onto a printable page. If the app allowed comparisons of multiple stores to compare weekly sales or user entered price info. it would be nice to have each stores savings card info linked to the store, so once a store is choosen for a shopping list savings can be linked to the card. Better yet would be the ability to create separate store shopping lists based on sale items at different locations for those that like shopping multiple stores for the best overall deals.
I would love to see an app that incorporates the best of digital grocery lists, recipe management/creation, couponing/sales/savings/planning and menu planning in one easy to use app. that only gets better and more functional with user added data.
Or at least an app interface that can combine the information entered from other apps/web sites that do one thing exceptionally well and allows the user to manipulate the imported data through the app interface. For instance maybe the interface app could automatically be linked to user accounts from sites like “The Grocery Game”, “All Recipes,” “Grocery Gadget” and some type of meal planning site or maybe the app interface allows one use the imported data to create a meal plan. *Side note- I have no idea if the sites I listed are the best at what they do, just listed them as an example.*
I know programming is a lot of time consuming work that doesn’t happen overnight, not even sure if all that I’ve suggested is possible, but it sure would be one of the coolest, most useful apps made to date. I would even be willing to pay up to $20 for a deluxe version that included all of the in-app upgrades if it was built that way. *See my “Poll Daddy” post that offers suggested ways to price the app at tiered levels based on functionality and ads to understand the last comment.*
One more thing in an effort to satisfy many needs and an app that is functional for many different needs, maybe a checkbox system can be incorporated for things like ratings, left over worthy, quick, easy, slow cooker, raw/whole food, comfort food, seasonal, high fiber/protein, gluten-free, advanced prep time, etc… Then the user could search the recipe database with filters that are useful to them. Maybe, the app could have a customizable filter so the user could ad a search term not listed, delete ones not used or just create their own altogether. What if the was even an alert that could be set to remind you a choosen time to start preparing an item listed as advanced prep. Or an option that tells you what time to start cooking an item if it has a long cook time.
Sorry, I wrote so much. I’m just so excited that a potential app developer is interested in what people actually want/need in an app that would make our lives easier. I stumbled across this site on a quest to find my perfect app or something even close. Thanks Again!!!