I am building https://mealdone.com
I love cooking but the daily "what do you want" grind was killing me. Rushing to the store after work hoping for inspiration but leaving with the same five fallback meals. Recipes using half a box of something so you eat the same thing twice or watch leftovers die in the fridge.
The final straw was our newborn's milk protein allergy, turns out milk is in everything. Recipe sites are hostile. Ads reload and jump the page mid-sentence, 20 versions of every dish, comparing the 4.7 star rating version with the 4.8 star one. So you go by thumbnail. Visual clutter everywhere.
I tried the apps. One does swiping, one does shopping lists, one does Sunday budget planning, one has "what's in my fridge" mode. Pick your half-solution.
So I built what I wanted: swipe mode that makes picking dinner fun again, or instant 3 quality suggestions for when I am in the store. Aisle oriented shopping list, budget, personal taste, fridge inventory in one place. UI looks like a restaurant menu — off-white, black text, no glossy photos. I'm working on AI mode now. Not for recipe generation, which are mostly garbage, but for search and substitution.
The origin story here is really strong - milk protein allergy with a newborn is a deeply relatable, specific pain. That's the kind of problem-clarity that makes for good founder-market fit.
The "AI for search and substitution" angle makes sense - ingredient substitution for dietary restrictions is genuinely hard to do well across recipes and that's probably where your moat is vs. the generic meal planning apps.
I'm building ad-vertly.ai (marketing autopilots for solo founders). Curious where you're at with distribution - the allergy/dietary restriction angle seems like it would resonate well in specific communities (new parent groups, allergy forums, etc.). Are you targeting those, or still mostly letting the product speak for itself at this stage?
Are you going to localize this? Using US recipes works only okay-ish: I usually have to figure out local substitutions for some ingredients, and transform units.
Anyway, amazing idea and I absolutely feel you. Recipe sites (and search engine results) are cluttered like hell, that's why I started collecting recipes in Mealie. But in practice this merely bumped my pool from "five fallback meals" to "10 usual recipes, which mostly cover my eating preferences since I'm the only one in the household putting recipes into Mealie".
I will eventually. For now I rely on browser translations which work most of the time. My biggest focus right now is on recipe quality and getting the right mix as well as the AI mode.
So... what does it do? You made it sound like Tinder for food. (I am assuming the food always swipes right!)
- Tinder for food when you need to agree with the household. Both swipe, matches become dinner picks.
- Pick mode for when you're in the store looking like a deer in headlights at the produce section. It gives you 3 solid options instantly.
- AI mode (WIP) for "something with chicken, but I also have carrots in the fridge that are going bad."
Plus aisle-sorted shopping lists for everything. No more backtracking at Aldi.
Thanks. Btw you sound like ChatGPT
this is good! the problem is so real, every single dinner cooking on weekdays starts with the same conversation
I stress at all the steps for planning and making dinner - especially finding a good recipe that won't take too long! At the moment I'm utterly dependent on Hello Fresh to be able to make a nice dinner. MealDone could be a potential replacement, where dinner is planned for the week but instead of having the items delivered, I can buy it cheaper at the store.
For me, having a selection of high quality recipes would be important. For more experienced cooks like my husband, he would just tweak on the fly or use his own recipe anyhow and would enjoy being able to plan with the household and have a shopping list.
Good luck with the project!
That's pretty much the same setup we have at home. When we tried their service it was a bit expensive and came with a lot of packaging.
Thanks a lot.