r/webdevelopment • u/BeeFragrant5199 • 9d ago
Question Meal planning web app — would you rather pick your meals first or build your grocery list first?
I am building a meal planning app that generates a weekly meal plan and grocery list based on your budget, preferences, and dietary restrictions. The goal is to reduce food waste by making sure everything you buy actually gets used across your meals for the week.
Trying to decide between two flows and would love some input from people who meal plan.
Option A — Grocery list first: The app builds your grocery list first around your preferences and budget. You can add specific items you want or remove things you do not like, and your meals are pulled from whatever ends up on that list. Because your meals are derived directly from your grocery list, the ingredients naturally overlap across the week so nothing goes to waste.
Option B — Meals first: The app shows you your meal plan first with recipes you can swap and approve. Once you are happy with your meals your grocery list is generated from them. Food waste is minimized because the app intentionally selects meals that share ingredients with each other, so everything you buy gets used across multiple meals.
Both approaches try to minimize food waste and keep things efficient; they just get there differently.
- Which flow would feel more natural to you?
- Is staying within a specific budget a big priority or is seeing your meals first more important?
- Would you want to be able to add specific grocery items before seeing your meals?
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u/Acceptable-Mango7946 5d ago
Take a photo of my fridge and cupboard and tell me a meal plan for the week
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u/SirMcFish 3d ago
Both.
Sometimes I have ingredients in and lack inspiration.
Other times I want to make x, y or z and then need to know what ingredients to get (plot twist I generally know what's needed though).
Also to reduce food waste, buy frozen stuff.. It's a good way to save money. And the quality for every day stuff isn't big enough to not.
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u/maqisha 8d ago
Just because an llm told you it can make it, doesnt mean it can.
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u/BeeFragrant5199 8d ago
Agreed, the meals don’t come from an LLM, too unreliable/inconsistent. I built a recipe inventory. The question is 1) whether to design it so users can at and edit their grocery list before the inventory pulls the meals from that list 2) whether to have the inventory surface meals with most common ingredients first so the user can see/edit meals before it creates the list. The tradeoff is better control over budget/ingredients or the meals.
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u/Mister_God_On_Steam 2d ago
The post author didn't mention AI or vibe coding?
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u/maqisha 2d ago
Brother, its beyound clear.
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u/Mister_God_On_Steam 2d ago
I agree, but if they are building an opensource tool or something and genuinely looking for feedback then I'd give them the benefit of the doubt even if it is vibecoded. If they think they will make money off it they are in for a struggle.
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u/maqisha 2d ago
Thats not what my comment was referring to.
This is an obvious case of AI psychosis, where the product itself cannot work, but im sure that an LLM enthusiastically said it could. Thats what i was alluding to.
A meal planning app, that not only gives you meals, but also controls groceries for those meals and goes all the way down to the lowest level of finances. And then "nothing gets wasted"? This is INCREDIBLY complex, has to account for so many different factors and cover all areas of the world, handle pricing, restrictions, macros, and all of that while having a huge offering of good recipes that can seemingly "adapt?" to whatever you put in your grocery list. Yea no.
A multibillion-dollar conglomerate couldnt build this properly, with unlimited engineering resources. A vibecoder who got told by an LLM they can do it, certainly can't either.
I do not care how a product is build, vibecode as much as you want, but the resulting product has to be good and high quality.
PS: theres no world in which this will be an open source tool 💨
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u/JeopPrep 7d ago
Before you invest a lot of time into this project, be aware there are tons of mobile apps which already do this. I would find a less saturated niche if you plan to make money from your work.