Built an app that solved our grocery budget issues - saves us $200/month

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/plateful-meal-plan-budget/id6743173309

by eliasreyes10 • 1 year ago

16 7 1 year ago

apps.apple.com

I built Plateful for a few personal reasons:

Me and my wife had a recurring problem, we would set a budget for our groceries (we shop every two weeks) but we kept overspending. This would happen because we planned our own meals but followed the same budget without any coordination.

When I was meal planning my meals, I was jumping from different stores looking for the best macros and prices. I had a notepad and was writing it all down that way. I decided to try and make an app for it to make our lives easier.

The cycle was annoying - going over budget pretty much everytime.

Plateful solves these problems with:

Real-time shared grocery lists so both partners instantly see updates, even while one is at the store

Collaborative meal planning with a calendar view showing what meals are planned for the week

Store price comparison across major chains like Walmart, Target, Aldi, and more

Budget tracking that lets you set limits and see exactly where you stand

Barcode scanning to quickly add items you're running low on

Nutrition tracking for those watching macros or calories

For us, the greatest help was being able to add ingredients/items from the stores we shop at into the same grocery list. The prices are added to the shared grocery list with the macros (if available).

Since we started using it, we have been able to stick to our budget and macros much easier!

I build this hoping it will help couples, families, and roommates who want to collab when it comes to meal planning/grocery list planning.

It can still be used for individual users who want to make it easier to budget and meal plan on their own.

And yes there is a dark mode!

Check it out here (Pre-order): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/plateful-meal-plan-budget/id67...

fred_is_fred• 1 year ago

I like the idea of the shared list, right now it’s paper and SMS and maybe Apple Notes at my house. One question- It’s not clear to me whether the idea is that you were supposed to go to 3 different stores to find the lowest prices?

Also “me had a recurring problem” sounds wrong presumably. That’s how you know it’s not “me and my wife”.

cosmie3• 1 year ago

That used to be the same mix my household used. I’d suggest giving the Reminders app a try as a drop in replacement for Notes. There’s a really handy list template in the Reminders app called Groceries. It’ll auto-group items you add to the list into categories so it’s easier to sweep through the store in one go and not have to double back repeatedly for things you overlooked further down the list.

No idea why it’s tucked into the Reminders app instead of Notes, but it’s been really handy since stumbling on it and a QoL improvement in my household over a generic Apple Notes list.

kirtakat2• 1 year ago

This doesn't solve all the problems the app mentioned is solving, but if you're using iOS (based on the Apple Notes) - Reminders is oddly a solid grocery list tool:

- It can be shared with others - It can be updated natively with Siri voice commands ("Hey Siri - Add eggs to grocery list" works out of the box) - It gives other users notifications when it changes (this is also my major negative) - It "knows" it's a grocery list and tries to do some smart grouping/labeling (Dairy, Sauces, etc)

I'm just really not sure why that's built into Reminders and not Notes

Built an app that solved our grocery budget issues - saves us $200/month

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