Problem

Meal prepping is a valuable practice for maintaining a healthy lifestyle, saving time, and reducing food waste. However, many individuals find the process overwhelming due to the need to manage recipes, plan meals, and organize grocery shopping. For busy individuals, this can quickly become a stressful task. Additionally, the growing desire for a social aspect in meal prepping—where users can share recipes, meal plans, and grocery lists with friends or household members—adds another layer of complexity.

While there are apps currently available that aim to support meal prepping, they often come with significant limitations. Many of these apps restrict users to a predefined set of meals, such as breakfast or dinner, and offer only a limited selection of recipes sourced from specific websites. They also typically lack robust sharing functionalities, making it difficult for users to connect with others. Moreover, these apps fail to consider ingredients users already have at home when generating shopping lists, leading to unnecessary purchases. Most of these apps are also mobile-only, limiting the user interface to smaller screens, which can be restrictive for many users.

Solution

To tackle these issues, we propose the development of a Meal Prep Management WebApp that offers a comprehensive solution for meal prepping. This app will allow users to organize their meal plans, manage recipes, and streamline grocery shopping in a user-friendly and customizable manner. Unlike existing apps, it will be accessible on both web and mobile platforms, offering flexibility and ease of use across different devices.

The app will feature customizable meal prep calendars, enabling users to add, modify, or remove meals according to their preferences. Recipe management will be streamlined, allowing users to create, edit, and categorize recipes with tags for easy searching. The app will also generate smart shopping lists based on users' weekly meal plans, while considering the ingredients they already have at home through an online pantry feature. Additionally, the app will incorporate social network integration, letting users share recipes, meal plans, and grocery lists with friends and family, with customizable permission levels. As a stretch goal, AI tools could be integrated to recommend recipes and meal plans based on user preferences and past meal history.