My girlfriend and I waste too much energy to decide what to eat. Every day, we would text each other, "what do we eat tonight" messages, and go over options and many times spend too much time on deciding. I am an indie dev and created this app to solve my own problem: decide with my girlfriend what to eat for dinner.
Initially, I created a simple app, in which we listed all the recipes we ever prepared, and it would propose randomly three of them. We would then choose together one of them. This app[0] turned into a tinder-like app, which would propose every day a set of recipes to my girlfriend and me - we would swipe and go for the first match.
If have some time, give it a try and feedback is very appreciated!
Cheers, Kiru
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/meal-planner-dinner-ideas/id64...
Unfortunately I’m not going to pay $20/year to make deciding on dinner slightly easier. Sorry. I understand why people want subscriptions for recurring revenue. But I hate having dozens and dozens of subscriptions for niche services.
If this was like a $10 one time purchase I might go for it.
Author of a $10 one time purchase app here. People have been acclimatized to paying rent on apps for so long that I routinely get emails asking for a cheaper monthly option, because $10 is too steep. :)
If you could execute this technically it's clearly a billion-dollar idea, but maybe the only people with the right connections to do it are Apple and Google.
One of the best features is to streamline the online ordering from the app.
It works very well.
That's not even considering the many subscriptions a developer has to pay, including to Apple.
some base price quote.
then, the more I use it, the cheaper it gets, or at least never "the more expensive it gets" (in this way we can get tiers, but it's not quoted as screw-you plan)
and, I stop using it, I stop paying
If the base price is attractive to try, put in my credit card and try. If I keep liking it, I keep using it, if I don't, I don't. It's what we all want, just give it to us.
But I have to admit, a food matching app with this approach would be strange since the person I am truing to match is know to me and possibly living in the same place.
I would personally open a chatGPT session and tell what I have eaten today or this week and should suggest from the history when I need it.
i do wonder if for new products they should opt for a webapp instead which would negate the apple/google tax and it would allow android users to also try
I miss when good apps were selling for $2 on the app stores.
Perfect.
Of course then there is the price of the subscription... But I'm talking about the model, not the cost.
'Pay for what you use' (micropayments?) seems under-explored outside of cloudhosting to me. Some small cost per meal solves the same problem while seeming more reasonable (or more obviously reasonable) to the consumer, doesn't it?
More than enough to pay for server costs.
But why?
This is described as "a simple app, in which we listed all the recipes we ever prepared, and it would propose randomly three of them. We would then choose together one of them."
You could, if you chose to, built/architect that in a way that doesn't require a backend at all.
You can use deep link URIs to send a _lot_ of data in a link in an email (like literally gigabytes on iOS). Easily enough data to send each other newly added meals/recipes.
You could also encode recipes in QR Codes, so one person enters a new recipe and the other can scan a QR Code the app generates to grab it - you can get about 4kb into a high density QR Code that'll read reliably off a phone screen.
Use one of those to maintain the whole meal/recipe database on each device, no backend required.
Maybe use a date based PRNG so both ends will pick the same "three random recipes" every day.
Send messages between apps as emails with deep links in them, so one user can use the native iOS "share by email" widget to send a "hey, what do you want for dinner" email, with an app generated message with three deeplinks, one for each random choice. Recipient responds by tapping the deep link for their recipe choice, which opens their version of the app - and the app digs the data out off the deeplink URI to pres3ent a "share your choice" button that also uses the native iOS "share by email" widget to send the response back to the first user.
Tapping links in emails and sharing via email isn't as "nice" as an app with a centralised database and push notifications, but it also has zero ongoing cost to run and you know for sure the developer has no lever to enshittify the service, and has no user PII or usage data to sell to surveillance capitalists.
Hmmm, I wonder if you could do this entirely as a web app?
Whoever was driving would mentally pick a place and start driving there. The other - before getting to the parking lot - could pick anywhere else and that’s where we would go instead.
We’ve been happily married 26 years now and still follow that same rule for choosing where to eat. ;-)
e.g. (bad): "How about pizza tonight?" "I don't feel like pizza." "Ok then, burritos?" "No." "Soup?" > Frustration
vs (good): A: "How about pizza tonight?" B: "I'm not into pizza, but I could go for a burger." A: "I'm not feeling burgers, how about sushi?" > Continues until agreement
It's true also of deciding what to watch. I've spent 30+ minutes debating what to watch, only to realize we should be going to sleep in just another 15 mins so no we can't really watch anything anymore
So over the years my strategy has morphed to making the decision and taking responsibility for making it an enjoyable experience for both
My wife absolutely hates seafood. So, if I don't want to pick I just start heading in the direction of somewhere like Red Lobster and she'll always think of something else rapidly.
She'll do the same to me with something like a vegetarian place.
What's hilarious is when one of us starts heading somewhere we think the other won't like and they don't change it. We end up eating there and usually have a great time anyway. I've learned to like eggplant that way, and she's started growing more fond of Thai food.
We did solve the problem in a much easier way though. We do have 40 recipes we usually cycle through. I wrote them in a spreadsheet and marked them based on who can cook them, if it's brunch, lunch or dinner, quick or elaborate, summery or wintery.
Then in another sheet I just create a list of those recipes/dishes picked randomly based on the day of the month.
If we start the discussion "what do we eat tonight", I can just open the spreadsheet. 99% of the time proposing the option for that day on the sheet gives us closure and we're done.
Also, what about that "who can cook them" column in that spreadsheet? Obviously there are personal prefs but you guys have the recipe stored, surely anyone can cook it.
In a very general sense, yes, but people have varying competencies/preferences in the kitchen.
Some people have more patience/precision for baking, some people don't think twice about handling raw meat, some people put in the time to learn fancy knife skills and can dice an onion in half the time...
I have found it works very well to divvy up the complicated cooking by skill/preference (though obviously everyone in the house can churn out a pasta dish if the need arises).
For the "who can cook them" in the spreadsheet, I guess it's just a matter of what we're used to cook. I'm from Italy, she's from Malawi, I'm sure I could cook 'nsima and she could cook polenta.
If you're not VC funded, who gives a fuck how many users you have or how quickly you get more?
Unless the cost of whatever backing online resources you need doesn't scale fairly closely with the number of users you have, the only thing number of users matters for is the size of the check you get at the end of the year, rather than the profit percentage from that check.
If you're creating an app to make money, then don't put all your eggs in a Tinder-for-dinner basket.
Matches you with 5 people to have dinner on wednesdays.
I’m new in town and was hoping to meet some fun people
Turns it there is an underlying intention of meeting potential dating material, as I matched up with 3 single women.
Being a married man I had an amazing evening and lots of fun discussing dating apps and dating life, though I’m not sure if the ladies would rate the evening equally successful given the absence of potential dating material …
The whole idea is just fucking dumb.
This and a million other little nuances are super important for successful relationships.
So very venture capital - solving real world problems, one subscription at a time. Nice.
:(
You seem to go with user generated content, so the inspiration part is out, the health part is out, but you focus very much on the problem of forming a choice just for diner.
I do think this way your audience is huge, but the added value is a bit limited.
So you can decide to slowly move towards those other apps. Or, perhaps move away from it somehow. Maybe it's a generic tool to help you grow and maitain your relationship with your partner by providing tools that deal with each other preferences and choices within that relationship. Both practical and more emotional. But I guess I'm now more brainstorming :).
You can also just keep it small and have fun tinkering in a way that works for you. I read a comment:
> There are servers needed for the app to work, right? So I guess subscription makes sense?
Perhaps you don't really need servers. Keep the data just local on the app. Let people use regular chat for getting to a compromise. That way you could ask a one time fee of $5. It could be a (very) small passive income that doesn't require you much work, no moderation, no security risks.
Either way, good luck!
You probably need a food purchasing to-do list feature, and allow user to plan ahead of purchase.
But overall, it's a very nice idea with many potentials.
When I was little, the feeling of anticipating a good dinner always keeps me excited the entire day. Maybe this app can bring that feeling back.
Check out the demo video in the README: https://github.com/kassner/whattocook
Turkinator, basically.
Your comment made me remember of and realize this is basically the same thing, just presented differently and with the need to populate the entries yourself.
https://www.kassner.com.br/en/2023/09/21/what-to-cook-launch... https://github.com/kassner/whattocook
I like to do sports, I prefer my body and physical activities help me decide.
Also should consider what was selected last time - a bit of a predictive algorithm would be useful to start providing towards my likes a bit quicker.
Where are the restaurants in this?
Btw, I have added an Android wait list [0]
[0] https://whatdinner.com/ (second button)
How long does it take for someone to input 40 recipes?
I feel like this should essentially just be a cookbook app with a random function call.
Is this a difficult thing to programatically do for one's own Apple/Google-provided gratis cloud storage? Even a couple-thousand recipes wouldn't take much space at all, so "I don't want to hit users' quota" doesn't seem a good excuse to not do it this way.
Hundreds of recipes that I could swipe left and right through, allowing me to build up a typical selection of what I would usually eat. Instead, I was presented with only three choices, none of which I would generally consider.
A simple way to send the code to my wife — via imessage, Telegram, etc. Instead, I had to tell her in person! :)
This presents the perfect opportunity to delve into shopping lists where the wife wants something healthy, and the I crave a burger. I can think of quite a few features you could add if the app develops further.
Also, like the comment below about having a stranger over for dinner (not for dating purposes), it could involve a couple or someone visiting a new country who would appreciate a local showing them around and perhaps covering the dinner cost. Once the app learns your food preferences and interests, that could be quite exciting! There might already be an app that does this; I’m not sure. Swiping left and right on both food likes / dislikes and also general interests.
Good luck!
You have a set of ingredients at home (or easily purchaseable)—an evolution of this app could have you tell the app "look, I want recipes that use any of these 45 different ingredients, what recipes have we never tried?" And it has access to some big database of possibilities.
Lotta people talking about broader app/subscription ecosystem issues, which hopefully you can take as off-topic to your specific project. Making a cool useful thing and putting it on the internet is great, cheers.
About your girlfriend, she wants you to make a decision. That's why you're ending up in a recursive loop.
Where are those recipes? Like ones that Kenji does, but without having to do everything from scratch because I'm lazy and would forgo some amount of taste for pouring a packet or jar of something over some other, more fresh, stuff and cook it for 30 minutes. Thats real person minutes, not "Jamie Oliver, this has been timed to perfection by a team of 10 pro chefs who spent 5 days tweaking everything so I could rock up infront of a camera and make it look effortless" minutes.
Oh, and while I'm at it, if you could also make these recipes palatable to my 8 yo child so I don't have to cook A WHOLE OTHER MEAL while brain dead and lazy, I would happily like and subscribe and even pay the equivalent of my Netflix subscription.
Thank you.
However, I would not personally use this, because I plan meals for a full week in advance, trying to arrange for both a style of cuisine and for repeated ingredients.
So, I'm not your target audience.
We did solve the problem in a much easier way though. We do have 40 recipes we usually cycle through. I wrote them in a spreadsheet and marked them based on who can cook them, if it's brunch, lunch or dinner, quick or elaborate, summery or wintery.
Then in another sheet I just create a list of those recipes/dishes picked randomly based on the day of the month.
If we start the discussion "what do we eat tonight", I can just open the spreadsheet. 99% of the time proposing the option for that day on the sheet gives us closure and we're done.
