I posted this in another comment but couldn't help but notice this discussion since it seemed relevant. I've been working on https://mealsyoulove.com, which is a meal planning app that also integrates with Kroger and Instacart for ordering groceries. Jow looks similar (not sure what their pricing model is?), but I'm leveraging AI to build highly tailored recipes and meal plans while allowing you to also import your own recipes to incorporate.
Basically personalized meal planning and grocery integration. Since the Show HN I posted a couple months back I've been incorporating user feedback to add things like meal prepping, better ingredient reuse across meals, and cooking style preferences.
One of the biggest points of feedback has been adding more grocery stores but I'm really limited by who has APIs to actually integrate with, which is basically just Kroger and Instacart. Walmart has an API but ignored my API access request. Would love to hear if anyone has ideas on how to approach this.
I get the skepticism as I shared similar thoughts on what recipe quality would be like. I'm also quite sensitive to AI slop. My wife, who really is an outstanding cook, was even more skeptical, and she has a _very_ high bar for recipes. To be clear, we don't use it to generate recipes for every meal. She has a collection of go-to favorites and then peppers in 1-2 AI recipes throughout the week, often to explore new things. She also uses it to create "Quick Bite" recipes for when we need something fast with whatever we have on hand, outside of an actual meal plan.
Honestly, I wasn't sure if the AI recipes were going to meet her standards when it comes to food, but so far she's been quite happy overall with the recipe quality. She often will request replacements or customizations, so the first pass suggestions are not always what she's looking for.
I realize it's definitely not for everyone though.
I'm sorry you hit that as it should definitely respect instructions around things like protein sources and ingredient selection. I'll take a look at that.
Not at all a nitpick, it is one of the things that is painful in the app IMO. I think the length of time for some of the operations is one of the bigger reasons for people to bounce after initial sign up. I need to think if there are some clever ways to improve the onboarding experience such as trying to pre-generate some recipes during/after the onboarding flow.
I think your sign up flow is just too long also, all that information might be necessary to get the app to function how you want but it feels more like filing your taxes. Maybe you could build an agent that the user talks to during sign up? And it will fill out the form in the background? Also you could definitely cache some high quality content (kind of like how TikTok has a core set of high quality videos it uses during new user onboarding)
