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Ask HN: What's a good app for grocery management?

12 points| Odenwaelder | 9 years ago | reply

What's a good app for managing the inventory of my pantry? It should sync between my phone and my girlfriend's phone and show me how much I should buy when I'm in the supermarket.

14 comments

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[+] TeeJay942|9 years ago|reply
Anylist was made for this. It's a YC funded company, but it's great because the sync is perfected, it has a calendar meal plan, recipe lists, those recipe lists can be populated from most recipe websites, works great on mobile and desktop, etc.

The biggest reason I used this over Wunderlist (which also has perfect sync) is there is no way to make two separate lists in Wunderlist and then combine them. This is important because like me you might try to make a separate list for a separate recipe, but it's a no go unless you are making and modifying one grocery list anew for each trip.

[+] ParameterOne|9 years ago|reply
Inventory app, make list of everything you would ever buy, what you have in the house, and a meal plan calendar. Then as you make dinners it will automatically deduct from inventory and possibly know what you need to buy for following week/month. If you wanted to get really crazy you could then use your old data to see that maybe you used 15 bars of soap per year and make annual purchases to fight inflation, the time spent in the grocery store, and leverage coupons.
[+] ParameterOne|9 years ago|reply
and it would be even better if you could scan UPC and know how much of what you bought with expiration date included. Expiration date could maximize meal planning to minimize wasted food.
[+] garethsprice|9 years ago|reply
Wunderlist is a great distributed todo list app that's not too overcomplicated and syncs well between devices.

I don't think it'd be a good inventory management system, although you could use it by adding "items to buy" to a grocery list each time an item is depleted.

[+] pantryplan|9 years ago|reply
I've heard good things about Evernote and Google Keep.

I have tried out specific apps like Out of Milk but they were always super bloated.

Keep it super simple. :)