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Food

Groceries, meal plans and eating out · 90 ideas
FoodNew

My AI logs every meal by voice, text or photo into my own spreadsheet

After years of building his own food logging apps and never liking them, he set up an AI as his food logger in about half an hour, and now sends it a voice note, a text or a photo of each meal. The bot works out what he ate, looks up the nutrition numbers and logs it in a Google spreadsheet it made for him, and its guesses are usually right.

Ordered 12 detox-soup ingredients ($30.79 total) for next-day Whole Foods delivery from

Plant-based nutritionist Natalie Golba typed a request to her AI 'WALL-E' in iMessage; it pulled 12 ingredients (cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, bell pepper, tomato, cilantro, dill, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, salt) from her detox-soup recipe into an Amazon Whole Foods cart totaling $30.79, and footage shows the groceries delivered the next day.

$30.79
FoodWent wrong

Order my Walmart+ cookies to land two days before my period

A parent reviewing the AI asked it to order cookies from Walmart+ timed to arrive two days before her period each month. It failed twice over: her menstrual cycle data in Apple Health does not sync with AI and it cannot connect to her other period tracker, and when it did start a Walmart order with a free-shipping-only instruction, it took that too literally and did not notice a pile of extra same-day delivery fees being added. She told it to cancel the task and not place the order.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

Read my grocery list and rebuild my Walmart cart from my last purchases

In 'Ways to Use the AI Episode 2', a creator demonstrates his grocery system: he keeps a list in Google Keep, then asks the AI to access his Walmart account, find his most recent milk purchase from his purchase history, and add it to the cart. He reports the AI completed the task, identifying three items in the cart including one he did not recognise.

Handwritten grocery list photo became an Instacart cart, and a recipe URL topped it up

Austin of YoMamasTech dragged a photo of his handwritten grocery list into AI, which read the handwriting and built the cart in Instacart at Aldi: ground beef, butter, non-fat plain Greek yogurt and five more items, subtotal $40.33, with checkout left to him in the Instacart app. He then pasted a chili recipe URL and the AI added 21 more ingredients (brown sugar, beef broth, kidney beans among them) to reach $70.72, deliberately skipping the recipe's 2 lbs of ground beef because the handwritten list already covered it.

FoodPartly worked

Loaded an Instacart cart for J. Kenji López-Alt's no-stir risotto recipe from

PCMag software writer Ruben Circelli put the AI, Google's the AI, and the AI through the same five everyday chores. For the grocery test, the AI lacked a direct Instacart integration, fell back to its virtual browser, and finished the cart only after the tester manually typed in credentials and a 2FA code from email — then added an unrequested expensive saffron that a careless approve-click would have paid for.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Do my food shopping in under 3 minutes with a 3-bot team

A user set up an AI food team under his chief-of-staff bot: a Meal Organiser that knows the lunches and dinners he likes, a Shopper that fills his grocery cart, and a Cooking Bot that walks him through each meal. He says the shopping takes under 3 minutes versus about an hour at the shops or 30 minutes online, with meals cooked in under 20 minutes; he checks out himself.

Booked a dad's-birthday dinner for four at Two Urban Licks via OpenTable

Shana Basnight (someone, 6.9K followers) named her AI 'Marigold' and asked for a dad's-birthday restaurant (steak, Inman Park). Marigold suggested Kevin Rathbun Steak, Two Urban Licks, and Il Premio; when the first was closed on Sundays, she offered a backup and, with permission, booked a table for four at Two Urban Licks via OpenTable.

$250

Our weekly meal plan lands in the family calendar and bends around our week

A weekly scheduled plan writes the week's dinners into their Google Calendar, trained on the family's dietary needs, restrictions and preferences. It checks the local weather forecast and the calendar itself, so a hot day gets burgers on the grill, a cool night gets chili, and travel days or evening commitments get easy low stress meals. They eat out far less now.

FoodPartly worked

Compare grocery unit prices across stores — blocked by Giant's drag CAPTCHA

Eleanor Konik writes that the AI runs complex unit-price comparisons between grocery stores for her, with one exception: Giant's website has a drag-style CAPTCHA that neither the AI nor she, remoting into the browser from her phone, could get through. The comparison workflow works elsewhere; Giant remains a hard wall.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Ordered 12 detox-soup ingredients from an Amazon Whole Foods cart ($30.79) for

Natalie Golba (verified, 290K followers) introduced her AI 'WALL-E,' explaining it changed her business. Screen recordings show her chatting in iMessage: WALL-E pulled 12 ingredients from her detox-soup recipe (cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, red bell pepper, roma tomato, cilantro, dill, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, salt), added them to an Amazon Whole Foods cart, and presented a $30.79 checkout for delivery the next day 5-6 PM in Beverly Hills.

$30.79

It learned how we shop at Costco and loads my Vons cart for me

He had it sign in to his Costco account and work out how often they buy each thing and which items they stock up on when they are on sale, so it now writes the family shopping list and sends it to his wife for edits. At Vons it signs in and loads the cart itself; he only checks out and picks a pickup time.

His family votes on dinner, then two agents shop three stores for the cheapest basket

His household setup sends him, his wife and the kids the week's meal choices to vote on. He scans pantry barcodes with his phone every few weeks to keep the inventory current. After the vote, a list is built from the recipes and weekly staples: The AI shops it through the Kroger API while the AI covers Walmart and Food Lion looking for cheaper items. He reviews the picks, adjusts, and schedules pickup at whichever store is cheapest for each part. The setup saves the family $20 to $30 a week.

FoodWent wrong

He took weekly meal planning back from the AI after it drifted to wagyu and fugu

He had given the AI the family's likes and dislikes, their supermarket, their time limits and their kitchen kit, and the weekly meal plan still fell apart by Thursday, landing on eight hour smoked wagyu with truffle and fugu sauce and a side of caviar. It hit the macro targets and missed everything that mattered. He does the plan himself again.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.