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Food

Groceries, meal plans and eating out · 90 ideas
FoodPartly worked

Took a brief of desired restaurants for a Japan trip and booked

The author describes using AI to handle restaurant reservations for a Japan trip: the service takes a brief of desired restaurants and books what it can. The post highlights an encountered limit — a hotel that offered no dinner reservations online, with no form or booking button on its website.

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

It price checked my grocery basket across Zepto, Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket and ordered from the cheapest

He asked the AI to run his whole grocery shop. It signed into Zepto, built the cart, then price checked the same basket on Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket. The Zepto cart came to 189 rupees, 10 short of free delivery, so following his standing rule of never paying delivery fees it scanned his 24 past Zepto orders, ranked his most reordered staples, and added a 50 rupee Mother Dairy curd cup as filler. Final totals: Zepto 239 rupees with fees waived, Swiggy Instamart 251, BigBasket 289.50. Zepto won and the order was placed, paid with Amazon Pay.

₹12

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.

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.

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.

FoodWent wrong

Book me a well-reviewed Asian restaurant for 6 p.m. tonight

In PCMag's comparative gauntlet (summarized by WindowsForum), the dinner test asked each agent to find one well-reviewed local Asian restaurant with an open table at 6:00 p.m. that evening. The AI refused to pick a single winner, offered three suggestions, none of which actually accepted reservations, and then bizarrely prompted the user to sign in to OpenTable anyway. Dots found a 6:15 p.m. slot and flagged it as the closest to the request.

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

Booked dinner reservations on the reporter's behalf

The New York Times' own Daily podcast episode on Tan's two-week the AI test (Oct 6, 2026) summarizes: 'the AI, Meta's A.I. agent, helped a Times reporter with dental insurance, dinner reservations and more.' Dinner reservations were among the delegated real-world tasks in the review.

Booked Beeside Del Mar at 5:30 PM for a party of 3

Amanda Robinson ('The Digital Gal', 3.5K followers) got a notification that the AI wanted to book 'Beeside Del Mar' for 5:30 PM for 3 via OpenTable. The chat showed detailed criteria — seafood-focused, mocktail/cocktail variety, ~$50 per person, cool vibe, Instagrammable but not trendy.

$50

Plan my family's meals for my weight-loss challenge

A dad of two under two steered the AI to build Forkcast, a weekly meal-planning and calorie-tracking web app, because existing apps plan only a day at a time. It generates his grocery list from the week's plan and imports recipes from photos and labels for his 90-day weight-loss challenge.

FoodWent wrong

Order my Chipotle pickup through DoorDash

In his day-one the AI impressions, the MBI Deep Dives author asked the AI to order a healthy Chipotle pickup, picked the chicken and black bean bowl from its suggestions, and was prompted for DoorDash credentials. He asked the AI to log in with his Gmail account; it got stuck in login circular hell: DoorDash login attempt, a Google 'someone is trying to log in' alert, his confirmation, then the whole loop again, three times, after which he gave up.

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

Had the AI 'Kai' build a 7-day family meal plan (family of 3,

Corina Noriega (130K followers), a busy mom, nutrition coach, and trainer, demonstrated the AI’s assistant 'Kai' (cartoon dog). She entered family of three, $50 grocery budget, fridge/freezer contents (chicken tenders, beef), training schedule, and macro goals; Kai generated a detailed PDF plan covering Friday Sept 18 to Thursday Sept 24 with grab-and-go breakfasts, prepped dinners, a $38.43 shopping list, training windows, and recipes.

$50

Noticed she was free Thursday for jazz and booked Crazy Pizza via

In the same 'Lux' demo, Ashley Graham showed the AI proactively notifying her that she and husband Justin were free Thursday for jazz, suggesting a booking at 'Crazy Pizza,' checking OpenTable availability, and mapping traffic from Maplewood, NJ with advised departure times. The demo covered date-night picks, calendar management, a rescheduled fitting email, and a Marketplace kids'-bike search — positioned as full life management.

FoodWent wrong

Build my clean-eating Instacart basket — it shopped for a family of 12

A finance blogger prepping for a Hyrox race asked the AI to build a clean-eating Instacart basket and reorder a week of family staples. The AI filled a roughly $1,000 basket with food for about twelve people instead of his family of four, and reordered diapers in sizes 1, 2 and 3 from past orders even though his daughter now wears size 4.

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

Log into DoorDash and get my refunds from support chat

An AI user runs the agent on a headless home server with his DoorDash and email credentials stored in 1Password. The AI logs into DoorDash with a skill it built itself and chats with support reps, and the user says it now gets refunds issued with no issue where DoorDash had turned stingy with him.

Turned 12 detox-soup ingredients into an Amazon Whole Foods cart totaling $30.79

Nutritionist's agent 'WALL-E' pulled 12 ingredients (cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, bell pepper, tomatoes, herbs, garlic, lemon, salt) from her detox-soup recipe, added them to an Amazon Whole Foods cart, and presented checkout review at $30.79 with next-day 5-6pm delivery in Beverly Hills. Delivery was filmed the next morning.

$30.79
FoodWent wrong

The AI’s recipe import put five times too much sugar in his scones

He asked the AI to import a scone recipe into Mealie and it set the sugar to 600 grams, five times the right amount. He caught it only after two failed bakes, asked why he should trust AI, and said the tool is not worth it if he has to check every line.

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

Audit two years of my grocery receipts and build me a Kroger-vs-Amazon lineup

A homeschooling mom posted on Facebook on Oct 20 that she handed the AI (her agent 'Mira') two years of grocery data — all 140 Kroger orders plus her Amazon history, line by line. Mira found her worst leak (cat treats bought 16 times in nine months, at full price 14 times; the subscription price would have saved about $96 a year) and built a categorized lineup assigning every staple to Kroger or Amazon with prices shown.

$96a year

Typed a weekly meal plan for four into 'Michelle's the AI': got a

Michelle Solomon (recipes/homemaking, 9.5K) typed her weekly meal plan for four into AI, which returned a consolidated grocery list organized by produce, meat/seafood, etc., keeping the total under $200 using store-brand picks. She approved the AI logging into her grocery account; the groceries arrived and she cooked glazed chicken breasts.

$200

Restaurant owner's voice clone answers the phone so the crew never leaves the line

Palona built Cali BBQ owner Shawn Walchef an AI phone agent from his own voice, sampled from his YouTube videos, and it now answers the restaurant's phone as him. On Father's Day it fielded 150 calls without any staff stepping away from service, and the restaurant posted its biggest sales day ever at $26,000, up 18 percent on the year before.

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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.