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Food

Groceries, meal plans and eating out · 90 ideas

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
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.

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.

Delegated a personal to-do list: planned three dinners from fridge contents, budget,

A reel from the verified 'the AI' brand account (100K followers) has the presenter delegating his personal to-do list: planning three dinners based on fridge contents, budget, and taste preferences, then generating a grocery list for approval before ordering; drafting a refund request email for a damaged desk lamp with the agent set to ask permission before contacting support; auditing subscriptions to identify unused services (Paramount+, Apple storage, LinkedIn Premium) for review and cancellati

Auto-generates a personalized weekly dinner plan and grocery list every Sunday at

Myra Chiasson (98 followers) described the stress of 'what's for dinner' with a picky-eater child plus her own protein goals, and presented her 'mom hack': The AI automatically generates a personalized weekly dinner plan every Sunday at 8 AM, with a new menu and grocery list accounting for dietary restrictions, preferences, and kid-safe foods. On-screen text reinforces 'personalized dinner plan for the week' and 'Stress free dinner FTW.'

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.

My Dot found the risotto recipe and filled my Instacart cart

PCMag asked all three agents to find a named risotto recipe, match its ingredients to what a local Wegmans stocks, and load them into Instacart. Once the reviewer linked his Instacart account, the Dot found the recipe, matched the ingredients and filled the cart without a hitch, while the AI needed his password and a login code and added saffron nobody asked for.

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.

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.

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.

FoodWent wrong

Email a restaurant about a private-room booking for me

Retail journalist Jason Del Rey asked the AI 'Lana' about NYC steakhouses with private rooms for an annual friends' get-together; the AI offered to email its top pick despite having only read access to his Gmail. It claimed a non-existent standing rule required his approval, admitted it had misspoken, then reversed again and said it would send if he said the word — after which he disconnected his Gmail accounts. His post of the exchange drew almost 95,000 views on X.

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

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.

FoodPartly worked

The AI turned her family recipes into a five week meal plan

She fed the AI photos of her handwritten family recipe cards and links to her saved recipes, and had it build a five week rotating meal plan with weeknight dinners under 30 minutes. A scheduled the AI prompt now tells her each night what is cooking. The grocery list the AI made was wrong, so she fixed that part by hand.

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

Verify a 7pm table at City O' City — by checking the Toast page, not just OpenTable

A 10-slide head-to-head test gave the AI and the AI the same job: a table for 4 in downtown Denver, Friday Oct 9 at 7pm, under $40 per person, good vegetarian options — verify availability without booking and draft an invite. The AI checked only OpenTable, declared no bookings and switched restaurants; the AI confirmed via City O' City's own Toast page that a 7pm table was bookable, which the tester verified manually (The AI took ~6 minutes vs the AI’s ~3).

$40

It checked my grocery list against Kroger and Sam's Club deals and cut a third off the Kroger price

Answering a what do you use it for thread, he says he had the AI take his grocery list and check the deals at his two stores. It worked through the trade offs: Kroger had a sale on ice cream but Sam's Club was far cheaper in bulk, while Kroger carried many more flavors. He had told it his rules on name brands versus generics, size variations, and coupons that stack with the sales. Result a few minutes before he posted: it saved a third of what the order would have cost at Kroger.

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.

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.
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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.