Congrats on shipping! Quick question, maybe I missed it on your homepage: How do you track what ingredients a user has on hand? Does the user enter each one by hand, by barcode, etc?
Cool, good luck! Also, not sure if this is by design or not, but the header bar (with the about and pricing links) doesn't show up until I've scrolled down past the main splash image. I'm on IE11 and Win10.
I love how clear it's the headline. I see too many apps unable to explain what they do, instead you tell the user immediately.
Even the rest of the copy on the home page it's really well-written. Nice work.
I agree with this sentiment. This is America, never apologize for capitalism. Hype the app, show us why it's worth more than your price, convince us to subscribe. Close the sale.
The personal blurb before "The Money Thing" is great, definitely keep that. But the money thing... rework it into the sales pitch. "I want to make EatHow much better. That means more delicious recipes and improvements that make things easier for you" - start with this, justify the $5, then delete the rest.
Minor grammar nitpick: "Less grocery store trips" should be "Fewer grocery store trips."
At this point I'd consider the former correct. It's just too commonly used in too many contexts. When more natives speakers than not don't know about a rule, I dunno if it's valid anymore.
I think the battle is lost here already. I'm an educated native English speaker and I could literally care less if someone says "less" when, traditionally, "fewer" would have been used.
It still annoys me that people describe things as "lite" instead of "light", but I realise the battle is lost as well.
Making it a thoroughly meaningless thing to say. I could also care less, obviously, since I'm posting here talking about how I do care and find the use annoying, and you disagree and think it doesn't matter.
Telling me that you 'care some non-zero amount' doesn't mean much at all.
The phrase is couldn't care less, that is, 'zero units of care', i.e. you don't care.
Ok this is no fun anymore. I was trolling. I tried to make it blindingly obvious by combining two common grammar pedant triggers in one sentence but people were so keen to be self-righteous that it flew over their head.
I know the correct grammar, and I just think it's sad that people care.
I'm not sure if you think I'm refusing to understand this, but I agree, it's what I'm saying less succinctly in my comment above, with the addition that saying you care some unspecified amount is no use to anyone.
I found it annoying to be forced into a pedantic onboarding tutorial. I decided not to finish it.
Can't you wait until I try to do things, like view recipes or build grocery lists, before forcing me into them? I just want to check out the app my own way. The tips could appear when contextually appropriate, and be dismissible.
I think both would be good, like some mobile apps - free and paid. I hate ads but if it's something genuinely useful I'd be happy to pay a few bucks each month to use it, especially if it's something that will save me money.
That might help, but providing some example searches and recipes before requiring an account would also be helpful. Personally, I'm only comfortable signing up for something if I feel I can reasonably judge its quality first, even if it's free.
I've always wanted something like this that works backwards from what you already have. 14 days free is too short to onboard me, though. I want a longer trial to get hooked.
I've considered this a few times, and things are getting closer to where it's practical to make an app you can point in your fridge and cupboards and have it work out you've got tomatoes, mushrooms, rice, pasta, whatever, and show you recipes you can make with what you've got, or a list of groceries to grab on the way home to make a longer list of possible recipes... I suspect I'll see this app within a few years - given the current capabilities of OpenCV and other optical recognition software...
Solid idea. But for me it really depends on how big a recipes database you have. Eg, is it suitable for a household where a lot of the meals we already make are from a smallish geographic area?
Hope it works out, I've wanted something like this too (but not enough to pay for it). An issue I wish could be resolved is too much reliance on any particular recipe. My two-minutes-with-this observations are that it's nice that some recipes seem to have 'one of these' so it can work with substitutes but how about outright removals? Do I really need that dash of nutmeg, and if I don't have the nutmeg, will that recipe just not show up? Seems like this interface could almost get there with another category besides 'on hand' and 'all' called 'almost'. It would fit in well with the add-to-shopping-cart feature too.
Very cool project! I often hear people talk about this as an idea, but never really getting further than that :)
Some suggestions/notes:
- Looking at a recipe (e.g. https://www.eathow.com/recipes/219) I think you forgot to use a cursor: pointer; on the "Directions" and "Ingredients", to indicate that they are clickable
- Someone else mentioned, but you don't have to be so apologetic about wanting money for this :) My personal recommendation would be to mark "The money thing" in it's own section, after your self-intro, and then display very clearly as the first item the two different plans (monthly and yearly), perhaps in some more traditional style boxes as you often see (familiarity is oft helpful).
- I completely understand your reasoning behind 14 days of trial, but you might want to consider your long term game more, by extending the trial so that users will get hooked/dependent on it. Take for example the difference in Apple Music and Spotify trial plans, with Apple Music offering 3 months and Spotify only one month. Now I'm not saying that's the only reason, but Apple Music recently overtook Spotify in monthly unique users[0], which will presumeably convert to paying users later on.
"90 days before we ask for a credit card, then less than $40 per year after that. Try us for 3 months let us show you how to save time, money and hassle for less than the cost of a family meal per year"
The issue with most subscription web services is that people who foresee using it a couple of times a month end up not signing up. Which is all lost revenue. LastPass charges $1 per month. I think that's the magic number for casual users. They may only use this once every month or two. But $12 can easily be forgotten / justified.
I second the re-think about the trial period and pricing. I would like to trial it, but wouldn't be keen on paying after 14 days. If I was consistently using it after 3 months, I would definitely pay US$40 for the year, since I'd save that on grocery bills from saved food.
Maybe that's another feature you can add, amount of money the person has saved (approximately) through food re-use. Not sure how you'd implement it though.
I haven't monetized it, but figured it could be monetized with referrals to stores or delivery services. If nothing else, Amazon has a lot of non-perishable ingredients. I wonder if you considered that rather than a subscription model?
I was looking at doing something similar recently, but I ran into the problem of finding a good database of cocktail recipes, especially one that I didn't need to pay for.
What I think would be even better is an app that makes up recipes based on what you have, sort of like Chef Watson (www.ibmchefwatson.com) for cocktails.
At first I thought you were crazy for naming it so close to EatNow, but turns out that's just an Australian thing. Did confuse me for a second tho.
Cool to see someone implement this often-suggested idea!
Having a subscription does sound hard to get off the ground tho. Maybe it'd be better monetised thru advertising deals? Can't find any good recipes with what you have? Blue Apron would be happy to cover you for next time...
Google keeps track of your current on-hand ingredients and then constrains recipes by that inventory? Can you direct me to this functionality? I'd love to use it.
No but if I type "beets yellow squash" it gives me a bunch of recipes. It's far easier to do that than keep a running inventory of ingredients in my fridge updated in an app.
I can see that this might be useful for people who really don't know anything about cooking but would like to start somewhere.
Now if this app has a receipt OCR scanner that automatically adds ingredients and amounts to the inventory, I could see paying for it. I started a project like that in the past but gave up with the OCR technology wasn't very accurate.
I like this idea but current execution doesn't work for me.
I currently achieve this goal by typing the main ingredients I have into google and adding the word vegetarian. I get something worthwhile in the first two pages.
I can see benefits to your system in terms of granularity and accuracy. But these will only accrue over time and at first use I found this approach cumbersome. Free text entry of main stuff I had would have been so much quicker. I took almost everything off your initial list.
I think this has great potential but there is a high bar.
Yep, I do exactly the same thing. Works really well. Another thing that helps use stuff in the fridge is following recipes as suggestions instead of strict ingredient lists. Swapping out different root vegetables for example.
I wrote something like this as my first programming project. I had serious trouble with an algorithm to search and filter recipes, however.
The best point of my site was that it gathered its recipes from food blogs and linked directly to them. I had to tweak a scraper for about a hundred different food blogs, it was a hell of work, but the scraping results were good.
Differently from SuperCook, which uses food portals, my recipes were all personal and of higher quality.
No, I didn't even know version control or how to properly save code to disk at the time. It was 2011. I kept all my code in Dropbox and life was a mess.
There was a site with recipe search at http://receitrom.com.br/. Wayback Machine had it, but it seems to have a new search feature now that doesn't find anything anymore.
Anyway, it was scraping recipes in Brazilian blogs, so it would probably be useless for you.
87 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadBut I myself would not spend $5/mo for this. I don't know that it solves that much of a problem for me? So, maybe just not in target audience.
The personal blurb before "The Money Thing" is great, definitely keep that. But the money thing... rework it into the sales pitch. "I want to make EatHow much better. That means more delicious recipes and improvements that make things easier for you" - start with this, justify the $5, then delete the rest.
Minor grammar nitpick: "Less grocery store trips" should be "Fewer grocery store trips."
At this point I'd consider the former correct. It's just too commonly used in too many contexts. When more natives speakers than not don't know about a rule, I dunno if it's valid anymore.
It still annoys me that people describe things as "lite" instead of "light", but I realise the battle is lost as well.
I am from Australasia and the fewer/less distinction is largely respected in my experience. I find the example jarring.
Regarding light/lite, I am doubtful that this is a problem outside of the US.
Don't give in so easily!
I think I have some of this in my fridge right now. "Lite" is used here a lot.
I hear native English speakers in NZ make grammar mistakes here all the time. I'm really curious that you hear the less/fewer distinction adhered to.
Telling me that you 'care some non-zero amount' doesn't mean much at all.
The phrase is couldn't care less, that is, 'zero units of care', i.e. you don't care.
I could care less what you think of my grammar.
I know the correct grammar, and I just think it's sad that people care.
I could care less = I care some amount. Possibly a lot.
I couldn't care less = I care no amount. I do not care.
Can't you wait until I try to do things, like view recipes or build grocery lists, before forcing me into them? I just want to check out the app my own way. The tips could appear when contextually appropriate, and be dismissible.
One caveat though, I would never pay $5/mo for it. If you're writing the recipes, consider advertising and product placement as a revenue stream.
At least let me get hooked on some value before trying to make me sign up / pay.
Congrats!
Or we'll all be eating nothing but Soylent in the future anyway ;)
Also wish more places used the recipe format that Cooking For Engineers uses... e.g. http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/170/Chinese-Almond...
I love that format by the way. Will definitely look more into it.
Some suggestions/notes:
- Looking at a recipe (e.g. https://www.eathow.com/recipes/219) I think you forgot to use a cursor: pointer; on the "Directions" and "Ingredients", to indicate that they are clickable
- Someone else mentioned, but you don't have to be so apologetic about wanting money for this :) My personal recommendation would be to mark "The money thing" in it's own section, after your self-intro, and then display very clearly as the first item the two different plans (monthly and yearly), perhaps in some more traditional style boxes as you often see (familiarity is oft helpful).
- I completely understand your reasoning behind 14 days of trial, but you might want to consider your long term game more, by extending the trial so that users will get hooked/dependent on it. Take for example the difference in Apple Music and Spotify trial plans, with Apple Music offering 3 months and Spotify only one month. Now I'm not saying that's the only reason, but Apple Music recently overtook Spotify in monthly unique users[0], which will presumeably convert to paying users later on.
[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2017/03/29/apple-music-monthly-uni...
Just a thought to throw out there.
People on HN might be cheapskates but your target might be willing to whip out their wallet sooner.
Maybe that's another feature you can add, amount of money the person has saved (approximately) through food re-use. Not sure how you'd implement it though.
I haven't monetized it, but figured it could be monetized with referrals to stores or delivery services. If nothing else, Amazon has a lot of non-perishable ingredients. I wonder if you considered that rather than a subscription model?
What I think would be even better is an app that makes up recipes based on what you have, sort of like Chef Watson (www.ibmchefwatson.com) for cocktails.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IBA_official_cocktails
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cocktails
Or did you want something more comprehensive, not just the most famous cocktails?
Cool to see someone implement this often-suggested idea!
Having a subscription does sound hard to get off the ground tho. Maybe it'd be better monetised thru advertising deals? Can't find any good recipes with what you have? Blue Apron would be happy to cover you for next time...
I can see that this might be useful for people who really don't know anything about cooking but would like to start somewhere.
Now if this app has a receipt OCR scanner that automatically adds ingredients and amounts to the inventory, I could see paying for it. I started a project like that in the past but gave up with the OCR technology wasn't very accurate.
I was always lazy to think how to do it.
I'm so happy!
0. http://www.supercook.com/#/recipes
I currently achieve this goal by typing the main ingredients I have into google and adding the word vegetarian. I get something worthwhile in the first two pages.
I can see benefits to your system in terms of granularity and accuracy. But these will only accrue over time and at first use I found this approach cumbersome. Free text entry of main stuff I had would have been so much quicker. I took almost everything off your initial list.
I think this has great potential but there is a high bar.
The best point of my site was that it gathered its recipes from food blogs and linked directly to them. I had to tweak a scraper for about a hundred different food blogs, it was a hell of work, but the scraping results were good.
Differently from SuperCook, which uses food portals, my recipes were all personal and of higher quality.
There was a site with recipe search at http://receitrom.com.br/. Wayback Machine had it, but it seems to have a new search feature now that doesn't find anything anymore.
Anyway, it was scraping recipes in Brazilian blogs, so it would probably be useless for you.
This is an NP-hard problem!! Some version of this is anyway. Can someone with more math knowledge be more specific?