Meal Planning (Premium)

Plan your meals for the week and let Map Your Store build your shopping list automatically. The meal planner brings together recipes, ingredients, and your shopping workflow so you always know what to cook and what to buy.

Premium Feature

Meal Planning is available to Map Your Store Premium subscribers. Upgrade from the Settings page to unlock it.

How It Works

The meal planner is a weekly calendar where you assign meals to specific days and mealtimes (breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snacks). Once your week is planned, Map Your Store reads the ingredient lists from your meals and generates a combined shopping list with the correct quantities. That list feeds directly into route optimization so you can shop efficiently for everything you need.

Planning Your Week

1. Open the meal planner from the main menu.
2. Add a meal -- Tap any day on the calendar and choose a mealtime slot. You can type a meal name, import a recipe, or pick from AI suggestions.
3. Fill out the week -- Repeat for as many days and meals as you like. You do not need to fill every slot.
4. Review -- See your full week at a glance on the calendar view.

Adding Recipes

There are several ways to get recipes into your meal plan:

• Import from a URL -- Paste a link to a recipe page and Map Your Store extracts the title, ingredients, and instructions automatically.
• Import from text -- Copy and paste a recipe from any source and the app parses out the ingredient list.
• Type it in -- Enter a meal name and add ingredients manually.

AI Meal Suggestions

Not sure what to cook? Tap Get Suggestions and Map Your Store recommends meals based on your history, dietary patterns, and what is already in your pantry. Pick the ones that sound good and they are added to your calendar.

Generating a Shopping List

Once your meals are planned:

1. Tap Generate Shopping List.
2. Map Your Store combines all the ingredients from your planned meals into a single list.
3. Duplicate ingredients are merged and quantities are totaled (e.g., two recipes that each need one onion become "onions x 2").
4. The generated list is added to your shopping list, ready for route optimization.

Scaling Servings

Cooking for more or fewer people than the recipe calls for? Use the scale servings feature to adjust ingredient quantities up or down. The shopping list generation respects the scaled amounts so you buy the right quantity.

Auto-Planner

The Auto-Planner takes meal planning a step further by using AI to generate an entire week of meals for you. It considers what is in your pantry (prioritizing items that are expiring soon), current store deals, your dietary preferences, your budget, and your purchase history to build a practical, personalized meal plan.

After generating a plan, you see a 7-day calendar of meals and a deduplicated shopping list with pantry items already subtracted. Each item includes a buy-or-wait recommendation based on price trends. If the plan looks good, accept it to add everything to your calendar and shopping list. If not, adjust your constraints and regenerate.

For full details, see the dedicated Auto-Planner page.

Tips

• Plan your meals on the weekend and generate your shopping list before you head to the store on Monday. This saves time and reduces impulse buys.
• Use AI suggestions when you are stuck in a rut. The recommendations change based on the season and what you have been eating recently.
• Import recipes from your favorite food blogs by pasting the URL. It is much faster than typing ingredients by hand.
• If you are cooking a recipe for a dinner party, scale the servings up before generating your list so you do not end up short on ingredients.
• Combine meal planning with the pantry tracker. Map Your Store can cross-reference what you already have at home so you only buy what you actually need.
• Try the Auto-Planner when you want a fully hands-off approach. It works best when your pantry inventory and dietary profile are up to date.