In this guide we'll cover the following topics:
- Meal Planning
- Your Weekly Calendar
- Inventory Management
- Grocery Shopping
- How to Cook
Why use Budgeat?
We're Making Smart Eating Easy
Meal planning can take hours for experienced cooks, and can be complicated to do properly. Budgeat will create meal plans that are best suited for your lifestyle and tastes so you can spend less time thinking about what to eat and have more time for yourself, or to spend with loved ones.
Recipes for All Tastes & Diets
We have curated a library of recipes that we're confident will cater to all tastes and dietary needs. Food should be enjoyed and having variety in your meals is both more nutritious and more exciting than eating the same recipes repeatedly.
Grocery Shopping
Buy only what you need, that is our philosophy, that’s why we will generate a shopping list with all the required ingredients and their quantities. You can manually update the shopping list with any other staples so that everything's in one place. The categorized shopping list will then help you save time at the grocery store.
Inventory Management
We automatically track ingredient quantities from your shopping list, and know how much of each ingredient you're using to prepare your meals, so the Budgeat app also knows how much you have left at the end of the week. Every week, your meal plans will first use ingredients you already have on hand. By keeping an accurate, up-to-date inventory you will waste less and save more.
Meal Planning
Your First Meal Plan
After you onboard and let us know your preferences, we curate your first meal plan for you. This meal plan will consist of recipes based on how many meals you have chosen, dietary preferences, and budget. The app will create your first shopping list for you so you can easily shop for those groceries in order to fulfill your meal plan for the week. Here we will learn more about you and what you have in your household so we can then curate better meal plans for the following weeks.
This is your main page where you will see a snapshot of your daily menus for your current week. Here you can navigate the different days of the week and see what you will be having each day for your meals, you can click on each recipe and see more details on the ingredients for the recipe, the steps to make it and nutritional facts.
There are two buttons that are associated with each recipe in the main page, one of them is the pause button which is a feature that we built just in case you need skip that meal for the day due to any changes to your schedule (this will also add back your ingredients to your inventory and will not reduce them).
The second feature is the ‘Eat Button’ which you can press after you have eaten your meal, this will reduce the quantities from your inventory. You will be prompted to another screen that will ask you to rate the recipe and add it to your favorites if you would like (help us rate it fairly as this will determine which recipes we keep on our app).
Your Future Meal Plans
Once you are approaching the end of your weekly meal plan, you will be guided in the app to generate your next week's meal plan.
First, the app will ask you to edit your inventory or confirm what you have in your household, once you complete this step it will generate a meal plan during which the app will ask you to confirm the recipes.
If you don't like a certain recipe then change it for something else. If you know you will be out for a day and can’t eat at home just skip that day. Once you confirm your meal plan the app will generate your shopping list with only the ingredients you need for that week excluding what you already had.
Your Weekly Calendar View
Here you will find a full list of your weekly meal plan broken down daily. There are a few features that you can take advantage of here. You can view each recipe by clicking on them individually, you can skip a meal (just incase anything happens you can reuse those allocated ingredients) or you can skip a full day of meals that were already planned (this is a great feature just in case your schedule changes and you will not be able to go home all day).
Inventory Management
Your Pantry
Your pantry, your fridge, your freezer…this is the heart of your kitchen and every ingredient or product you have purchased will live on this list. We created several common areas that a household has, but feel free to create your own locations that will fit your household. After you go shopping and once you check off all your items as purchased we will make sure to transfer what you bought into your inventory (always make sure to edit the quantities and use by date as we have only used generic dates). You can edit individual items by swiping left.
Here you can also add items manually whenever you need, this a great feature just in case you buy something outside of the meal plan so we can ensure to include it on your next meal plan.
Time to Go Shopping
One of the great features here is how automated your shopping list is. Once the meal plan automatically generates itself, all you do is accept the meal plan and you get your grocery list broken down by aisle/shopping category and ingredient quantity. Since everything is personalized we added a feature so you can add more ingredients that are not part of the meal plan to allow you to have the entire list all in one place.
Need to edit a quantity? Just swipe left and edit the amount.
When you are shopping just check off the items as you purchase them. Since we already categorized the ingredients by generic aisles you should be able to go through pretty fast and use your time for other things. (tip here is to edit the quantity when you are at the grocery store so when it moves it to the inventory it will have more accurate quantities).
How to Cook
Once you are ready to cook your meal, click on it and you will be taken to the recipe page, here there are two sections, one for the ingredients that are needed and one with the steps to cook the recipe.
There is a good amount of information that you will find here such as the amount of time it takes to cook the recipe, how many ingredients are used in total, what the average cost of this recipe is and the total amount of calories per serving. After the ingredients quantities you will find even more information about the nutritional facts for the recipe.
All About You
Here you will have all the information you need to navigate the setting of the app, change your dietary preferences and most importantly to change the budget you have per week.