Meal planning in our house is always interesting because we don't have a lot of time, but we like to cook new things. So having suggestions is always good. I just signed up and have a few comments.
Don't send the username and password in plaintext when someone signs up. Also I didn't create a username, and didn't notice you'd assigned one, so when I went to activate the account I used my email and that worked. So good on your side to recognize both.
Meal wise, I'm not sure why every food service (including all of the ship-you-groceries-in-a-box ones) always have a burger on their list. Wings aren't a meal to me, more like a appetizer. Same thing with the cobb salad. While it is a meal, its not quite the sort of thing I'm looking for recommendations for. For our use case, we're looking for things we either haven't ever had or made, or an innovative way to make something.
This week's recipe for Marinated Pork Loin and Sweet Potato pancakes looks good until I hit the recipe. Without posting it here, it's quite unclear in several places:
"In a large freezer bag add all the ingredients abd pork and allow to marinate over night" - ok, but the ingredient list also has the ingredients for the sweet potato pancakes and they aren't differentiated. And the instructions for the pancakes says "place them in the mixing bowl with the rest of the ingredients". So while I can pretty much tell where to separate the two recipes, it isn't clear and that'll trip up less experienced cooks. (and your picture of the pork loin looks like it has a rub, not a marinade btw).
So I like the idea. I've played with doing something like this ourselves, if only to remove the having to come up with some new meal ideas every week, but never found the time. You're close to what I'm looking for, but just not quite there.
@sacbookreviewer Hey Ross, my apologies for ThinkYum's technical difficulties when you were signing up, they're either already resolved or being resolved at this time. Thank you for the very thoughtful and detailed feedback, we won't be able to improve our service without feedback like this.
@mitchp_jansen that's why I gave it. I've thrown enough projects out into the wild and not gotten any feedback or only minimal, so I do try and give feedback when I can. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for you, this is a field I've done a lot of theoretical work in, and pretty familiar with, so I'm pretty opinionated.
@sacbookreviewer new recipes available now, these any better than the first batch you saw? They will only continue to improve based on ratings and user comments/feedback
@mitchp_jansen Hey mitch, sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. Yes, week 2 and 3 meals were better than the first one I looked at, but you had another burger meal on the menu (so twice in 3 weeks), and you had a couple of things that I would have considered appetizers or sides, not main dishes. But then maybe your target audience is a burgers every other week audience. But recipes like pigs in a blanket, etc aren't going to be anything that people who know how to cook and want to get meal suggestions.
Overall, the site is easy to use and looks good. Recipes fall under the newbie to casual level of cooking, and probably less adventurous than I'd suggest. Do more surveys, and discuss with customers what you're suggesting. Granted more complicated recipes might require better instructions (see blue apron for some good examples, one of their best features). Avoid recipes that have an expensive, yet minimally used odd ingredients (I hate having to buy a full piece of ginger when I only need 1/8th of it.).
Branching into meal verticals isn't a bad idea, but will also have issues with the depth of options. Exchanging burgers every two week for black bean burgers every two weeks still leaves the vegetarian looking for a broader variety. There are millions of recipes and recipe apps/websites, but its the curation that's a pain in the ass. I almost hired someone once just to send me suggestions every week from a variety of food blogs so I didn't have to go looking myself every week for new ideas.
Good luck with it, and you've got a good base. Feel free to ping me if you ever want some discussion.
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