Show HN: Food Inventory Management App | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Food Inventory Management App

apps.apple.com

3 pointsAiluropoda11 comments

We recently launched our beta app in the App Store (with bugs, but usable). Currently only available on iOS and in the US. We are looking for users to help us figure out how to prioritize our roadmap for future features. The current iteration lets you:

- add food items and mark them as finished/expired - scan receipts to add items faster - includes a category breakdown to help track costs and budgeting

Leave a comment if you have any feedback, suggestions, questions, etc. Thank you for reading!

If I spend a ton of time scanning receipts, updating my lists, it's a big time investment for me. Will I be able to export my data as CSV or something so that it won't be lost in case the company folds or the app stops being supported?

Great question and of course, this is in the works and we plan to notify users beforehand if this ever happens. We value your time and data, so it is only fair that you have access to it.

That's good news. Are you guys implementing the export feature right so we can export at any time, or only when the app is gonna be shut down?

It's in the pipeline but I'll admit it's not high priority at the moment. We are trying to make sure there's product market fit and people finding value in our product before building out these additional features.

> Start managing food inventory smarter, and save over $1,600 annually per family.

Where are you getting that metric from? I think I'd still end up throwing away 20-40% of my food even if I did have an app that showed me what's in my refrigerator...

We got that metric from calculating the amount of food waste in 2020 in the US. Most people we've talked to throw away around 35%ish of their food without a second thought. We're not only trying to help people track their food items, but also help with tracking their spend. We believe that seeing money being wasted is a more eye-opening metric for most people. So we've added both food waste and spend metrics to deter people from just chucking food away. We want people to be more conscious with their food and understand their daily, weekly, and monthly habits so they can prevent overbuying.

Are you insinuating that your app brings that 35% figure down to 0%? Like I said, most of the time I don't throw stuff away because I've forgotten about it, but more because I've overbought, made too much of a dish, or flat-out don't want any more of the food that I bought.

No, I'm saying that 35% of food is thrown away by people we've talked to. I don't think there is a clear-cut solution that will reduce that to 0%. But we're trying to provide ways to help people reduce their own % number, no matter how small or big it is.

Like I mentioned earlier, we're trying to help people recognize patterns and habits in spending so they can reduce overbuying and potentially see a way to save money.

This is what I wanted to make as a child for so many years, I really hope this succeeds!

Thanks for the kind words.

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