Show HN: PlateJoy (YC S15) – Algorithmic meal planner with integrated delivery

Hi all,

I lost 50 pounds a few years ago and realized that the options for healthy eating are limited to frozen meal delivery services or nutrition apps that never worked for me. So I started PlateJoy, which uses data about your lifestyle, preferences, and goals to help you plan what to buy and cook each week. We send customized shopping lists and recipes that match your preferences with optional grocery delivery of your shopping list through Instacart. Support for lots of eating styles including: paleo, vegan, whole30, weight loss, kid-friendly, ketogenic, quick & easy, etc.

A few things that make us different:

1. We care a lot about personalization. You start off by taking a lifestyle quiz about foods you love, avoid, recipe complexity, time constraints, preferences and more. You can also add a starting weight and goal weight and we'll adjust your portions accordingly.

2. We don’t want you to have to deal with waste, so we've created a Digital Pantry of your kitchen which takes inventory of what you have, only replenishing things like cinnamon or olive oil when you need it. We also pair recipes together that use up the same ingredients to prevent food waste.

3. We plan your leftovers, too.

4. You can shop for yourself or use our integration with Instacart to send your shopping list to them for same day delivery. (No dry ice or breaking down Fed Ex boxes, because ingredients come fresh from your local grocer.) This is a new feature that people have been liking a lot.

Our biggest technical challenges have been taking so many preferences into account when creating a menu (takes a few seconds!), and synergistically pairing meals to reduce food waste while also making sure there's ample variety in plans.

Hope you'll check it out - just set up a free trial for everyone today - feedback and questions welcome!

This looks remarkably awesome. I have been looking for / contemplating building something where I can put in some recipes and have it figure out the most efficient, least wasteful shopping list for me. This seems like a fairly complex problem to solve (in fact, it sounds like a linear programming problem). It would be really nice if I could put in a monthly budget amount as well, so that my meal options are also customized to what I expect to spend. One nice potential side effect of doing this is that I might even be able to reduce my current grocery budget by some amount -- and seeing what that amount is could make the value of the service real obvious.

Is there any way I can customize my plan even further for "meals good for kids" and/or "easy to eat / no unusual textures"? Some of these recipes look delicious, but my 18-month-old will refuse edamame outright. :)

I love this. I plan on signing up when I get home.

Looks awesome so far! I wanted to give a thumbs up for adding the "seasonal" option. It is much appreciated and often overlooked.

Hahaha, they are truly not! But we will tell them you asked :)