📱 Best Platforms
Gumroad, Product Hunt, own website
📖 The Hustle
Build a web-based tool where users input recipes (or paste URLs that parse ingredients), set serving sizes, and the tool auto-scales all ingredient quantities. Then it aggregates ingredients across multiple recipes into a unified grocery list organized by store aisle. Meal preppers cooking 3-5 recipes for the week currently do this math by hand. Your tool saves them 30 minutes of arithmetic and list-rewriting every Sunday.
🚀 First Step
Build a simple web app with a recipe input form (ingredient name, quantity, unit), a serving size slider that scales all quantities proportionally, and an 'Add to Grocery List' button that deduplicates and merges ingredients.
🔑 Keys to Success
- Add a 'Recipe URL Paster' that parses ingredient lists from popular recipe sites using basic DOM parsing — users copy a recipe link, the tool extracts the ingredients, and they scale without manual typing
- Organize the aggregated grocery list by store section (Produce, Dairy, Meat, Pantry, Frozen) using keyword matching — an organized list is the feature that turns a scaler tool into a must-have weekly tool
- Charge a one-time $19 fee for lifetime access — meal preppers are price-conscious but will pay for a tool that demonstrably saves them 30+ minutes every single week
🛠 Tools & Resources: HTML/CSS/JavaScript or React, Netlify (hosting), Gumroad, Product Hunt, Supabase (if user accounts needed)