Groceryplaylist.com, Whatsinmyfridge.ai, and the future of grocery shopping

I was excited to blend an interest in cooking with programming, so I registered the domains for both Groceryplaylist.com and Whatsinmyfridge.ai in December 2022 and wrote 2 simple web apps.

Both sites do largely the same thing, but in reverse order. Groceryplaylist prompts the user for a meal and outputs a shopping list. Whatsinmyfridge prompts the users for ingredients they have on-hand, and outputs some meal ideas.

I developed a loyal fanbase of roughly 7 friends and family members who used the web apps somewhat regularly.

While I enjoyed the process of making these apps. I learned that as many people got their hands on ChatGPT and other LLM’s, building a grocery list or recipe builder was a very played out idea.

So what’s next?

I don’t know. I may make some tweaks to the sites or just keep them on life support.

But where could I see something like Groceryplaylist going in the future?

In the future, it’s very possible that grocery stores as we know them will become obsolete. We’re already seeing Amazon turn Whole Foods into a hybrid grocery store/distribution center. Imagine a future where everything gets delivered to your residence or a nearby hub (like an Amazon locker) in a secure cold storage lock box.

In this future, you’re no longer walking the aisles of a grocery store to become inspired (or manipulated) by the store layout and product placement. In this new world, what might the shopping experience look like?

Imagine an application like Spotify, but instead of famous artists, it was chefs, food influencers, and friends and family. Instead of playlists of songs, it was playlists of ingredients, forming a grocery list that serves a certain purpose (Super Bowl party, Thanksgiving dinner, Chipotle-copycat burrito, your sister in-law’s weekly vegan grocery haul, etc.).

You make playlists, follow others, combine them, edit them, share them, etc.

You could order anything off your playlist for delivery or pickup. If your playlist included something you already had in stock, maybe that would be automatically removed from the list.

Supermarkets would vanish. The only remaining markets would be the little specialty ones where you’re on a first name basis with the employees.

YouTube creators could earn affiliate commission if somebody buys the ingredients that go into their recipe. Maybe the playlists could be interoperable, so that various grocery distribution centers could fulfill your order. If a playlist includes an item that’s not currently stocked, maybe it gets subbed out for the nearest match.

Who knows what will happen in the future, but I think a “grocery playlist” would be a pretty cool way to discover new ingredients, recipes, and cuisines.