Meal prep software has been an integral part of many kitchens. It provides people with the ease of finding all the ingredients they need to cook amazing meals. That said, if you are looking to build meal prep software, understand that it isn’t as straightforward as you might think.
There are many things you must consider when choosing meal prep software, especially when it comes to the features it has to offer! Today, let’s talk about those features to ensure your meal prep software has what it takes to be useful and reliable:
1. The Cart and Checkout Function
The cart and checkout function is what enables shoppers to shop around from the comfort of their homes. It should be seamless, clear, and easy to use. This motivates customers to buy!
By allowing your customers to choose weekly meal deliveries and subscribe as a part of checkout, your customer retention will skyrocket by creating repeat customers and brand advocates.
2. Ability to Synchronize Meal Prep with Other Devices
When you’re meal prepping, you need to check on your schedule, your to-do lists, and all of your other important files. Having your meal prep synchronized with your mobile device is crucial to ensure you’re on track and up-to-date.
3. Automatic Recalculation of the Shopping List
When your customers add items to their cart, you need to create a shopping list that contains the same items. And when they remove items, you have to recalculate the list to reflect the changes. That is a crucial part of building a meal prep platform and ensures your customers have flexibility in making changes to their selected meal plan while you as the owner remain in control with real-time updates.
4. Create Sorting Lists Based on Ingredients, Not on Recipes
Since meal prepping is all about maximizing efficiency, a shopping list should update based on ingredients, not on recipes. This tells chefs exactly what they’re missing and ensures a full pantry before the cooking begins.
5. Multilingual Support
One can’t be highly effective if they only speak one language! Meal prep software with multilingual support will help you market your products more widely and help more people manage their meal prep.
6. Import and Export Data
Importing and exporting data is crucial for multiple reasons. First, it lets you back up your data in case your meal prep platform gets hacked, and you lose everything. Second, it lets you share your data with other apps and software you might use.
7. Mobile-Friendly Ordering Experience
It’s also important to have a mobile-friendly ordering experience for your meal prep software. Customers order online from their phones more often than you think. Make sure that their experience is just as optimized as on their laptop and hopefully turn them into repeat customers based on how easy it was to order.
Summary
Meal prep software is super important, especially when you’re running a business that involves changing menus every week and customized meals for your customers. But creating such software isn’t easy. It requires a lot of thought and a lot of time. The features we’ve described here should give you a good idea of what your software can do and what it can’t. Keep in mind that you should test out the ordering experience of a sample client before making a selection to understand what your customers will go through.
KitchenFuel offers an all-in-one meal prep software to help businesses engage with customers and grow the business, all from one solution. If you are looking for food business software to help you run your company, check out our platform!