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The Vision

Meal Planner

Vision

Meal planning for families can be very challenging for a mother. Allergies, vegetarianism, one evening meal together, one meal with only 2 people, or even effectively planning meals for several days or on the basis of the same main ingredients makes this a mammoth task.Our food and a healthy and balanced eating contributes to the well-being and productivity of all. The most important thing is that we take care of it.

Our partner's idea was to create a novel and smart meal planner that, with the help of an individual and detailed configuration, effectively plans the meals for the next week of a family, taking into account the characteristics of each family member, but reducing the daily cooking time to a minimum and at the same time providing a very balanced, healthy and varied nutrition. Taking care of the family's food should be less stressful and more fun.

In order to realize such an idea, it is necessary to have years of experience in nutrition and being a mother, as well as the IT experience to build a simple and intuitive IT Solution that will simplify the daily life for our families.

With our partner we were able to meet all the requirements to build such a solution.

Read this very interesting story to find out how we went from a rough goal to a high quality and successful IT Solution.

Duration : 6 Months

Collaboration : Fixed price project

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Our Solution

Our Solution

The Revolution Of Meal Planning By Mother For Mothers

Our Solution

The IT Solution MealPlanner combines the expertise of nutritional science, a mother's care for her family, and the technical know-how to create and customize targeted weekly plans for diverse families in a landing page and Web App.

An account setup with a linked membership is the only hurdle between the family and healthy meal planning. All profile information and payment reference information can be coordinated in the Web App.

A personalized and high quality configurator allows the user to customize the family, needs, eating habits, favorite ingredients and more, which are used for the algorithm to create high quality and unique meal plans.

The created plans can be viewed weekly and adjusted again if changes are needed. A built-in shopping list allows to optimize the shopping process and automatically receive shopping lists based on the plans.

A large recipe database allows you to get new inspirations and incorporate them into your own weekly planning.

For each week, a PDF can be created that summarizes everything and at the same time still gives important tips on ingredients and seasonal specialties.

A smart tool that makes the everyday life of every mother easier.

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Key Components

Key Features
registration

User profile management

registration

Meal plan configurator

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Meal plan management

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Recipe management

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Payment gateway

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Admin panel

Tech Stack

Tech

Laravel + MySQL Database

Back-end

Laravel was used in this project. Laravel is a full-stack system that provides the ability to create front-end and back-end as part of a framework for websites. Combined with a MySQL database, the entire infrastructure can be created, maintained and scaled. It is an open source framework with a large community and many built-in features.

Stripe payment

Social

For the payment of an course we have integrated Stripe. It offers several payment options, from credit card to payment on invoice, which was required for the product itself. With Stripe also the subscriptions can be managed and the account can be charged regularly.

How Vitec Archived The Project Goal?

Client goal

With the help of requirements discussions with our partner, we were able to design a suitable concept and understand how to design the configurator and the underlying algorithm. The next step was project planning to implement the requirements.

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We created a very friendly and warm design that easily appeals to the target audience. We also worked hard on the UX part of the product to make it as easy as possible for mothers to navigate and access. The right information at the right time is the key word here.

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By using the Laravel framework and MVC design pattern, we were able to develop the project quickly and fix minor procedural bugs directly through an iterative review process with our partner. We were particularly concerned about the database design for the large amounts of data and accessibility to the algorithms to keep performance high.

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To make sure our users are satisfied, our team tests each element before performing an end-to-end test and testing the algorithm very thoroughly to create the right meal plans for the different configurations. Improvements and bug fixes are recorded in a comprehensive test report and fixed according to their importance.

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After making sure that all core functions were working smoothly and production was set up, we were more than happy to launch a new IT Solution on the German market.

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Main Functionalities

Functionalities
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User Authentication and Management

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MealPlanner offers classical authentication via email and password and social log ins such as Google and Facebook. The email is verified by a second step via a One-Time-Password send to the email to complete the registration.

Within the web App, the user has the ability to edit all information, maintain their profile related data and membership or can delete the account.

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The Configurator

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The main function of the MealPlanner is the configurator and the underlying algorithm.

The user defines over 10 steps how many family members there are, which eating behavior they have, which allergies and specialties should be considered, if food should be cooked for several days and if leftovers should be eaten the next day. And much more.

The algorithm determines which meals can be optimally cooked in which order and at the same time meet the requirements of a balanced and varied nutrition.

This configuration can be corrected by the user at any time to adjust the meal plan.

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The Meal Plan

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The result of the configurator is a meal plan for 6 months, which takes into account all the settings. The user sees the planned meals of a day. The meals have detail views of how they need to be cooked. And whether they should replace a meal the next day or only leftovers should be eaten.

The user can replace individual meals or correct the number of persons. More meals can be added from the meal database.

This plan can be printed in a beautiful PDF to hang it up at home.

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Shopping List

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For the purchase of the ingredients of the meal plan there is a smart shopping list creation where you can select days and from it a list of ingredients divided by main and stock ingredients (salt, pepper, oil). The lists can be downloaded and used directly for shopping.

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Membership

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MealPlanner is free for 7 days and the user has access to all features for the first week. After the 7 days the user will be asked for a paid membership, which can be either monthly or yearly.

The payment is done via Stripe. Stripeoffers many payment methods for the western European economic area.

A cancellation function with cancellation policy has also been integrated.

Biggest challenge

Biggest challenge and our journey of overcoming

Biggest challenge

The biggest challenge in this project for us was defining and implementing the algorithm for creating the meal plans.

To meet this challenge, we worked our way forward piece by piece. First, we defined all the parameters and how they influence the creation of the meal plan. Then we defined how the recipes had to be created in the database in order to be able to effectively create plans from them.

Now we developed the different logics and effective database accesses to create a varied and correct meal plan.

Since the user can also make changes, we had to look at past days differently than future days. Likewise, linked meals had to be addressed differently than individual meals that, for example, do not share common ingredients.

Finally, we ran dedicated tests to see if our logics worked appropriately under different conditions.

We were very happy when at the end of the day everything worked as it should and a proven approach produced an appropriate result.

Most special moment in
our journey

journey

The most special experience in this project was the goal of the project to build something unique and helpful for all mothers. There are thousands of meal plans for fitness or healthy eating, but a smart meal plan for families does not exist.

The challenge involved in building a product from design to usability and logics behind it is as educational as it is special.

We are very happy to be the 360° Software Development Partner for our partner and to have built such a beautiful IT Solution together. As always, it shows how important it is to have a partnership at eye level and with complementary skills and characteristics.

MealPlanner is now part of our iterative development together with our families who use it.

Take a look and convince yourself of this unique IT Solution.

If you also have a beautiful idea and are looking for a partner who brings the necessary experience and qualities, as well as is hungry for challenges like you, then contact us.

journey

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Marc

Marc Roset, CEO at Vitec, loves working with people around the world to develop trend-setting and innovative IT concepts. His working methodology can be summarized as follows: "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships."

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