Check & Bake

• 

  Introduction

• 

  Home Screen

• 

  Import recipes from anywhere or paste them in as plain text

• 

  Recipe Ingredients

• 

  Autocomplete when adding a new item

• 

  Filter by ingredients

• 

  Assign lists to stores and automatically filter shopping lists when at the store

• 

  Shopping list

• 

  Filter Shopping list by store

Inspiration

I’ve wanted a shopping list app that’s designed for the store, not just for typing items.

Years ago there was an app I liked that was really great for visual scanning (icons + categories) the shopping list while at the store, so it's easier to tell what you need at a glance. But then it was acquired and went downhill from there. I've wanted this app for years, and Shipyard inspired me to finally just do it.

What it does

Check & Bake turns recipes into a store-ready checklist and keeps the in-store experience simple:

• Recipe → Cart: import from a website link, pasted text, or photo/screenshot, then tap the ingredients you need to add them to your list (deduped).
• Fast shopping list: add items with autocomplete, plus a large icon catalog and automatic categories for quick scanning in aisles.
• Store-aware shopping: attach lists to stores, filter Shop by All Stores / specific store, optionally use nearby store detection, and store loyalty cards.
• Two-mode workflow: Home for planning/importing/organizing, Shop for checking things off. Simple with intention.

How I built it

• Built as an iOS app with a deliberately constrained navigation model: Home vs Shop to keep the in-store flow focused.
• A recipe import pipeline that accepts URL/text/photo, extracts ingredients into structured rows, then normalizes and matches them to an on-device item catalog for icons + categories.
• RevenueCat subscriptions and entitlements to gate premium features (recipe importing and higher organization limits).

Challenges I ran into

• Messy inputs: recipes vary wildly across websites, screenshots, and cookbook photos, so extraction needs to be resilient to inconsistent formatting.
• Ingredient normalization: turning real-world ingredient text into consistent items that map cleanly to icons and categories without forcing manual cleanup.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

• A consistent 1,000+ icon catalog that meaningfully improves at-a-glance shopping.
• The two-tab “prepare vs shop” philosophy that keeps the app from becoming a cluttered feature dashboard. Simple is not easy.
• A complete recipe → ingredient selection → deduped grocery list loop, plus store filtering and optional nearby-store prompts.

What’s next for Check & Bake

• Ship and polish the free-tier limits (planned: 5 lists + 5 stores) and make the upgrade value proposition clearer in-product.
• Improve the recipe library with better organization (categories/collections).
• Add localization (UI + item catalog) so it works well internationally.
• Improve automatic filters and make it easy to get to loyalty cards
• Add cooking utilities and improve recipe reading in-the-kitchen experience
• Continue improving import reliability and ingredient matching so “recipe → cart” works on more sources with less cleanup.

Built With

• apify
• bun
• firecrawl
• gemini
• revenuecat
• sqlite
• swift