Kitchen Butler

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Inspiration

I’m not the chef in our house — my wife is. She’s a great cook, but every evening after juggling work and two kids she’d sigh, “What on earth do I cook tonight?” Her recipe collection is spread everywhere: saved links on Instagram and Pinterest, screenshots and scribbles in her Notes app, and even a handwritten notebook she has collected and written over years. When I read Eitan’s brief about helping people turn inspiration into action, it felt like he was talking about our kitchen. Instead of building a demo for judges, I decided to build Kitchen Butler for my wife and Eitan’s audience — an app that gathers recipes from all those scattered sources, organises them, and helps busy cooks decide what to make.

What it does

Kitchen Butler is a cross‑platform mobile app (Android - my wife's got an android, with iOS planned if it gains traction) that:

Imports and organises recipes: Paste a recipe URL from a blog or other public website and Kitchen Butler automatically parses the title, description, ingredients and instructions. For recipes you find on social platforms or in videos that can’t be fetched directly, there’s a manual paste mode: copy the text and the AI parser will structure it for you.

Manages a digital pantry: Track what’s in stock, what needs replenishing and how many servings you can make. No more buying another bottle of soy sauce when you already have two.

Suggests meals instantly: Our “What Can I Cook?” feature compares recipes to your pantry (or a custom shopping list) and suggests dishes based on ingredient matches. It solves Eitan’s challenge of helping users go from “I saw this” to “it’s on the table.”

Unlocks premium features: Using RevenueCat, users can subscribe for unlimited recipe imports and suggestions, aligning with the monetization requirement of the contest.

Everything works offline and syncs when online.

How we built it

I developed Kitchen Butler using React Native and Expo Router within Rork. I built custom hooks and context providers to store recipes and pantry items in local storage, and integrated AI parsing to extract structured recipes from publicly accessible web pages. For social posts or videos, the app offers a manual copy‑paste flow because scraping those platforms isn’t feasible without login or video processing. This was my first time integrating a payment solution, and RevenueCat proved tricky: Rork’s wrapper was broken, so I manually wired up the Revenuecat to handle subscriptions and entitlements on the second attempt. With over a decade of software experience, I was able to troubleshoot and work around these hurdles.

Challenges we ran into

Broken integrations: Rork’s out‑of‑the‑box RevenueCat setup didn’t work (probably got stuck in middle of setup), so I had to clone the original app to a new one, clean up RevenueCat project and let Rork recreate it again and then configure it again in the new/cloned app.

Time vs. scope: Balancing a polished MVP against daily work + life (and two kids) meant cutting features ruthlessly.

First payment integration: Even with years of experience, managing subscriptions and entitlements in a mobile app was new territory.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A real solution to a real problem: My wife now uses Kitchen Butler daily, and it directly addresses the chaos of having recipes scattered across apps and paper.

Full MVP in weeks: We have a polished app with recipe import (public pages), pantry tracking and working subscriptions, ready for internal testers.

Overcoming integration hurdles: Turning a broken monetization module into a robust subscription system was a personal milestone.

What we learned

You never stop learning: integrating payments taught me about sandbox environments and entitlements.

Rork is great for rapid builds, but you need to know the underlying Expo/React Native stack to fix issues. It's a good starting point or I unsure how it would allow non-devs to develop and release an app end-to-end without the technical glitches that happen along the way.

Building something for your own family (and Eitan’s audience) keeps you invested in solving the real pain points.

What's next for Kitchen Butler

Grocery list generation: Automatically create shopping lists from saved recipes and fill gaps in the pantry.

Better OCR and AI: Scan handwritten notes or photos of ingredients directly into the app.

Family sharing: Let family members share recipes and pantry updates, and follow Eitan’s curated collections.

Expanded premium tiers: More monetization options such as family accounts and advanced meal planning tools, etc..

Built With

• expo.io
• react-native
• revenuecat
• rork
• typescript