From all of us at Plan to Eat, thank you! We’re so glad you’re here and that Plan to Eat has been useful for you.
As we look back on 2018, part of what we get to look back on is data on our server based on how tens of thousands of you are meal planning with Plan to Eat. Here are a few details of (somewhat useless) information that you may find interesting:
In 2018 You planned 2,501,615 recipes,
added 28,891,524 items to your shopping lists,
And spent a total of 162,430 hours meal planning with Plan to Eat.
When are you planning?
Those of you starting meal planning as a resolution for 2019, take note! January is a huge month for meal planning, it slows during the summer months, then picks up again when school starts in August. Stick with it! Make meal planning a habit, not a resolution. Here’s what the activity on our server looks like throughout the year:
Sunday is consistently the most popular day for meal planning. Fridays are the slowest day of the week with about half of the activity of Sundays. On Saturday the traffic spikes back up and peaks again on Sunday. Here’s what the activity on our server looks like every week (repeating with clockwork consistency!) :
“The worst day of the week to shop might be Saturday, although there is little research on the topic. A 2008 study from the Time Use Institute does say that Saturday is, by far, the busiest grocery shopping day of the week, with 41 million shoppers (Friday is second, at 35 million).” – The Street
The 3 recipes most imported in 2018:
#3: Prawn linguine
A surprising #3 is this Prawn Linguine recipe from Jamie Oliver, which is very “fishy” and distinctly smells and tastes of seafood. If you’re into that, which apparently many of you are, this is a fantastic recipe! We loved it.
#2: This roast was tender and juicy and it is not surprising that it made the top three recipe imports in Plan to Eat! The veggies were perfectly cooked and not overdone and the gravy was scrumptious. Overall, the pistachios on top were the perfect touch of salt and crunch. Don’t skip this part!
#1: Here it is! The most imported recipe in 2018 is this instant pot recipe and it should quickly be added to your meal plan. It’s creamy, flavorful, and very easy. This recipe hides the cauliflower perfectly, and you’d never know this dish wasn’t 100% potatoes. Perfect for hiding veggies from picky kids or incorporating more veggies for yourself!
The most recipes added by 1 user in 2018: 5,268
The most recipes in any account: 12,906
The most time spent on Plan to Eat by one user in 2018: 341 hours (about 56 minutes per day)
Recipe organization
Recipes in Plan to Eat can be organized based on Course, Cuisine, or Main ingredient, but the most significant tool to organize your recipes is by using Tags. Tags are the most flexible tool and can be anything you want. Because of their flexibility they can be an interesting way of seeing trends in how we think about food. Here’s how the top 10 recipe tags in 2018 compared with one another:
A comparison of the 10 most popular shopping list items:
Our support team answered almost
6,000 support tickets (about 16 NEW tickets per day)
with an average response time of 7 hours and 20 minutes.
If you have any trouble at all, we’re happy to help! Contact us anytime at [email protected] and we’ll get back with you as soon as we can.
In 2018 we:
Launched an app for both iOS and Android
Motivated kids to cook (with tips to parents about how to teach them in the kitchen)
Had some meal planning success stories
And ate a lot of tacos!
We’re grateful to all of you for making 2018 a fantastic year and we’re really excited about 2019! Here are a few things in the works right now that will be released in the coming weeks:
iPhone and Android apps:
- Soon you will have the ability to add, invite, and share recipes with your friends, just like like you can on the website version of Plan to Eat.
- We are also adding filters in the search to make searching within the app as robust as the desktop version. This will allow you to search using the general search box in combination with any of the filter (course, cuisine, main ingredient, tags, etc.) pulldown menus.
Desktop:
- We’re really excited to be upgrading servers throughout January. The upgrade will enhance security, give us the ability to add software for new features, and improve performance.
- It’s now easier to toggle between your recipes, hidden recipes, and removed recipes. Hidden recipes are useful for seasonal recipes that you want to keep, but maybe only use occasionally, like holiday recipes, and don’t want to clutter up your recipe book. Removed recipes are recipes that didn’t make the cut — for whatever reason, you just don’t want them.
Wishing you all the best for a successful 2019.
Happy New Year, from all of us at Plan to Eat!
