Be aware
Also uk what how is going and preparing completely different dishes every night climate or financially responsible??? I’m sorry but I was under the impression this would help me plan meals for the week and what your offering is the random button on a list of recipes. My apologies if my criticism is harsh I had high hopes .
Response from developer
Hey there, I am Baptiste, the indie developer of Kuri. Thanks for updating your review and providing more context. There are some interesting suggestions, but I'd like to address some of your comments that aren't actually true, to clear things up for other people reading this. First, I'd like to address the claim that Kuri's meal plans only offer one meal per day. It isn't true, and I wish you had seen the "Add a meal" buttons that are situated on each meal (!). I genuinely wish you had also explored the product a bit more. This button "Add a meal", prominently displayed, lets you add a breakfast or lunch options. Conveniently, if you add a breakfast, Kuri will suggest to assign it to all the days in your meal plan. By default, a meal plan will indeed have dinners only. Had I elected to assign automatically a breakfast and a lunch to each day, I'd be making *huge* assumptions about your breakfast preferences and lunch. Had I done that, most of the suggested breakfasts would be irrelevant to most people and they'd have to remove them one by one, which would be a terrible user experience. Instead, I let users decide what to add. You are totally right about one thing: my app should try to learn about your breakfast preferences, and apply it to all your future meal plans. Same with lunch preferences: should we add a lunch, or not? This is something I am working on. I do feel that this is a harsh review, leaving out everything else and giving it 1 star. It's truly demotivating for an indie developer, but I understand that you wanted to voice out your disappointment. Note that there is also a specific button on the meal plan that lets you send suggestions & feedback directly to my email, so I can address this quicker. I always respond within a couple of hours tops, and update the app to adapt to my users' wishes. Regarding the climate friendliness of meals: it may be counter intuitive, but the diversity of meals isn't a driving factor of greenhouse gas emissions; the presence of animal based products (especially red meat) is the main driver of greenhouse gas emissions. So Kuri focuses on providing plant-rich suggestions that are diverse enough to be enjoyed all week long. I'll take good note on your comment about the financial aspect of that, and appreciate you bringing it up. Finally, please note that my app is a work in progress. I constantly work on improving it. 1 star reviews are depressing, especially when they dunk on a single aspect of the app that I can improve. I receive constructive feedback on a daily basis, and that helps a lot with both building a better app for people and motivation. Best, Baptiste
Back to Meallime for me
Clunky examples include:
- Multiple recipes do not acknowledge where to put in ingredients that were called for, or do not acknowledge amounts. For example the Jollof Rice calls for vegetable broth but doesn’t say when to put it in; Wild Mushrooms and Scrambled Eggs asks for salt and pepper but doesn’t say when to put it in, nor does it say how much tarragon to use. Also “wild mushrooms” is an exotic ingredient on account neither Trader Joe’s nor Fred Meyer carries them, and the closest equivalent Freddy’s has are $5 a pop, equaling $15 for one recipe.
- Portions are half-assedly adjusted in the ingredients. For example the Jollof Rice asked for 1/3rd of a Jalapeño, and 1/3rd of an onion, without using the Jalapeño or 2/3rds of the onion later in the week, which is wasteful and defeats the whole purpose of using the app.
- Ingredients aren’t specific enough. Some recipes just call for “tarragon.” Dried? Fresh? How much? Another calls for “rice.” Basmati? Jasmine? Brown?
It had the right spirit, and I want to like it, but it had a lot of work to do.
Amazing
Response from developer
Hey bel! Thank you so much for leaving such a kind review, I appreciate it a lot. You're right, it would be great if we could expand to other regions. Actually, the only thing we're missing to be able to do so is a reliable and complete source of information for seasonality in this region. Do you have any that you could recommend? I'd be happy to check it out and get it done! You can email me at baptiste@kuri.co (it's .co and not .com). Thank you so much again! Best, Baptiste - developer of Kuri