I'm Bill and I live in Dayton, Ohio. I have a family, a normal day job, and a couple of hours most nights after everyone else goes to bed to wind down. During those couple of hours is when I built Dishcount.
Dishcount started with my weekly grocery list. I would search through weekly ads from several stores, then look for recipes that used as many of those sale items as possible. Going back and forth between the ads, recipes and my list took time. I kept thinking there had to be a better way.
I assumed someone had already built a tool for this. When I searched online, I couldn't find one that did what I needed. So I decided to create it myself. I wanted to solve my own problem, and I figured other people were running into the same thing.
Dishcount is the tool that could have saved me a lot of time and money. You enter your zip code, it finds available weekly deals from supported stores near you, and it builds meals around what's actually on sale. I'm not a developer. An AI coding assistant helped me get started. A lot of stubbornness and dislike of spending more than I need to kept me going. The full story is in Why I Built Dishcount →.
WDTN covered Dishcount on Sept. 1, the Dayton Daily News ran a story on Sept. 20, and Axios Cincinnati featured Dishcount on Sept. 23.
What it does
Start with your ZIP. Choose the quick five-meal plan, set your store, household size, budget target and dietary preferences, and let Dishcount choose the sale ingredients. Or browse the deals yourself, pick what you want to cook with, and choose your meal preferences.
You get generated recipes with ingredient quantities, cooking instructions and estimated costs. Review a recipe, then add the ingredients you need to a shopping list. With a connected Kroger account, you can review product matches before adding them to your cart.
The quick plan generates five personalized meals when you request them; it is not a fixed premade menu. Recipes use the available deal data for your selected store. There's a full feature list → if you want it.
The math behind it
Checking the sales first gives you a starting point for meals. Reusing ingredients across recipes can also help you make more of what you buy.
For my family of five, planning meals around the weekly sales took our grocery bill from about $175–$200 a week to about $140–$160. That is my family’s experience. Your costs and savings will depend on your household, local prices and what you buy.
Kroger-family deals come from Kroger's API for a selected location. Other supported stores use extracted weekly-ad data. Coverage and freshness vary by store and area. Recipe costs and savings are estimates: package sizes, pantry items and checkout prices can change the total. Confirm prices and offer conditions with your store.
A few promises
- Dishcount is free to use. Recipe-generation limits help keep the service available.
- We do not sell your personal information. Our privacy policy explains how information is used and which services help run the site.
- We don't take a cut of your grocery bill. The sale prices are whatever your store says they are.
- If something breaks, send a message through the contact form for me to review.
If you want to try it, the homepage is the whole thing. Type your ZIP to check available deals near you. No signup required.
Bill