Dishcount started with a routine I repeated every week: checking grocery ads, making my list, and trying to turn the best deals into meals.
I would search through weekly ads from several stores while putting together my grocery list. Then I would look for recipes that used as many of those sale items as possible. It meant a lot of switching between ads, recipe searches and my list.
I kept thinking there had to be a better way. Why couldn't one tool help me connect the deals with recipes I actually wanted to make?
The solution I couldn't find
I assumed somebody had already created it. I searched online for a tool that would start with the weekly sales and help me plan meals around them. I couldn't find one that did what I needed.
That's when I decided to build the solution myself. I knew it would help with my own grocery planning, and I figured plenty of other people were dealing with the same problem.
I am not a developer
Here's the part where I should say something like "so I hired a team" or "so I raised some money." I didn't. I don't have either of those things and exactly zero experience writing code or developing a website. I work a normal job. I'm in the Navy Reserve. I have a family. And I have about an hour every night, after everyone else goes to bed, to work on whatever project I thought would take 2 days but is now in week 3!
What I did have was an AI coding assistant.
I started asking Claude questions like "how would I pull grocery store weekly ads" and "what's an API" and "how do I make a website." For the first couple of weeks I didn't know what I was doing at all. I broke things constantly. I'd describe what I wanted, get code back, copy-paste it, watch it fail, and then ask why it failed. Over and over. Night after night.
Slowly, it started working. First a simple page that pulled Kroger deals by zip code. Then ALDI. Then a way to generate recipes from the sale items using AI. Then the rest.
I want to be clear: I didn't build this the "right" way. A real developer would look at the code and have opinions. But it works, and it works for real families. And that's what matters.
What it does now
Enter your ZIP to find available deals from supported stores near you. Choose the quick five-meal plan and set your store, household size, budget target and dietary preferences. Or browse the deals yourself and choose the ingredients you want to cook with.
Dishcount generates recipes around those deals, with ingredients and cooking instructions. Add what you need to your shopping list. With a free Dishcount account and a connected Kroger account, you can review matching products and send them to your Kroger cart.
That's it. There's no app to download. No sign-up required to try it. No "premium plan." It's free because I wanted to build the thing I'd needed, and then it felt weird to charge people for it.
What I've learned
Two things, mostly.
First, the barrier to building something has never been lower. If there's a problem in your life that you wish somebody would solve, and nobody has, the tools exist right now to let you try. I'm not saying it's easy. It was hard. But it was possible, and a year ago I wouldn't have believed that.
Second, the best time to build something is when nobody's watching. No investors. No deadlines. No pressure to monetize. Just a problem you cared about and the stubbornness to keep poking at it until it worked. That's not a bad way to spend your evenings.
If Dishcount helps your family even a little, that's what it was for. And if you've got feedback — good, bad, or "hey this is broken" — I'd love to hear it. There's a contact form on the site and it goes straight to me.
Plan meals from deals near you → Free to use, with no account required.