Dinner Done Fast

Dinner Done Fast turns saved recipe inspiration into a cooked meal in under 30 seconds.

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Dinner Done Fast Inspiration

Millions of people save recipe videos every day — but very few actually cook them.

Scrolling creates inspiration, but not execution. The gap between “that looks amazing” and “dinner is on the table” is friction: unclear ingredients, missing groceries, no plan, and overwhelm.

The Eitan Bernath brief made the problem clear: How do we turn saved inspiration into a real, cooked meal?

Dinner Done Fast was built around one guiding metric:

Time to Ready (TTR)<30 seconds Time to Ready (TTR)<30 seconds

If a user can go from link → grocery list → plan in under 30 seconds, the probability of actually cooking increases dramatically.

Our mission was simple: eliminate friction and make cooking inevitable.

What It Does

Dinner Done Fast converts any saved recipe link or idea into an actionable plan.

In under half a minute, users can:

Paste a recipe link or description

Generate a structured recipe card

Create an aisle-grouped grocery list

Mark items they already have

Enter step-by-step Cook Mode

Log their finished meal with a photo

No accounts. No social feed. No distractions.

Just execution.

How We Built It

The app was built as a mobile-first experience using:

React + Vite for fast iteration

React Router for clean screen navigation

Local persistence for recipe data, grocery lists, and cook history

RevenueCat for subscription-based monetization

We implemented a freemium model:

Free users: 5 imports per month + limited cooking history

Pro users: unlimited imports and unlimited history

The import counter resets monthly using a simple calendar key:

monthKey=YYYY-MM monthKey=YYYY-MM

When the 6th import attempt occurs within the same month, the paywall triggers deterministically.

This structure allowed us to:

Keep the demo reliable

Ensure monetization is visible

Maintain a frictionless user flow

We also added demo recipes so the experience never depends on unpredictable URL parsing during judging.

Challenges We Faced

  1. Reliability vs. AI Fragility

Recipe parsing from arbitrary links can fail. To ensure demo stability, we built fallback flows and preloaded structured recipes.

  1. Monetization Without Friction

Subscription gating must encourage upgrade without interrupting core usability. We had to carefully choose limits that felt motivating but fair.

  1. Avoiding Feature Creep

It’s tempting to add:

Social features

Grocery delivery integrations

Accounts and cloud sync

We intentionally did not.

Focus wins hackathons.

What We Learned

Inspiration is cheap. Execution is valuable.

Reducing friction has a larger impact than adding features.

A clean core loop beats complexity every time.

Monetization must feel like an upgrade, not a punishment.

Most importantly, we learned that turning passive scrolling into action requires ruthless simplicity.

What’s Next

Future improvements could include:

Pantry scanning for smart substitutions

Smart ingredient scaling for families

Creator integrations

Shared meal planning

But the core principle will remain:

Inspiration→Action Inspiration→Action

Dinner Done Fast transforms saved content into real meals.

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