Mealime meal planning.

Start with the week you have.

Mealime’s official notice announces closure on 21 October 2026. Pro features are now open to everyone, and its catalogue and planning tools continue in free Meals Hub through Albertsons Companies apps and websites. Use this guide to understand the Mealime builder and carry the routine forward. For recovering an existing menu, see the separate meal-plan guide.

Before opening a recipe library, look at the evenings ahead. Mark the night you get home late, the meal someone else will cook and the evening you already have plans. A quick dinner belongs on the busy night; a recipe with several pans can wait.

Write down how many people will eat each meal. Use that number when checking ingredients instead of assuming the serving size is the same all week.

Set preferences before building.

Mealime’s preference guide, updated 29 July 2019, places these controls under Settings → Eating Preferences. It says changes take effect when you create a new plan, not by rewriting the current one. Review the individual recipes already scheduled if a requirement changes midweek.

Choose the meals together.

Use the manual builder for dinners you already have in mind.

1. From Meal Plan, start a new plan. The 2019 help calls this New; the later getting-started guide calls it Start Your Next Meal Plan.
2. Browse recipes or open the search icon for keywords and filters.
3. Tap a recipe to preview it; tap its + icon to add it.
4. Open the button showing your selected meal count, review the selection and servings, then choose Build this Meal Plan.

The 29 July 2019 builder guide documents the sequence and resulting grocery list. Its button called “checkout” reviews your selected meals; this step builds a plan, not a paid grocery order. The same-day mobile preview guide describes checking cookware, ingredients, instructions and nutrition before choosing a dish.

Use the automatic builder for suggestions—or combine both.

The 3 December 2020 guide documents Build a perfect plan: choose a meal count, review the suggested set, swipe left for another set and build the one you want. It also describes choosing favourite recipes manually first, then opening the automatic builder to fill the remaining places while keeping those selections. Its top-right What’s in my fridge option supplies ingredients to use up. These are dated navigation references; final-version labels may differ.

Start with a few dishes you know people will eat. Add something new where there is time to cook it. Then look across the recipes: could the remaining spinach from one meal go into another? Will an opened tub or bag be used again?

You do not need every dinner to share ingredients. A little overlap helps, but variety and a plan people want to follow matter too.

To reuse favourites, the 12 October 2020 guide documents planner search → Your Favorites under Suggestions. That filter only shows dishes matching current eating preferences. A favourite missing there may still be in the main Favorites section.

The selected recipes require eight portions in total, with the larger batch assigned to one recipe. Mealime’s getting-started guide documents reviewing individual serving sizes before building; the weekday assignments above are your own planning notes. You do not need five new recipes simply because five evenings appear on the worksheet.

Check the grocery list before you leave.

Combine the ingredients, then compare the list with your fridge and cupboards. Check the units carefully: one can, one serving and a weight are not interchangeable. Think about the pack you can actually buy and what you will do with anything left over.

A budget estimate helps you plan, but the total at the store depends on prices, pack sizes and the products you choose. Recheck expensive items before committing to a basket.

Give yourself room to change a meal.

Keep an easy fallback in mind. If an evening changes, swap the planned meal and check whether you still need its ingredients. Save the dish you skipped for another week.

For an already-built Mealime plan, the 29 July 2019 editing guide documents Meal Plan → More → Edit this plan. Rebuilding replaces recipe-generated grocery entries; personal additions carry over, and completed entries may need checking again. If you have already shopped, compare the revised list with what you bought. The grocery-list guide explains those changes.

For the same recipe catalogue after closure, Meals Hub supports browsing, planning and lists even without a nearby Albertsons Companies store. Some preferences need to be set up again. If you prefer assembling a collection of selected recipes, compare that workflow separately; MealPot app import requires Pro, while the browser’s recipe backup remains a separate TXT/JSON download.

Common questions