Feature Focus: Turning Your Pantry into a Recipe Generator
After introducing CoChefy’s story and celebrating its launch, it’s time to talk about one of its core features — the Pantry.
This feature is where CoChefy’s real magic happens: it transforms the ingredients you already have into fresh, personalized recipes with the help of AI.
The Challenge: Cooking with What’s Already There
When we started designing CoChefy, one of the main goals was to help people reduce food waste and simplify everyday cooking.
But we quickly realized something: most people don’t really know what they have at home until they start digging through their fridge.
That’s why the Pantry feature doesn’t just store your ingredients — it helps you talk to CoChefy about them.
You can speak or type what’s in your kitchen — from “I have rice, eggs, and chicken” to “I think I have some veggies and a pan.”
CoChefy then processes what you said, organizes it into your Pantry, and lets you decide which items you actually want to cook with.
Once you confirm, AI gets to work — generating original recipes that make sense for your setup. Each result is freshly created on demand, not pulled from a static database, so no two recipes are ever the same.
How It Works Behind the Scenes
CoChefy’s backend uses a multi-model LLM system that balances quality and cost.
From a technical standpoint, CoChefy’s AI:
- Parses user input (even when it’s messy or incomplete).
- Distinguishes between cookware and ingredients.
- Generates full recipes with steps, estimated times, and imagery.
- Stores everything in the user’s Recipe Book for future access.
Early in testing, we also learned that users don’t always separate ingredients from spices — and neither do LLMs.
To simplify, we removed spices from the Pantry altogether. This made the experience clearer for users and improved AI consistency.
Designing for Real Users
Creating the Pantry flow was as much a UX challenge as a technical one.
People tend to “ramble” when describing what they have, so we designed the interface to feel conversational — more like talking to a smart cooking assistant than filling out a form.
We also made sure users can access their Pantry from anywhere in the app, keeping it a central hub for meal discovery.
What This Means for CoChefy (and for You)
The Pantry is more than a feature — it’s the foundation of how CoChefy helps people cook smarter, waste less, and enjoy the process.
It’s also a great example of how AI-powered UX design can turn a simple idea (“help people cook what they already have”) into a delightful experience.
If you missed the first post in this series, read From Idea to MVP: How We Designed CoChefy Using a Design Sprint and Figma Prototiping to see how it all started.
And if you want to experience the Pantry feature yourself — download CoChefy today and start cooking with what’s already in your kitchen.
Built by 10 Grounds
CoChefy was designed and developed by 10 Grounds, using:
- React Native + TypeScript for the mobile app
- Ruby on Rails + PostgreSQL for the backend API
- Next.js + Material UI for the admin panel
- Gemini + OpenAI for recipe generation and speech processing