Pallet: Smart Meal Planner with Live Kroger API Integration
Joey Musselman · February 1, 2026
My wife and I were spending too much on groceries through Hungry Root. We wanted to shop at Harris Teeter, eat seasonally, and actually save money — but planning meals around what's on sale and in season is tedious work.
Challenge
The app needed to connect to a real grocery store API (Kroger/Harris Teeter) for live product search and pricing, factor in seasonality data for NC Piedmont region produce, generate meal plans that balanced multiple competing priorities (cost, variety, nutrition, user preferences), and send shopping lists directly to a store cart for checkout.
My Role & Contribution
Sole Developer — Full-Stack Development & API Integration
- Built a 5-factor recommendation engine weighing seasonality (0.25), active sales (0.3), variety (0.2), user ratings (0.15), and budget (0.1)
- Integrated Kroger API with OAuth for account linking, product search, and direct cart additions via UPC
- Pre-loaded 45 NC Piedmont seasonal produce items with 4-level availability scoring
- Implemented 23 API routes covering auth, recipes, meal plans, shopping lists, and store integration
- Built recipe import from Hungry Root format for easy migration
Key Technologies
Impact
Working meal planning app that generates weekly plans, auto-creates shopping lists, and sends items directly to a Harris Teeter cart. The recommendation engine surfaces recipes based on what's actually cheap and in season right now, not just what's popular.