Hi Friends! I’m excited to officially announce Butler, the first meal planner and recipe assistant designed to think with you. Butler is coming to the Apple App Store in early January 2026.

This has been in the works quietly for a long time, and I’m excited to finally share what I’ve been building behind the scenes.

Let me quickly back up to last spring, when I kept having a thought that wouldn’t leave me alone:

Cooking isn’t the hard part. It’s everything leading up to the cooking—the decisions, planning, etc.— that gets people.

After 15+ years of writing recipes, creating meal plans, and helping people “eat better,” I realized something important: most people already know how to cook. We just don’t want to think about it every single day.

We all ask ourselves the same questions on repeat: What’s for dinner??!, Do we have the ingredients?, Will this make leftovers?, Is this serving my health goals?!…

… and on and on.

It got me thinking: why does planning food feel like a second job?

That mental load adds up. And despite all the meal planners and apps out there, nothing actually solved this in a way that felt personal, flexible, and realistic for real life.

I searched for months and couldn’t find a solution that I would actually use myself.

So I decided to build the tool I wished existed.

Meet Butler: Your Meal Planning Kitchen Assistant

Meet Butler—a first-of-its-kind meal planning & recipe assistant designed to think with you.

Butler plans food around your preferences, saves you time and money, and adapts as your week changes—handling the planning and remembering so cooking feels easier and more flexible.

Inside Butler, you’ll be able to:

1. Create Unlimited Meal Plans That Fit Your Life

Butler creates 100% customized meal plans tailored to your goals, needs, and preferences. (Yes, even if you have a super specific eating style!)

You can swap meals, adjust portions, or change your plan at any time. Butler adapts instantly, so your plan actually works for real life (not an idealized version of it).

2. Finally Have All Your Recipes in One Spot

Butler brings all your recipes together in one place. Blog posts, saved links, Instagram screenshots, cookbook pages, handwritten family recipes, and more. Everything is organized, searchable, and easy to use.

If you want, Butler can even generate new recipe ideas tailored to your preferences. Need high-protein, but don’t like meat? Hate cilantro? Severe nut allergy? Have an uber-specific eating style? Insert any preference, and Butler will learn and adapt to fit your needs.

3. Build Smarter Grocery Lists That Save You Money

Butler helps you shop smarter and waste less.

It builds grocery lists based on what you’re actually cooking and what you already have on hand. You can set your “always have” items (for me that’s salt, pepper, olive oil, cinnamon, cumin, and a few others) and the grocery list will exclude them if you’d like.

You can even take a quick photo of your fridge or pantry, and Butler will suggest ways to use what you have on hand so you’re not overbuying or throwing food away.

You set your preferences and let Butler do the work. Dietary needs, allergies, likes and dislikes, goals, and more—all accounted for. Want just M-F or all 7 days taken into account? Butler does it. Want a place to import recipes you want to try in the future? Yep, Butler does it. Butler takes it all into account to create meal plans with food you’ll actually want to eat.

Over time, Butler learns how you cook, eat, and plan. After a few weeks and months, it starts thinking just like you—saving you time, money, and effort every single week.

Butler isn’t about perfection or rules. It’s about support.

The more you use it, the better it gets. Most people will use it weekly (or daily if you take advantage of the grocery list feature), but even if you use it once or twice a month, it will get you know you, so next summer you’ll see a suggestion for that awesome salad you loved, and at Thanksgiving you can have all of the recipes you loved from last year ready to go at your fingertips.

Now, let’s talk about AI, because love it or not, it’s here to stay (and when used correctly, it can do WONDERS!).

A Custom Build, With AI Carefully Applied

Butler combines a custom-built algorithm with carefully applied AI to create an experience that feels genuinely helpful, not generic.

This is the kind of AI I believe in. Not flashy. Not noisy. No “slop.”

I don’t want AI to write me poetry or generate recipes I’ll never make. But I do want it to fast-track repetitive thinking and everyday decisions so life feels a little easier. (And yes, I’d happily let AI do my laundry one day, too.)

We didn’t take shortcuts. Every part of Butler was built from the ground up to solve real, everyday food-planning problems.

You’re Invited to Early Access

Because you’re part of this community, you’ll be invited to join Butler at a special early price before it opens to the public.

If you want to lighten your mental load in the new year—and have a plan that truly supports your personal goals—I think you’ll love this.

👉 Join the Butler waitlist here

The app will be released in early January 2026 on iOS (iPhone), with a web-based version and an Android version coming soon.

Thanks for being here, and Happy New Year!

xo,
Elizabeth