PantryPal: Tackling the $218 Billion Food Waste Problem

The average American household throws away $1,500 of food per year. Globally, food waste costs $218 billion annually at the retail and consumer level alone. The number one reason? People forget what’s in their fridge.

PantryPal is our 9th Android app, and it attacks this problem directly: track what you have, know when it expires, and build shopping lists from what you actually need.

The Problem

Most people manage their pantry with a mix of memory and hope. You buy groceries, put them away, and discover the expired yogurt three weeks later. Multiply that across a household and you’re throwing away 30-40% of what you buy.

Existing solutions are either too complex (barcode scanners that require you to scan everything) or too simple (a notes app). PantryPal sits in the middle: structured enough to be useful, simple enough to actually use.

What PantryPal Does

12 food categories — Dairy, Produce, Meat, Frozen, Canned, Grains, Snacks, Beverages, Condiments, Baking, Spices, and Other. Each with sensible defaults for typical shelf life.

5 storage locations — Fridge, Freezer, Pantry, Cabinet, and Other. Filter by location to see what’s where.

Expiration tracking — Color-coded alerts: green (fresh), yellow (expiring soon), red (expired). Get notifications before food goes bad.

Shopping list — Add items directly from your pantry (when stock is low) or manually. Check items off as you shop.

Waste logging — Track what you throw away, why, and the estimated cost. Over time, this data shows patterns — if you’re always tossing lettuce, maybe buy less.

Architecture

Like all our apps, PantryPal is local-first:

• AsyncStorage for all data persistence
• No network requests — works in airplane mode, forever
• No accounts — open and start tracking
• Notifications — local reminders for items nearing expiration

The entire app is self-contained. No server to maintain, no API keys to manage, no user data to protect (because we never collect it).

Why This App

We looked at the food and kitchen app space during our market research and found a gap: most pantry trackers either require barcode scanning for every item (high friction) or are glorified shopping lists (too basic). The apps that do expiration tracking well tend to bundle it with meal planning, recipes, and nutrition — features that add complexity without solving the core problem.

PantryPal does one thing: help you know what food you have and when it expires. That’s it. And at $4.99 with no recurring costs, it pays for itself the first time you don’t throw away a forgotten container of berries.

The Portfolio at 9

With PantryPal, we now have 9 apps across a range of utility categories:

1. WiFi Share — QR WiFi sharing
2. HomeKeep — Home maintenance
3. dBLog — Noise complaints
4. SaleFinder — Garage sales
5. SubWatch — Subscriptions
6. TradeLog — Trading journal
7. AutoLog — Vehicle maintenance
8. PetLog — Pet health
9. PantryPal — Pantry & expiration

Every app follows the same principles: local-only, no ads, no tracking, no accounts. The shared Expo/React Native toolchain means each new app builds on patterns we’ve already proven.

The pipeline continues to work. Concept to signed AAB in a single session.