GroceryZen App Reviews

I have tried dozens of grocery list apps, and no other comes close to the elegance and simplicity of this - everything else is super busy and cluttered with extraneous junk or has a poorly designed or just goofy interface. This one works flawlessly with minimal effort and is a pleasure to use.

I love this app and have so many lists. It’s disappointing that is no longer works after the update.

I absolutely love this app but some reason it’s not working with the latest iOS 14.2 update. I’m really hoping the the developer will keep this app up to date so I can continue to you use it! I customize everything & have a lot of recipes which I would hate to lose. I’m crossing my fingers this would be fixed!!

Please update! I love this app and now I can’t use it!!

So simple, easy to make your own recipes and lists. And easy to send list to hubby!

Love the app but there have been no updates for years! What's up guys??????

I have used and depended on this app for years. It's just right. I can check off items I need plus add ones not on the list or customize with brand names like the type of bread. For some of my regular recipes I have added the ingredients with the quantities and a photo. Then when I'm going to make that, I just choose that recipe and it also was up on my shopping list. You can then take off any ingredients you already have. I've also created a couple of specialty stores that I go to for special ingredients. I open GroceryZen when I'm in the store and check things off is it going to my basket. I highly recommend this app. In this day of increasingly complex apps, this one is simple and elegant.

I love this app, but the iOS 7 version is less visually efficient. Please put some grey in the aisle headings to separate them from the items listed!!! The white really confuses my eyes and frustrates me. I can't fast scan items in aisles. It looks like one long list. I understand you wanted to be cohesive with iOS 7, but it's not functional. Overall, it meets my needs in a way that a paper list can't. My phone is always with me so I can always add items when I have a random thought about something I want to buy. I live how editable the item list is. I created a Trader Joe aisle so I have a TJ shopping list as well as a grocery store list. I love that it sorts my shopping list by aisle! My trip through the store was so efficient before this white design change.

One of my favorite apps! Saves time and I save my recipes so it helps me pick out what I'm going to make for the week! No more forgetting an ingredient

This app is awesome for so many reasons! I like selecting the items as opposed to typing each of them out. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE that I can email the list. I email it to my husband from time to time and all he has to do is import it. AMAZING!! I never grocery shop without it! I would rank 5 full stars if they would make an iPad version. Right now I run the iPhone version which is adequate, but you know... Also, cloud functionality would be awesome for my lists so I don't have to email them to myself if I make a list on my iPad and just take my phone grocery shipping. Great product!

I keep coming back to this app. It is still the only grocery/recipe app that runs off of a database of ingredients, which makes adding your own recipes very quick and easy. Most other apps just give you a text box to write the ingredients in. That is tedious. I hope the developers will resume working on this app. Features I'd like to see: High res graphics Item combination in grocery list: i.e. one recipe calls for 2 onions, another for 1, the grocery list says "3 onions". Cloud syncing for backups. I lost all of my recipes once with this app. Still debating entering them all in again.

I agree with other reviewers. Need to be able to alphabetized isles. I am like most other I shop in the same sequence. So if I could put the isles in my stores order, that would be great. I find myself missing isles because it was so far down the list. I use this ap all the time. Looking forward to an update!

Alphabetize please!!!! Like others, I use the "recipes" as sub-lists and add aisles for different stores. I add to it throughout the week and use it every time I shop. It's a 3.5 stars. Alphabetization would make it a 5.

I've tried about every grocery app and this one works best for me but it's still pretty terrible. Grocery apps seem so simple and there are so many why are they all so weak? I like that you can create your own master list of items easily so you don't have hundreds of things in the main list you'd never ever buy. Searching for items is great. The killer feature is the "recipe" feature but this is poorly named. It's really sub-lists. So you can have a recipe of things you normally buy every week and you can easily go through that list and add what you are out of. Or quickly add all the ingredients of a dish you're going to make. The biggest problem is the incredibly, no, amazingly, awful way it handles quantities. You can advance the quantity forward by tapping the quantity of an item. But if your default is 3 then it advances by 3s (one tap = 6), if your default is 1 1/2 pounds one tap gets you to 3 pounds. Any other quantity change (including removing from your shopping list) requires going to an edit screen and selecting quantity and then saving. And then the app often erases the aisle info for that item. Developer responded quickly to say I was wrong about this bug. When I gave them step-by-step instructions that always recreate it they didn't respond. I don't know if it's been updated in months. If so the changes were minute. Basically it's useful but obnoxious but still the best in a surprisingly weak class of apps.

I love the ability to select a recipe & add to list. I use this feature as I use weekly menus containing recipes or when I am at the store and need ideas, or when I find an ingredient on sale and want to use it for one of my recipes. I also use recipes to list items I buy at specific stores (i.e. Health food store, etc.) and I have a recipe "Every" for basics to get every shopping trip. My couponing method is to separate coupons by month, so I have month "recipes" with ingredients that I have coupons for that expire that month. Here's the catch, I would like to see a program upgrade that flags the ingredients that I have coupons for so that when those ingredients are added from a meal recipe or store recipe, I will be able to see I have a coupon and should pull it from my file. Right now I add a dollar sign to the name of the ingredient as my flag, but it can disappear with long ingredient names. I also will second the request for some way to handle long lists of recipes. Perhaps the ability to search that narrows the field with each letter entered?

1. There is no undo- so if you press an item on your list it disappears forever. What if you click on something accidently- and you are not sure what you clicked and an important item disappears forever? You would never even know it..... 2. It doesn't display the whole recipe line by line, if one ingredient is more characters than the line you cannot read the whole thing!! 3. It is hard to read recipes for said reason. This was a waste of time to set up, and of money to buy!

Love this app and use it all the time. I cut and paste recipes into all the time and use it for every trip to the grocery store. One thing that would make it even better though, is if I could catagorize my recipes: main dishes, holidays, side dishes, etc. I now have so many recipes, it takes awhile to sort throught them all. :) Thanks for a great app though!

I have compared a lot of the shopping apps in the App Store and this is by far the best - at least for my needs. Yes, there are apps out there with more features but a lot of them suffer from feature bloat. It might make sense to add prices and aisles and coupons and stores - but honestly, when you are in the store shopping for groceries you don't really have the time for all that stuff. I want to get things done in a fast, easy and efficient way and this app is the best. It's also the only one that passed the SOT (Significant Other Test). When you are shopping with your spouse (who might not be as technically inclined as you are) you gotta be quick on your feet. Add items, lose items, change items - and you better do it quickly. This app might not look the part but it is well thought out and it really shines in the store. And that's what matters. Plus: the recipe function rocks! There are three things though that prevent me from giving it five stars. I am not sure if it is actively developed - that's a big downside in my book. And it's not that great outside the store. I'd love to fine-tune my list of items at home before my next shopping trip. In my study I do have the time to really think about my items and group them accordingly. A web-based client to re-arrange and edit my items and recipes would be awesome. Of course you would need some sort of syncing solution for that - but this ties in nicely with my other caveat: emailing my lists is nice - but instant syncing would be so much better. There are other apps that do this. I'd love to sync my current list, my general list of items AND their categories with a web-based version AND with my significant other. That way we could shop in the same store and spread out and see what the other already got. Or I could go shopping and my wife could check her iPhone at home and add missing items that she just thought of. The app - as it is - is great. If you ask me, it's the best. But syncing would make it really awesome.

I am only seeing three photos of recipes. Only bought for a pairing with food52, any suggestions on why this app seems so empty?

This app has been such an amazing tool to simplify my grocery lists. I entered my recipes and can add all the needed ingredients with just one tap. I love that you can completely customize your shopping list by rearranging aisles and adding new aisles. It won't add the same ingredient from separate recipes if the measurement types are different (cup vs ounces) but it is a minor complication. It would be helpful to catagorize recipes (appetizers, main dishes, desserts, etc) for simplified searching but even without that feature this app has been a life saver!

This is just how I think for grocery lists. I looked at a lot of other options too. If you want something simple this is it. If you need prices and coupons etc, this is not it for you. My only complaint is that it's a little too sensitive crossing things off the list. Sometimes, I just want to scroll through the list and it will check off an item instead.

It's not clear if this app is still beibg activly developed - but it should be! I think it is very well designed and it really helps me get my shopping done quickly. We have saved many many hundreds of dollars by shopping more deliberately. Two features I'd like to see: - Undo when checking off items in list (now you have scroll way down to find item) - Ability to more easily adjust quantity on list. Now touching number increments one higher - but just as often I want to go lower. Using the edit function is cumbersome. How about touching number gives you choice of quantity? Hope the developer stays with this.

Love this app. Needs some tweaking: add more default items and/ or let us save added items to default list. "clear all" for shopping list w/o removing from default list. Good concept, though.

I love this app. It allows me to save recipes and add ingredients to my grocery list. I made a recipe for common items so that I could keep track of my staples. I do wish it had a menu planner. It just needs to be basic. It could even be a weekly list that I could create right from my recipe list. Right now I'm going to notepad to keep a list of my recipes for the week. I wish I didn't have to switch apps.

I suggest this app to everyone. Even my dad, who just got an iPhone because he's typically the quick shopper of the couple. My best friend and I can email recipes to each other to our apps. I can email the grocery list to my husband. Really I love it.

I love this app & have used it for over a year! I wondered if there could be a away to attach a price to the item or maybe have some sort of calculator in this app? Currently I flip back & forth between my zen list & the calculator app. Sometimes it's a pain. Also, not all of us have fancy camera phone models to be able to scan bar codes & whatnots. Anyways love this app a bunch!!!

Ok so this is my second review. I still love love love this app. In the over a year that I've been using it, it's still my fave. I have entered so many recipes at this point that scrolling was becoming pretty cumbersome. My solution is to email my recipes from Grocery Zen to myself and keep them in a "recipes" folder in my email, subsequently deleting them out of my grocery zen. Each week I go through the email folder, pick out what I might want to cook and just hit "add to grocery zen" for these recipes. As I make the items, i use my phone as a reference and when done I delete the recipe from Grocery Zen. I then repeat the following week. (hope that makes sense, not nearly as confusing as it sounds). This allows me to easily search by ingredient, index by type of dish, and avoid arduous scrolling (all using email). My grocery zen stays neat and tidy and totally useful. My latest wish- I would love to see a forum out there where fellow grocery Zen users could share their recipes. The "email this recipe" and "add to grocery zen" buttons make sharing so easy. Off to cook my chicken butternut tagine! Thanks again, fellas!

Was waiting for a quantity option in a shopping list. Plus this has a simplified search and recipes and let's me organize the store aisles to match my store's layout. You did good, and I reward you with my money.

I've used this app since it came out and I love it. No more wandering all over the grocery store because I forgot the bananas and I am already in dairy. I have also compiled my grocery list out and about using the recipe function and it means no forgotten items. Once last week I was finishing up at an appointment, thinking about what I wanted to make for dinner. I was able to choose from the list of MY OWN recipes and get a list with every item needed with one tap. I can add and arrange items based on the flow of the store I shop at and even add other stores, like the farmer's market. I feel like this application was made for me! I love the new feature where I can email the list to my husband and have him do the shopping with his iPhone.

This is a nice grocery list, easy to add items and I love the add from recipe feature. I'd love to be able to have a separate list for different stores - does anyone shop at "just one store"? One other feature I'd like - it's not exactly zen, but very practical - I'd like to be able to add prices. Being able to track prices for comparison shopping would be lovely, and the ability to keep a running total before heading to check out would be fantastic to help me stay in my budget.

Decent app but needs ability to plan menus for the week and build shopping list from that.

I really am enjoying this application - so much so that I have made it one of my four favorites on the bottom of the iPhone screen. It replaces all my old paper grocery lists that would get lost in the bottom of my purse and keeps me on track when shopping.

This app tries but fails to deliver the goods. Comes with only 3 recipes. Thousands of default items are missing. Building a recipe permanently stores "don't have" items into memory causing the shopping basket to fill up with hundreds of mixed-recipe items. There is no "clear all" from the shopping list. Gave up after struggling with 3 recipes. Discovered it was useless.

I wrote a review the other day and included some suggestions but now I don't see it. I did hit send--shouldn't it publish instantly? What happenned? I think my suggestions were really good and I don't want them to be lost!

I have used this app for over a year and really like it. True - you have to add a few things to your list up front but once your usual staples are in there it goes pretty easy week by week. I can usually make my weekly grocery list for a family of 4 in about 5 mins or less and once I get to the store I rarely have to back-track. That's saying a lot considering I am a guy. My wish list: 1- categorized recipes, 2-synchronization to a backup.

Every so often I browse the app store to make sure that there isn't a new app that does a better job than the one I have. None of the other grocery apps let you add recipe ingredients with the same ease as this one does. I can customize my lists by using all caps or adding asterisks to names of items for different categories (all caps means buy organic etc...). Suggestions for updates would be to allow recipes to be added from other online sites, for example if I see a recipe I like on Food Network, I could click to add it to my GZ list. It would also be helpful to be able to upload or import from another source. Any thoughts of creating a website and allowing data entry there and syncing with iPhone? I am wondering how hard would it be to add the ability to add prices and track list/recipe total costs? Overall, great app. Easily customizable, easy to use and really helpful. Makes a dreaded task almost fun. Erin

I've entered more than 300 recipes and have also made a "recipe" that includes all of our regularly purchased items (e.g., garbage bags, eggs, milk, laundry detergent, etc.). Easy to use, easy to share (sending grocery list or recipe to someone else), and exactly what I was hoping for from the description. I would love to also have an "appendix" type tab where I could click on broccoli, bring up the list of recipes that use broccoli, then click directly to a recipe to add all of the ingredients. You can almost do this now if you edit the "items" list, each item will show you which recipes it's in - just a little cumbersome now. All in all, glad I spent the money!

Great app, but would love to be able to sort list by category instead of alphabetical. I want to be able to put all my cereals in without having to jump all through the alphabet. Please!!!! Thanks.

This is an efficient app and I really like the concept and structure. As others have said, the ability to import recipes would make this much better though. I'm also dissappointed with the limited existing list of items. For the 2 recipes I've entered so far, I've had to manually add 4 common items (onions, pineapple, etc.). I'm glad I bought this, but there's room for improvement.

I use this everyday and it has made grocery shopping so much easier & faster. No more paper notes! Only suggestion would be for Recipe tab - need to be able to import recipes. No way I'm going to spend the time typing in all of my recipes!

Input some recipes into the proram: added the recipe items to the shopping list within the program; deleted items from the shopping list (because we had those items in the pantry) and in the process deleted the items from both the master item list and the recipe list. Did anyone actually try to use this app before selling it? How do I get a refund?

This has helped so much with eating in as opposed to dining out. When I'm at the grocery store I can browse recipes and make sure I get all that I need. Very easy to use -- and addictive.

I put my menus/regular meals in receipes. Touch items I need, Great! Now I come home from groc with several complete meals. Customize the list for one touch items. Love this app.

This is the best so far for customized grocery lists and recipes, but PLEASE add a way to "track" what recipes you've added to grocery list and add folders to organize recipes! Other than that, love it!

This app is surprisingly versatile, given some imagination. A "recipe" is just a group of items (with associated quantities). So I have a "recipe" for "Trader Joe's Run". It's just all the stuff I usually buy there. By selecting that one recipe, I've got my shopping list! And if I don't need a particular thing, I just check it off as if I bought it! Super simple. I shopped with my iPod Touch in one hand, and the basket in the other. I BLEW through the store. It's a great one-handed app. It's GREAT that this app has lots of grocery items already built into it. You don't have to enter them all. When you are shopping, the items are sorted in Aisle order. Very handy. Re-ordering the Aisles is a bit tricky. You go to Items Edit (choose an item), then Aisle, then Edit. You can then order the Aisles any way you want! My wish: that I could have a different aisle-order for each store, and be able to tell the app what store I'm in! Developers: please don't overcomplicate this app. Right now it's in a sweet-spot. Just add my one feature, and it'll be perfect! :-) Great app!

Until this app gets more functionality than notes or can import recipes (it comes with 3) save your money. I'd be more forgiving if this had an awesome feature such as being able to store what items you have at home and compare that to a recipe and tell you what to shop for, but it doesn't. It takes the entire list for a recipe. It also has an the odd feature that tells you when you need a vacation. If you have to use the item location to remember that milk is in dairy it's personal day time.

I am thoroughly enjoying this app. I cook most every night and often find myself at work with no dinner planned. With this app I can choose to make a favorite recipe with the risk of forgetting that one crucial ingredient. Thanks to this app, I will be ordering out less ;)

Great app. I use it all the time. I never write a shopping list anymore.

I thought it would be easier to get more. If there is a way, I'm not sure how to do it.