I was sick of planning group meals. So I created Kigumi.

Planning a trip with friends, a cruise, or a club weekend is great—until someone asks THE question: “What are we eating?”

And that’s when the trouble starts.

On paper, planning meals for a group isn’t complicated at all. You pick a few recipes, make a shopping list, and you’re all set.

Except that in practice, it’s rarely that simple.

The problem isn’t the cooking

When you’re planning meals for several people, you have to think of everything.

There are those who don’t eat meat, those with allergies, those who hate certain ingredients, and those who eat for two.

You have to find recipes that suit as many people as possible, calculate the right quantities, spread the meals out over several days, and—most importantly—not forget anything when you go shopping.

And of course, things change.

Is someone joining the party? You have to adjust the quantities. Is a recipe not suitable for one person? You have to find an alternative. Are you changing the menu? You have to revise the shopping list.

With every change, you have to redo part of the work.

For a long time, I relied on spreadsheets, shared lists, and messages flying back and forth. It works, but it takes way too much energy for something that should be simple.

And above all, it often ends up falling on just one person.

I wanted to stop worrying about meal logistics

What frustrated me the most wasn’t actually preparing the meals.

I enjoy cooking, and meals are among the best parts of a group trip.

What I wanted to eliminate was all the logistics surrounding it: the calculations, the double-checking, the oversights, the back-and-forth between the schedule and the grocery shopping.

I wanted a tool capable of answering three simple questions:

What can we cook so that everyone can eat?
How much do we actually need?
What do we need to buy for the entire trip?

I couldn’t find a solution that really fit this way of organizing meals.

So I started developing Kigumi.

Kigumi is meal prep designed for groups

It works pretty simply.

You create a trip, specify the number of participants and their dietary restrictions, then build your meal plan from a recipe catalog.

Kigumi helps you identify recipes that work for the group and any problematic ingredients. It also lets you manage substitutions when necessary.

Once the meals are chosen, the quantities are adjusted for the number of servings.

And best of all, all the ingredients are compiled into a single shopping list.

There’s no need to manually add up the tomatoes from three different recipes or recalculate the pasta every time you change the menu.

If the schedule changes, the list updates accordingly.

These are exactly the kinds of small tasks that take just a few minutes each, but end up adding up to hours when you’re planning an entire trip.

What Kigumi has really changed for me

The main benefit isn’t just saving time.

It’s no longer having to keep everything in my head. Today, Kigumi has 110 recipes, all ready to go.
For example:

- Beef Mandi<br>

- Fruit and Cream Cheese Breakfast Pastries<br>

- Apple peanut butter slices<br>

Before, every change to the schedule would trigger a series of questions: Are the quantities still right? Did we forget an ingredient? Is this meal really suitable for everyone?

Today, much of this work is centralized in one place.

I can focus on choosing meals and planning the trip itself, rather than on maintaining a spreadsheet.

And that’s exactly what I was looking for.

A tool born out of a real need

Kigumi wasn’t born out of market research or some grand startup idea.

It’s a tool I started building because I personally needed it.

It’s still in its early stages; there are things to improve, and I’m continuing to develop it.

But it already solves the problem that prompted me to start in the first place: organizing meals for a group without it turning into a second job.

If you organize vacations with friends, workshops, cruises, or group trips, you’re probably familiar with this hassle.

I created Kigumi so we can spend less time making shopping lists and more time enjoying meals together.

And if you’d like to give it a try, I’d really love to hear your feedback.