Considered one of Fireside Show’s most requested options was not too long ago launched: On Might 14, 2025, the Fireside Show lastly launched its built-in meal planning function. I’ve used it for a month now, and it matches in properly with the suite of options I recurrently use to arrange my household.

The Fireside Show is a household administration instrument that helps dad and mom handle their calendars, routines, and to-do lists. It appeared solely pure for the instrument’s companies to incorporate meal planning, however an official function did not exist for over a yr after the product’s launch. After I put in my very own Fireside for the primary time, I did what many different new Fireside homeowners did: I googled “Fireside Show meal planning” to see if I missed the function, solely to seek out feedback and boards with different customers lamenting the shortage of a meal planning choice, together with Reddit threads providing numerous clumsy workarounds. For these contemplating whether or not to purchase a Fireside Show or a Skylight Calendar to handle their household, an built-in meal planner was some extent in favor of Skylight.

However now, the Fireside Show has a brand new devoted tab referred to as Meals (replace your app in case you do not see it; your Fireside ought to replace routinely). The Meals tab serves two apparent capabilities: One, you’ll be able to arrange your loved ones meals for the week and plan your grocery buying accordingly; and two, everybody can know what to anticipate for meals by checking the menu on their very own. It is one other small step for educating independence, which is one in every of my favourite advantages of getting a digital household planner. When anybody has a household query—”what time is observe?” or “what’s for dinner?”—they’re empowered to seek out the reply on their very own.

Credit score: Lifehacker

How my household makes use of the Fireside meal planning function

The Fireside meal planning function has classes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, although I solely use the dinner class. Logging each meal can be too tedious to be useful, however my household is getting within the behavior of brainstorming their dinner solutions over the weekend to plan for the week forward.

Credit score: Lifehacker

Much like the to-do lists and calendar occasions, the meal planning function permits customers to assign the duty to a selected member of the family’s profile, together with labeling the meal with a selected colour, if needed. I usually assign every meal to the broader “Household” label, however I can see a future the place I take extra care to assign every meal to whoever is supposed to prepare dinner that day. After planning dinners for the week, I go to the Grocery checklist and add what I want.

Different meal planning options embrace including an non-compulsory recipe hyperlink and notes for every meal.