Along with listing out the popular menu items, you can now get photos of the food as well as reviews from restaurant patrons to help persuade or dissuade you.
Now, rather than looking up a restaurant on Google Maps, followed by checking the reviews on Yelp, dish-cover streamlines the whole process.
Also, if you are visiting a country that speaks a foreign language, Google Maps has you covered. The app will automatically translate the reviews for you to the language of your choosing.
Now, you can also become a “restaurant critic” yourself. Next time you visit your favorite restaurant, snap a photo of your food, and tell other users why they should order it!
The new feature is available today for Android users, and will be available for iOS users in the coming months.
Start ordering food now with Swiggy Food Order Delivery!
Swiggy Food Order Delivery is one of the top food delivery apps that’s been feeding the people of India for years. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, make sure you check it out!
As we said, Swiggy is very popular in India. Unfortunately, you can’t use the app in the U.S. For that, you’ll need to stick with apps like Grubhub.
Speaking of Grubhub, Swiggy is a lot like it if you’re familiar with it. Like Grubhub, Swiggy finds restaurants in your area and will have food from there delivered to you for a small fee.
When you place your first order on Swiggy, you get a 50% off discount, so make sure you take advantage of that.
There are plenty of deals like this that pop-up, so make sure you keep your eyes peeled. There’s no reason why you should pay more than you have to for good butter chicken.
Once you fill your cart with the food you like, enter your address, payment information, and the necessary delivery instructions. Delivery instructions typically include if you need the driver to bring plastic utensils, napkins, or if you need them to call upon arriving. Once your food arrives, it is time to chow down.
If you’re familiar with the clothing app Myntra, Swiggy is to food what Myntra is to clothing.
If you make a profile with Swiggy, you can store your address and payment information so you don’t need to enter it every single time you place an order.
Hopefully, Swiggy will help you find the best food around. Make sure you let us know what you got for your first order and how it tasted!
Find new local restaurants and become a review lord with Zomato!
Imagine having the food delivery features of Grubhub with the same review system of Yelp. Enter Zomato, the new food-service app that’s changing the game!
When you’re hankering for some take-out or delivery, or if you’re just looking for a new local dive, Zomato can help you!
Just like with Grubhub, Zomato will provide you with a list of restaurants around you. You can narrow down your searches based on what you want to eat, if you want take-out, if you want delivery, or if you’re eating out.
However, unlike Grubhub, Zomato will get you a list of pretty much every nearby restaurant, and not just ones that opt to use the service.
You don’t store credit card or specific delivery information on the app. Instead, you call the restaurant yourself to place your order. You can store your general location so the app knows to frequently search in that area. However, you don’t need to put in your specific address.
Sure, it might take a minute or two longer to place an order than if you used Grubhub, but it is still better than the dark ages of using a phone book. Plus, you don’t have to worry about your credit card and personal information being stolen in a data leak.
Where Zomato really stands out is in the reviews. You can build a review profile for yourself, and add photos, and reviews to the restaurants you frequent.
If you order some tasty baba ganoush at your favorite Mediterranean joint, share a picture and a review for other users to see. If your sushi from a local hibachi grill made you go belly-up, give a one-star review to warn other potential patrons.
Zomato also is a great way to find new restaurants. You can search by what recently opened to find a new local hang for you and your friends. Or, better yet, find out when a new Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts opens near you so you can get a quick coffee for your morning commute.
We can see this app really being of service on date nights. If one of your favorite date spots is too busy or is already closed, this app can help you find a suitable plan B nearby!
If you have some favorite restaurants you want to visit again, you can bookmark them in the app, so you always have them at your fingertips.
Zomato has taken some of the best features of our favorite food-service apps to make a truly great experience for its users. If you’re looking for the ideas of where to eat, we can’t recommend it enough!
Download these apps and get a great meal before your next flight.
You don’t need to be rushing through the largest, most confusing airport in the world to appreciate the simplistic joy of finding a perfect bite to eat before hopping on a flight or welcoming a friend home.
If you’re a foodie, frequent traveler, or average human, we recommend these apps. They can help you find a good airport restaurant, get your meal quickly, and maybe even something more! You probably know about Yelp and TripAdvisor, but the apps we’ve assembled take things a step further.
Grab focuses on exactly what their name implies: helping users order food ahead of time, so they can stop by and pick up their purchase before heading into the terminal.
If you don’t want it to check your location, you can still just choose the proper location. Upon opening the app, find your airport:
Once there, Grab provides a large list of possible restaurants, along with their location. You also have the option to peruse through retail outlets and service stations. That way, when you’re visiting Arizona, you can make sure to get that turquoise bracelet you’ve always wanted!
Among its other strengths, Grab has two more benefits we’d like to note: first, receipts are stored for later so you can track your finances. Second, and more importantly, you have the ability to store your favorite foods for easy ordering the next flight around!
A voyage with Trippie begins like any other: hop into the app and select your departure location.
From here, things become a bit different. Rather than suggesting food right off the bat, Trippie provides a huge litany of resources:
While the app mainly provides information on restaurants nearby, there are many other things this app can do! If you need to know your way around the airport, it can direct you. If you’re looking for a chat buddy, you can join the community, pick a chat handle, and talk anonymously with other people!
The list goes on. If you’re looking for more than food, this airport EXPERIENCE app may be your cup of tea!
But now, let’s return to food…
The food section opens a menu. We’d like to note that every store gets a relatively large picture, limiting your list to about two restaurants per page. You may want to put the Filters option to good use.
Finally, to top off our list, we have a classic food app.
Grubhub wasn’t intended to find food in airports, but it’s great at discovering restaurants anywhere:
Still, despite the ability to find a meal nearby, it may be difficult to have food delivered to you, which is one of Grubhub’s main strengths. You might need to set a meeting point with the delivery driver outside the airport terminal, or even the building itself. The app wasn’t specifically optimized for an airport environment.
Still: benefits of using Grubhub? Before and after reaching your destination, you’ll be able to use a world-class food delivery system! Nothing wrong with that.
If you like Chipotle, their new rewards program will give you free food.
Chipotle is a favorite food destination here at Softonic. The burritos are thick. The chips are crisp. The food is prepared right in front of you. Now, the Mexican chain is offering free food if you join their loyalty app. Here’s how it works.
You’ll get free chips and guac after you use the app and spend at least $5 on your first go. From there on out, your appetite will determine how quickly you get additional rewards. You get 10 points for every $1 you spend. So if you spend $125, you’ll get a free entree.
You’ll also get some free food on your birthday. (Thanks, burrito buddy!)
In a really smart move, the Chipotle app also gives bonus points for trying new menu items or visiting the restaurant during special dates and times. This allows Chipotle to summon its most loyal customers if traffic is light. It also provides an incentive to try (and get hooked) on the new stuff on the menu.
As we poked around the app, the What’s New tab revealed something interesting: food items that are available “online only.”
These preset salad bowls appear new to the menu, so Chipotle probably doesn’t want to slow up their line by having their employees try to remember all of the ingredients. You could certainly assemble these bowls in person – all of the ingredients are already part of the menu – but if you didn’t care about the personalization, you could just mash this button on the app and have the bowl waiting for you.
The app also has a delivery/pickup button prominently displayed, so it’s not hard to set up your preferred option.
Chipotle has been on the rebound since some food safety scandals a few years ago. After hitting a low of $271/share in October of 2017, the stock is trading for $669/share today. If Chipotle can create some added loyalty with this app, the future is bright.
Looking to make your Instagram feed more mouthwatering? Follow these foodies.
Instagram isn’t just a social network. It is a tool that can offer inspiration. Whether it be travel, fashion, exercise, meditation, or motivation, Instagram puts you in contact with inspirational people around the world offering visually appealing bite-size chunks of inspiration.
Food is one of the jewels in Instagram’s crowns and there are plenty of Instagram accounts all vying for your attention by serving up mouth-watering images of the tastiest dishes out there. Come to learn, come to cook, or just come to look. It doesn’t matter. Check out these mouthwatering Instagram accounts.
The best Instagram accounts to follow if you love food are…
Food is art and art is food. You’ll be seeing this truism in your timeline often if you subscribe you _foodstories_. Focusing on nature, including, but not limited to, apple and pear trees, berries, cherries, walnuts, elderberries, fresh herbs, and whatever else grows in their garden Laura Muthesius and Nora Eiserman post beautiful images of the food that they eat and tell the story behind each meal. If anything takes your fancy, you can get your hands on the recipe via their blog.
Delicious and kinda good for you. Katerina from Diethood has come up with some truly scrumptious recipes that both look fantastic and err on the healthier side of the spectrum. There’ll be no melting cheese or deep fat frying found here, but you will get hearty satisfying meals and easy to follow step by step recipes. This Instagram account is all about treating yourself without having to feel guilty about it.
For all you veggies, vegans, and people living gluten-free lifestyles we’ve got the minimalistbaker. Cooking up vibrant veggie platters and spicy Korean vegetarian wings, this Instagram account will make you drool and then realize how hungry you are. As a bonus, all recipes need just 10 ingredients or less and every one of them can be made in a single bowl in 30 minutes or less. If you’re hungry, lazy, and/or vegetarian you should be following the minimalistbaker.
The minimalistbaker branches out beyond mere baking, so if you’re looking for somebody to follow who’ll only bring you scrum-diddly-umptious baked treats, Brian Hart Hoffman is who you’re looking for. Brian is the Editor-in-chief of Bake from Scratch magazine so his personal Instagram account brings you all sorts of incredibly tasty cakes, cookies, brownies, and whatever else you can cook in an oven that tastes good. Warning: Don’t follow Brian if you’re trying to lose weight.
Not all of the best Instagram foodie accounts have thousands of followers. Feelinwhisky is one of our favorite foodies who has just a shade over 1,000 Instagram followers. She focuses on healthy food and easy to follow recipes and knows how to make photos of her food pop. If you’re looking for great recipes for soups, salads, tacos, or treats, give feelinwhisky a follow and join an exclusive club.
Hadley and Bennet make aprons for chefs. This puts Ellen Marie Bennett in a fortuitous position that allows her to travel the world and sample some of the tastiest delights it has to offer. Whether those delights be tacos in Mexico City or brunch in Chicago they’re always tastebud-tinglingly good. As well as all that, Ellen Marie Bennett is a pretty kick-ass cook herself and a really inspiring person to look up to.
The “swimmers” in question are Jill Fergus’ kids. She runs this Instagram account and accompanying blog and realized when her kids started swimming competitively how important nutrition is to performance and overall health. Accordingly, she posts images and recipes of fantastic dishes made from whole and organic natural ingredients. Jill also likes to experiment and embraces her failures as much as her successes so you’ll also find some out there creations that might just pique your interest.
Erin Jeanne McDowell brings another baking Instagram account to our list. She adds something new, however, thanks to her fantastic savory creations like this unctuous deep-dish pizza or this tearable, shareable giant pretzel. She, of course, also cooks up some mind-bendingly beautiful sweet treats, which have will make your mouth water and have your hand subconsciously reaching for the mixing bowl.
Disclaimer! As we approach the end of this list I need to tell you that putting it together has not helped my waistline at all. I’ve been in a constant state of needing to devour good food and the brunchboys have worked me up into that crazy fervor more than most of the other accounts we’ve looked at. This account is not held back by concepts like organic, vegan, or good for you. It is a simple celebration of the fact that some clever bastard realized that my merging lunch with breakfast we basically give ourselves the freedom to have ALL the good stuff on our plate at once. What a treat! Follow these guys and then eat well on every weekend and day off you have for the rest of your life.
Michelle Gatton is a food stylist. Yes, such a job exists. Her job is to make even boring food look amazing, and she does it admirably. You won’t find recipes on this Instagram account, but you will find out just how good food really can look. For all you adventurous gastronauts out there, you might not find step-step instructions here but you will find inspiration by the truckload. Take a look and see what you come up with.
Betty is a photographer. She snaps weddings on the weekend and food during the week. We’re bringing you back to the beginning here as Betty likes to tell stories with her Instagram account about the food in her photos and what that food means. She posts incredible photographs of many different types of food but her main focus is Asian food, due to the fact she grew up eating traditional Chinese food thanks to her mom’s cooking. No less enticing than other of the accounts we’ve featured, Betty’s account will make you think about the food rather than just wanting to put it inside you!
Get smarter, healthier, more productive, and more in shape with our complete guide to self-improvement.
Ever wonder what the difference is between the people who reach their goals and those who merely dream? Those who hit their targets prepared themselves to do so. Here at Softonic, we’re focused on bringing you the best advice and digital tools to achieve any goal. Take a look at the stories we’ve assembled and consider how they can help you start building your tomorrow today!
As we continue publishing articles to make your life better, we’ll add them to this page, so be sure to bookmark it and check back whenever you need a boost.
Need some help in the kitchen? Check out these great apps.
One of the hardest things about adulting is meal planning. The practice requires a daily, weekly struggle to find food options for individual tastes!
Yet, while planning the scheduling and shopping may seem crazy, your efforts will pay dividends: homemade meals are usually tastier, cheaper, and healthier than restaurant fare or instant meals. The downside comes from time spent wondering what to eat!
If you’re looking for better, tastier food and wish to take a bite out of the time spent planning, try these apps! They might just be your golden ticket.
Best meal planning apps
The Options
We have two top apps for your consideration: Mealime and Yummly. These apps stand out because they specifically help users find good recipes, plan a week’s worth of cooking, and compile an entire shopping list for the purpose.
We’ll go through both, explain what they do, and discuss their differences!
Mealime capitalizes on the minimalist theme, with a user interface reminiscent of a well-kept kitchen. Opening the app may remind you of organized cutlery, shining sinks, and impeccably lined spices.
Open the first page of the app and you’re greeted with the Mealime slogan: “Take the Hassle out of ‘What’s for Dinner?'”
Many meal planning apps follow a similar pattern. After signing in, you’ll be directed through a series of windows that gauge your preferences, dietary needs, and desired weight loss/gain. Mealime’s system begins with a roster of classic diets:
Next, they follow with the classic allergies screen. Remember to ask friends, family, and housemates about their allergies if you’re cooking for a group!
After a few more options, the Welcome screen appears, with a diagram that explains the Mealime cycle: choose food each week, use the conveniently created grocery list to shop, and create meals within 30 minutes, one of Mealime’s signature promises.
Looks simple…but how does it work, really?
When you open your Meal Plan, the screen will be empty at first. Click “New” to start!
Opening the meal selector looks something like the picture below. Hit “+” to add whatever looks good to your list!
Pretty homogenous, IMHO.
If you’re looking for something specific and can’t find it, the search menu has options to filter by favorites, price range, calories, and more, including a normal keyword search.
At this point, add all the meals you want to try for the week! For example, if you chose to eat Classic Spaghetti all week, it’ll look like so:
With that step complete, the app automatically fills up your Grocery List. You’re ready to start shopping!
(Remember, as a general rule, don’t run off to the store the moment your list comes together. First, check the fridge and the pantry, checking off anything that’s already there and will be around when you plan to cook.)
By now, you’ve encountered the Meal Plan and Grocery List menus. We’ll skip over Favorites and head right to settings for one last topic… Mealime Premium.
In the settings section, you can change the eating preferences you set earlier. Most options here are available to all users but some – such as “Upload your own recipes” – can only be used by Pro members.
Upgrading to Pro provides a few more benefits, the most pressing of which is the Exclusive Recipes only available with a premium account. The price of $6 a week or $60 a year won’t break the bank, but we recommend checking whether you prefer this app to others before committing.
Welcome to Yummly! Whereas Mealime appears minimalistic, Yummly has all the rich color one would expect from a well-used kitchen: the rich grain of a cutting board, a line of earthy nut jars, or the inside of a freshly cut steak.
From the start, Yummly shows its colors: rather than focusing on just healthy, quick options, it provides suggestions for a much larger range of tastes!
Yeah, that picture is me and m’dog.
Ah, the allergies screen.
Another important option: the disliked foods. If you’re opposed to avocados (Did we just hear a collective gasp from California?), now’s the time to let them know.
Even better, Yummly lets you choose your cooking skill preference! It can be changed later, so don’t feel bad about choosing “beginner” if you’re new to the kitchen.
Based on your choices above, Yummly now brings you to a personally generated option screen, which holds a range of meals. Unlike Mealime each page scrolls up and down like a social media feed. Oooh. Aaah.
To select a food that looks good, hit the “Yum’d” icon. That meal appears on a list for later use! However, they do not immediately show up in the grocery list…
Head to the profile section. Here, you can see all your “Yums”.
To begin adding ingredients to the grocery list, select an individual Yum and hit the menu button. For example, if you’re going to make “Perfect Air Fryer Salmon”…
Yummly now brings up the options: here, you can set the Yum as a Drink, Side, or more. We’re not to the groceries yet…
Hit the Grocery List, which will appears under the menu button, but only after the menu button has been selected:
There the groceries are! Once you’re sure an item isn’t already available at home, add it individually. Or, if everything’s missing, select “Add All” and call it a day.
Now, you’re ready to shop! The grocery list even organizes everything by type, so you can get all your condiment shopping done at once:
So, which one works best? The answer (of course) is: whichever works best for you. In fact, there are a few we left out, but we’ll mention those later. In the meantime, here’s our quick rundown of the important differences.
Mealime will likely work better for those looking to maintain a more healthy lifestyle. It looks simple and refreshing. Their setup options help create a personalized list of quick, healthy meals that are tailor-made for user diets. Their use of favorites makes meal planning easy and simple, but their Pro accounts limit what foods can be chosen, along with other choices.
Yummly aims to help anyone who enjoys food connect with more recipes that fit their taste, whether that means a lean meal or the tastiest homemade burger around town. The interface looks richer, but navigation (and especially grocer shopping) will take longer to figure out. Still, their food photography is hard to beat! Warning: if you choose this app, you may find yourself drawn to new things by the beautiful pictures.
Since we only had time to review two top-tier meal planning apps, there are many more out there which could better help specific users. If you were looking for something similar, but not quite like Mealime or Yummly, you may be seeking one of these awesome apps:
1. Plan to Eat: like Mealime and Yummly, Plan to Eat provides meal choices, recipes, and grocery shopping support.
2. Atkins Carb Counter/Tracker: the Atkins Carb Counter helps track the number of carbs consumed. If you’re looking to hold yourself accountable, the website and app can help you stay on top of things.
4. Lifesum: another excellent app with “diet plans, nutrition advice & healthy recipes.” Huge bonus in our opinion: the user interface looks great! (Yeah, that’ll always be a big thing with us)
5. Weight Watchers: a clear and present classic. Weigh Watchers reigns supreme among dieting apps, especially on the Apple app store where it has a five-star rating with 497k reviews. Dang!
We hope this helps you put together better meals at home, throughout the week. Remember: there’s no need to start making breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. Even professionals may find that kind of schedule exhausting! Some meals just need to be quick.
With that in mind, we recommend planning ahead for just a few meals. For the best results, place them at meaningful times in your schedule: if Wednesday holds four college classes at midday, perhaps set a celebratory dinner that night. Or, to cap off the work week, have something nice on Friday night, or Sunday night before Monday sets in.
The possibilities, and meals, are in your hands. Enjoy them!
Need groceries delivered to your door? Here are our favorite services.
Going to the grocery store is a pain.
A trip to the store means losing an hour or more of time better spent doing, well, anything else.
And don’t forget about the hassle of dragging heavy bags around town when you don’t have a car. There’s a reason that city dwellers love their takeout.
Why spend time standing in line when you can just buy your groceries online? What was once a luxury has become a relatively affordable convenience option—and some services even offer same-day delivery and high-end items—more than canned goods and snack items.
Below, we’ve included a list of home grocery delivery options that can help you free up your time and in some cases, help you save some cash while you’re at it.
Pros and cons of grocery delivery
Advantages of ordering groceries online
Obviously, the convenience factor is the most attractive selling point when it comes to buying food online. People don’t always have the time to make it to the store — and city folk can especially benefit from skipping walks to the store or train rides with brown bags in tow.
Many digital shoppers also like that ordering online makes it easy to stick to a budget and reduces the number of impulse buys made during a trip to the store.
So if you’re prone to picking up junky magazines at the checkout or junky foods in the middle aisles of your local market, shopping online can keep you on track.
Additionally, ordering food online is great for those people who feel rushed at the supermarket. Instead, you’ll get the chance to kick back, browse the virtual aisles at your leisure and create a meal plan based on what’s on sale and in season.
While delivery fees and higher per-item costs are associated with the service, there are a lot of deals out there that may make this process relatively affordable.
Disadvantages
Of course, everything has a downside.
If you don’t pay for a delivery service membership, chances are, you’ll be paying delivery fees each time you buy. Over time, fees can add up. In some cases, delivery services don’t offer everything that the IRL store has on the shelves. Nonperishables are always easy to find, though you might have trouble finding fresh foods on a reliable basis.
Finally, the main disadvantage of online grocery shopping is you don’t get to feel and smell the food up close. A successful produce haul often depends on a sensory evaluation — something you lose when ordering through a site — underripe, bruised, or overripe items can put a damper on even the best-planned meals.
Amazon Fresh is the food delivery service for Amazon Prime members. In general, pricing is better than some of the other options out there—Whole Foods brands are offered at lower rates than in store, and members have access to meal kits, and the option for same-day delivery.
Oh, and there’s the added benefit of ordering through Alexa.
Deals range considerably when compared to what you’ll pay at a conventional grocery store. For example, you might find your favorite chips are cheaper through Amazon Fresh, while fresh foods can cost a bit more than what you’d find in person.
For example, a bundle of scallions is $1.29 and a bunch of organic broccoli goes for $4.48. Non-perishables tend to be a better deal.
That said, the delivery costs are minimal, especially if you order a good chunk of your meals through the site. And while you might spend more on your scallion fix, the produce prices aren’t that much higher than IRL grocery.
Instacart
Instacart’s key benefit is that they source products from several stores such as Costco, Aldi, and even drug stores, but compile all of the items into one interface.
Groceries can be delivered within an hour, so this option is best suited for those who need food in a hurry.
That said, costs tend to be higher than you’ll find with other food delivery services. You’re paying for the personal shopper who can communicate with you via text, as well as the fast turnaround time. We don’t really see this being a sustainable alternative to traditional grocery shopping, but it’s a nice convenience on occasion.
The company has recently introduced a subscription fee for frequent shoppers — $149 annually for free deliveries over $35.
FreshDirect is another great option for those who can’t make it to the market or let’s face it, don’t want to venture out to buy their refrigerator staples.
We’ll say this outright, this company has a relatively small list of delivery areas — catering to NYC, and parts of New Jersey, DC, Delaware, and Philadelphia.
Delivery fees range by metropolitan area, though you can pay for a DeliveryPass, which covers six months or a year of delivery fees for $79 and $129, respectively.
The site offers a ton of discounts and provides food sourced from local farms. Unlike Amazon Fresh — which runs the gamut from junk food to organics and everything in between, FreshDirect has a focus on gourmet items, sustainable proteins, and specialty foods that cater to the vegan, paleo, and gluten-free crowds.
Thrive Market
Thrive Market falls into a slightly different category than the options mentioned above. Thrive delivers healthy options like antibiotic-free meats and sustainable seafood, and makes it easy to shop for specialty items — think Paleo, Vegan, or Keto foods — without breaking the bank. Membership is $59.95 per year and orders over $49 ship for free.
Unfortunately, you can’t find fresh produce on the site. However, discounts on higher-end items like oils, energy bars, and more make the membership worthwhile — discounts average about 25 to 50 percent off retail — so this is a good place to stock up on organic soups, bone broth, and matcha tea that costs an arm and a leg at the local Whole Foods.
Zomato also is a great way to find new restaurants. You can search by what recently opened to find a new local hang for you and your friends. Or, better yet, find out when a new Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts opens near you so you can get a quick coffee for your morning commute.
You’ll also get some free food on your birthday. (Thanks, burrito buddy!)
These preset salad bowls appear new to the menu, so Chipotle probably doesn’t want to slow up their line by having their employees try to remember all of the ingredients. You could certainly assemble these bowls in person – all of the ingredients are already part of the menu – but if you didn’t care about the personalization, you could just mash this button on the app and have the bowl waiting for you.
