Mealime will be discontinued on October 21, 2026, according to its own closing page (mealime.com/closing). Personal plans, favorites, and lists are removed when the app closes. The recipe catalog moves to Meals Hub inside Albertsons Companies’ store apps. The page does not describe a way to export your own favorites, plans, or lists. That is the news. This is the plan.
The details
October 1 opens Awareness week in a short runway: three weeks until the old planner goes quiet. Official facts only — mealime.com/closing — no rumors, no victory lap. If your house lived in those favorites, Oct 21 is not a soft sunset. It is a blank fridge unless the week already has names.
What does not change: somebody still has to answer “what’s for dinner?” after the app stops answering. Saving screenshots helps (do that if you haven’t). Alternatives lists help some people. Neither is today’s beat. Today is the calendar: start the shared week now, while the house can still see a plan that survives the shutdown.
What it means at your table
Picture the kitchen table with a blank “This week” notepad and a sticky that says the old planner closes Oct 21. Phone face-down. Nobody has voted Tuesday. That blank is the real risk — not the missing recipe carousel.
Tip culture will try to fix this with more recipes. Cute. Meanwhile the house never put a week on the wall, so Oct 21 becomes solo scramble with three people watching and one tired adult inventing dinner theater from a photo roll.
This week’s move
One time-bound practice for Awareness Day 1:
Theme → household vote → approve → one aisle-grouped list.
Pick a light theme the house will eat (skillet week, sheet-pan nights, pasta + protein — whatever already matches how you cook). Put options where people can see them. Vote. Approve once. Then let the list hold only the dinners you already named. After approve, say one already-voted weeknight out loud: Tuesday is the sheet-pan thing. One named dinner that matched the vote beats Oct 21 blank-fridge panic.
If you still need to screenshot keepers, do that in the same sitting — then put the shared week on the wall so the screenshots have a job.
Foodoodle is a free household meal planner built for that shared week — theme, vote, approve, aisle-grouped list. Free during beta, no card, browser first. It is a helper, not a guarantee. It is not an official Mealime replacement and cannot import Mealime data. It will not cook for you or invent a savings percent. Try it at https://foodoodle.com when the house is ready to see the week together.
Optional soft walkthrough (help asset, not an official handover): https://muse.ai/s/mealime-switch-kit-xqg5xgxixd27xj8xc
What’s the one weeknight your house will still eat after October 21 — and have you named it out loud yet? Tell us in the comments.