Our story
Built for families
who cook together
We are a family of five in Wellington, and we built The Saucery for our own kitchen first. It is the book, the plan and the list in one place, so that nobody has to hold the week in their head.
Meet the founders
Tom & Gini Peck
Parents to three girls, from Karori, Wellington
As parents, we know the weeknight dinner scramble all too well. Recipes scattered across bookmarks, screenshots and dog-eared cookbooks. A shopping list that somehow never has everything you need. And the inevitable 5pm question: “what are we having tonight?”
We built The Saucery because we wanted one place for all of it: our family recipes, a weekly plan that actually works, a shopping list that updates for everyone in real time, and an assistant that knows what we cook and can help when we’re stuck.
What started as a side project to solve our own kitchen chaos has grown into something we’re proud to share. It is built with care, tested at our own dinner table, and designed for real life rather than a cooking show.
Why we built it
We tried dozens of recipe apps
Before building anything, we genuinely tried to find something that already existed. We downloaded every recipe app we could find: the popular ones, the niche ones, the ones with great reviews. Some were good at storing recipes. Some had decent meal planning. A few had shopping lists. None of them did the whole thing.
The recipe-only apps left us copying ingredients into a separate list by hand. The meal planners had tiny libraries and no way to import our own. The ones with AI bolted a generic chatbot onto the side that knew nothing about what we actually cook. And not a single one could tell us what was on special at the supermarket this week.
That last part kept bugging us. We’re a family of five, so groceries are a real line item. We’d plan meals, write the list, then get to the supermarket and discover half the ingredients were twice the price they were last month. Meanwhile the things that were on special sat there unnoticed, because we’d already committed to a plan. It felt backwards.
What we wanted was simple: one app where the family recipes, the weekly plan, the shopping list and supermarket prices all talk to each other. Where you could ask “what should I cook this week?” and get an answer based on your own recipes, what you haven’t cooked recently, and what’s actually on sale. Where photographing a page from a cookbook or pasting a link was enough to add a recipe.
That app didn’t exist, so we built it. The Saucery is the app we wanted to use as a family, and now we use it every single week.
Our mission
Take the logistics out of dinner
Cooking at home should be enjoyable, not stressful. But between managing recipes, planning meals, writing lists and figuring out what to cook, the logistics can take the joy out of it.
The Saucery brings it all together: your recipes, your plan, your shopping list, and a record of what you have actually cooked, the same for everyone in the family. And when you need a hand, Whisp is there, an assistant that has read your book rather than someone else’s.
The assistant
Why “Whisp”?
Because the help you want at 6pm on a Tuesday isn’t a character with a hat and a catchphrase. It’s the steam off the pan: present when something is cooking, gone when it isn’t. Whisp has no face and no backstory. It reads your book, writes on the page, and gets out of the way.
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Knowledgeable
It knows your recipes, your staples and what the family will actually eat. Every answer is grounded in what you cook, not a stranger’s database.
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Helpful
Substitutions, scaling for guests, filling an empty night, checking a price. It does the thinking so you can get on with the cooking.
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There when you need it
Hands covered in flour? Ask out loud. In the supermarket? The list is already updating. At the stove at six? That is exactly when it earns its keep.
What it does
Everything the family kitchen needs
In one app, on iPhone and Android.
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Recipe book
Import from any link, photograph a page of a cookbook, or describe a dish and let it write itself up.
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Meal planning
Plan the week by dragging dinners onto the days, or ask Whisp to fill the gaps.
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Shopping lists
Built from the plan, organised by aisle, and ticking off live for everyone in the house.
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The pantry
What the house always keeps, topped onto the list without being asked, and a standing list of what nobody here will eat.
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Cook mode
Step by step, read aloud, answering to your voice, with timers that know which step they belong to.
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The Lab
Every technique, ingredient, cuisine and piece of equipment you cook with, filed and struck as a badge.
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Grocery prices
Price history on the things you actually buy, and an honest verdict on this week’s specials. New Zealand only, for now.
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Family sharing
One book, one plan, one list, the same for everyone, on every phone, changing as it happens.
Our values
The principles behind it
- Family first
- Built for real families, not professional chefs. Every feature is tested at our own dinner table.
- Save time
- Automate the dull parts of cooking: the planning, the list-making, the nightly decision.
- Save money
- Knowing what things should cost is what turns a meal plan into a cheaper week. In New Zealand, we can tell you.
- Made with care
- Proudly built in New Zealand, for every family that cooks from it.
Get dinner on the table
Download The Saucery on iPhone or Android, or open it in a browser. Free to keep, and every new family gets seven days of Saucery Pass with no card.