Meal Planning Features for Every Host
Time To Plate is a recipe management software and event meal planner built for people who cook for others. From holiday dinners to weekly family meals, these features keep your kitchen organized and your guests happy.
Appliance-Lane Scheduling
The core differentiator. Every appliance in your kitchen profile becomes a lane on the cooking timeline. The scheduler assigns tasks to the right appliance, ensures no lane is overbooked, and plans backward from your target serve time. Whether you have one oven or three, a stovetop, grill, smoker, slow cooker, or air fryer, the scheduler treats each as a resource with its own capacity. If a conflict arises, you get a plain-English explanation and a suggested fix.
Guest Dietary Intelligence
Create guest profiles with allergen information (severity levels included) and custom avoid-ingredients for preferences like religious restrictions or personal dislikes. During menu planning, the system warns you about potential conflicts so you can adjust recipes before cooking day. Tree nuts and peanuts are tracked separately. Allergens are always warn-and-allow, never hard-blocking, so you stay in control.
Meal Templates & Reusable Events
Build reusable templates for recurring meals: weekly family dinners, holiday traditions, summer BBQs, or your signature dinner party menu. Each template captures recipes, appliance assignments, and timing. When you are ready to cook, create an event from a template in minutes, adjust for the occasion, and let the scheduler handle the rest.
Themed Invitations & RSVP Tracking
Send beautifully themed email invitations with unique RSVP links for each guest. Guests can accept or decline, set their party size, and leave a message without needing an account. Track responses, headcount, and messages from your dashboard. Auto-reminders go out before the RSVP deadline.
Cook Mode & Live Now View
When it is time to cook, switch to Cook Mode for a distraction-free, step-by-step experience optimized for tablets and phones. The Now view shows only the currently active tasks across all appliance lanes, so you always know what needs attention right now. Timers run in the background and alert you when a task is done.
Recipe Management & Import
Create recipes from scratch or import them from a URL. Organize by course, tag favorites, and search across your entire collection. Each recipe stores ingredients, steps, prep time, cook time, and the appliance it uses. Share recipes with family members who have accounts on your plan.
Kitchen Profiles
Define your kitchen setup: list every appliance with its type, capacity, and whether it is indoor or outdoor. Create multiple profiles for different locations (home, vacation house, outdoor kitchen). When weather or equipment issues arise, exclude specific appliances at the event level and the scheduler regenerates your timeline automatically.
Shopping & Prep Lists
Once your event menu is set, generate consolidated shopping lists that combine ingredients across all recipes. Prep lists organize tasks by what can be done ahead of time versus day-of, helping you spread the workload across multiple days.