WFD vs Mise: a meal plan nobody in the house chose

Disclosure first: we make What's For Dinner?! (WFD). Mise, sold as "mise - meal planner", is a subscription meal plan app from TEGS LABS LTD, whose Google Play developer address is in Bridport, Dorset. It went live on the App Store on 10 June 2026 and on Google Play in August, and it's been turning up on TikTok feeds since. We tried it this month. Everything factual below comes from its own store listings and screenshots, and from dated public reviews on both stores, all fetched on 27 September 2026 and archived. The conclusions are our opinion.

One housekeeping note, because the name is shared. There's a separate recipe app on the App Store called "mise - recipes, simplified", from a different developer, Christian Verhoeven, LLC. Nothing in this post is about that one.

Mise's listing opens with a line we could have written ourselves: "Take the stress out of deciding what to eat." That's our whole reason for existing. So we wanted to know how Mise does the deciding, and who it does it for.

The stars and the reviews tell two different stories

At the time of writing Mise holds 4.6 stars from 860 ratings on the UK App Store, where it sits at No. 9 in Food & Drink, and 4.6 on Google Play, where it's listed as "#4 top grossing food & drink" with over 100,000 downloads. Those are big numbers for an app that's three and a half months old.

Then you read what people actually wrote. Google Play shows 2,837 star ratings, and only 102 of them are one or two stars. But of the 142 written reviews Google Play returned to us, 90 are one or two stars. On the UK App Store feed, 38 of the 81 written reviews are one or two stars. Annoyed people tend to write more than happy ones, so some gap is normal. This one is wide.

Three Google Play reviewers describe where some of the stars come from. "They get you to submit a review during the "set-up" phase, then once submitted, you can't actually use the app unless you pay for a subscription" (Jessica Knop, 1 star, 7 September 2026). "then after it asks you to rate it (originally gave 5 stars), then it hits you with the subscription! At the very end after you spend time putting in your information" (Michael McIntyre, 1 star, 11 August 2026). And: "after setup and asking for a review, before getting first meal plan it presents to you subscription plans" (Grim Cory "Grav" Blank, 1 star, 21 August 2026). If a rating is asked for before anyone has cooked a single meal, then in our view it's a rating of the onboarding, not the dinners.

"Choose from popular UK supermarkets"

That's a line from Mise's listing, and the supermarket is a big part of the pitch. The listing also promises plans built around your "favourite UK supermarkets" and your budget.

Look at the screenshots on its own UK App Store page. The preferences screen shows the country set to "United States" with Aldi as the shop. The plan shows an estimated cost of "$68.82 / $85". The grocery list is in ounces, it calls an aubergine "Eggplant", and it files chickpeas and crispy onions under "Fruit & Veg". That's the picture Mise chose to show British shoppers.

UK reviewers found the supermarket choice didn't change much. "what's the point in selecting your supermarket if the app doesn't provide the actual product details. Instead of stating 'Hellmans vegan burger sauce', it just gives you 'vegan burger sauce'" (Ya122456, 3 stars, UK App Store, 14 September 2026). "I really don't under why I select a supermarket for the app to just give me generic ingredient names" (r.amar, 3 stars, UK App Store, 28 June 2026). "I hoped that "choosing your shop" would show me exact products and prices but I'm not sure it had any impact at all" (AmieJ9, 1 star, UK App Store, 4 July 2026). On Google Play, a reviewer who shopped at Lidl wrote that "we had items listed that Lidl doesn't stock" and that "Items are sometimes missed off the shopping list entirely" (Vignar, 1 star, 11 September 2026). Another put the estimated cost of a week's list at 65.99 and the real bill, same store, same list, at 127.39 (Aaron Bam Groves, 2 stars, Google Play, 2 September 2026).

And once the list is made, that's where it stops. The list screen in Mise's screenshots offers "Copy list" and "Share". We found no basket, trolley or checkout anywhere on its listing or screenshots, and when we tried it we couldn't send the list to a supermarket at all. A Google Play reviewer asked for exactly that, an "order for me" button (Shanice McKenzie, 3 stars, 18 September 2026).

The food

Mise generates the week for you, and the reviews describe what that generation gets wrong. Most of it is the kind of thing a person cooking the dish would have caught.

The quantities: "The app instructed me that I needed 199 cloves of garlic when only three were needed" (Kay.S.Martin, 1 star, UK App Store, 23 August 2026). To be fair to Mise, that reviewer says the garlic was fixed once reported. The same review goes on: "I have selected vegetarian meals only and three recipes in one week included items that were not vegetarian."

The filters: "despite selecting gluten free as the allergy option it keeps suggesting recipes where bread, pasta or other gluten ingredients are the main ingredient" (luglutenfree, 2 stars, UK App Store, 9 July 2026). "the allergy options don't actually work, the pictures don't match the meals and the recipes are beyond simple, no seasoning etc. And it's like the same 20 meals on repeat" (Cas123l, 2 stars, UK App Store, 17 August 2026). "I put low calories and protein packed and some of the stuff it gave me was 800+ kcal with 15g protein" (Izzystrahan, 2 stars, UK App Store, 6 August 2026). "When stating a microwave as my only food prep option, I was told to boil rice, and set my oven to 200 degrees" (A Verified Human, 1 star, UK App Store, 15 June 2026).

A mum of two who paid for the year wrote that one dish listed beef mince while its picture clearly showed beef strips, and that she was "rather regretful of paying for the yearly subscription" (Opqurj, 2 stars, UK App Store, 21 September 2026).

Then the pictures. To our eye, the food photos in Mise's own screenshots have the glossy, too-perfect look of generated images, and reviewers reached the same conclusion on their own. "I immediately noticed that all the images of the food were AI" (alikat603, 1 star, UK App Store, 3 July 2026). "AI slop app. The meal images look incredibly unrealistic" (Chip Winger, 1 star, Google Play, 12 September 2026). The more practical complaint is that the picture and the recipe disagree: "The images of the recipes show extra seasonings, different cooking methods, and/or extra mystery ingredients that are not mentioned in the recipe. You could follow the recipe perfectly and not even get close to how the picture looks" (AmieJ9, 1 star, UK App Store, 4 July 2026). The same reviewer said they'd adore the app if it were "actually tested by a human".

Nobody else gets a say

Here's the part that matters most to us. Mise's screenshots show a setting called "Household size", which asks "How many are you cooking for?" and gives you a number to tap up or down. That's a headcount. The other people in the house don't get their own phone, their own likes or any say in the week, as far as the listing and screenshots show. Its written feature list doesn't mention household sharing, partners or family accounts at the time of writing, and when we tried it we found no way to invite anyone.

A Google Play reviewer asked for it straight out: "there are things I would add such as it being a family app so my husband can plan with me" (Laura Kuipers, 3 stars, 29 August 2026). The same review adds "you can't import recipes in".

You don't get much say yourself, either. When we tried it, we couldn't find a way to put together our own week. You take the plan it generates, or you press swap and take another one. Reviewers ran into the same wall. "You also can't choose to repeat meals to make shopping easier" (Izzystrahan, 2 stars, UK App Store, 6 August 2026). One asked for the "Ability to search for meals" after an accidental tap on "swap meal" halfway through cooking left them guessing (DanZimm, 3 stars, UK App Store, 16 July 2026). Another refreshed the plan "maybe 6 times", turned down every vegetarian option, "and I still got them" (Krystal Garcia, 2 stars, Google Play, 17 August 2026).

The price of saving money

Mise's listing says it helps you "save money on groceries". The UK App Store lists what it charges for that: yearly subscriptions at £19.99, £29.99, £39.99 and £49.99, a £9.99 monthly plan, and a £19.99 "Win back offer". The free trial is three days. When we tried it, the paywall asked £39.99 a year, then offered us a discount code for £29.99.

The reviewers who mention money mostly point at the same thing. "Ironic that this app is claiming to save you money despite you HAVING to pay a subscription to use it" (tomhuss, 1 star, UK App Store, 21 September 2026). And on the three days: "what good is that if your trialing a 7 day (weekly) food planner" (Th3colonel, 1 star, UK App Store, 25 June 2026). One Google Play reviewer summed up how they came to it: "Saw this app on tik tok and I am not a fan" (Lindsey Fetner, 1 star, 11 September 2026).

Why this keeps happening

None of this reads to us like bad luck. Mise's listing says it generates "personalised meal plans in seconds", and the reviews above read to us like what that looks like when nobody has cooked the food first. In our reading, a generated recipe can list 199 cloves of garlic because nothing in the process ever peeled one. And if a photo is generated, it and the recipe were never the same dinner, so of course they disagree.

And the deciding, the thing its listing promises to take the stress out of, gets handed to a single set of settings on a single phone. In our view that's not deciding what to eat. It's being told. For one person that might be fine for a week or two. In a house with two adults and a fussy eight-year-old, a plan nobody chose is a plan somebody argues with at six o'clock.

What WFD does instead

WFD starts from the people at the table. Everyone in the household, up to six people on one subscription, swipes on meals on their own phone. Two positive swipes make a match, and a match decides dinner. Matches build the weekly plan, and the plan builds one shared shopping list. Nobody sees what anyone else skipped. Nobody's dinner waits on anyone either. The plan can generate once any one of you has liked three meals, and it always fills the week.

It's your plan once it's built. You can swap a night for a ranked alternative or search for a specific meal by name or ingredient, move meals between nights, lock the ones you want to keep, and skip a night so the list rebuilds without it. You can bring your own recipes too. Import a recipe and it joins the household's deck like any other meal, which means it gets voted on.

Every meal in WFD is a real dish a human has checked before it ships. No AI writes recipes, quantities or nutrition at runtime. Every meal carries calories and macros per serving. Calorie and nutrition figures are estimates calculated from each recipe's ingredients using published food-composition data (McCance and Widdowson's The Composition of Foods and USDA FoodData Central). Actual values vary with brands, ingredient sizes, and cooking, so treat them as a guide, typically within about 20% of the true value, the same tolerance allowed on food packaging. Meals we can't estimate confidently show no figure. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

And it's built for British kitchens from the start. Aubergine, not eggplant. Metric by default, with the step text converted too. The list is sorted into UK supermarket aisles, with quantities merged across the week and turned into the pack sizes shops actually sell. Then the list fills a supermarket trolley at Tesco, Sainsbury's, Ocado and Morrisons, on iPhone, in the UK.

WFD saves money the unglamorous way. The week is decided before the week starts, so there's no 6pm dash for a meal deal. The list comes from the plan, merged and sized to packs, and there's a "Have it" button for what's already in the cupboard. And the app costs £1.99 a month or £19.99 a year for the whole household. Swiping, matching, the plan and cook mode are free. The list and plan editing are paid after a 21-day trial that takes no card, and guest mode gives you a starter plan after three swipes, before you've even made an account.

Side by side

	What's For Dinner?! (WFD)	Mise
Who decides dinner	The household: everyone swipes, two yeses make a match	Generated for one set of preferences; a headcount, not a household
Building your own week	Swap with search, move, lock, skip, import your own recipes	Swap for another suggestion; reviewers ask for search and repeats
Where recipes come from	Real dishes, checked by a human before they ship	Generated; reviewers report wrong quantities, missed diet settings and images that don't match
UK supermarkets	Fills a trolley at Tesco, Sainsbury's, Ocado and Morrisons (iPhone)	"Choose from popular UK supermarkets"; screenshots show US, $ and oz; no checkout found
Nutrition	Calculated from published food-composition data	Macros shown; a reviewer reports 800+ kcal on a low-calorie setting
Trying it	Guest mode, then a 21-day trial, no card	3-day trial
Price	£1.99 a month or £19.99 a year, up to 6 people	£9.99 a month; yearly £19.99 to £49.99 (UK App Store list)

The bottom line

Mise generates a week of dinners for one phone. WFD gets the whole household to agree on real food, then fills a UK trolley with it. Mise's listing promises to take the stress out of deciding what to eat, and its own written reviews describe a plan nobody chose, built from food nobody cooked, priced in dollars on a British listing. If you want a week your household actually picked, here is how the matching works. And if Mise fixes anything above or we've got something wrong, tell us and we'll update this post.