Meal plan products

Overview

Recipe publishers already do the hard part: developing recipes people trust. Meal Plan Products turns that trust into a product line without new infrastructure - no membership plugin, no checkout build-out, no delivery system. You assemble plans from recipes Allspice has already indexed from your site, attach them to a product, set a price, and publish. Purchase, entitlement, scheduling, and the reader experience are all handled by Allspice inside your widget.

How the system is organized

The Meal Plans area of the Publisher Portal has two parts:

• Content Library - where meal plans themselves are created and edited. Plans are the content: days, meals, and write-ups.
• Products - what readers actually get access to. A product bundles one or more plans and defines the access model (free/paid/subscription/Premium), pricing, and marketing presentation. The same plan can be attached to multiple products.

This separation is deliberate: content is reusable, and packaging is flexible. A “7-Day Summer Dinners” plan can live inside a one-time purchase bundle today and a subscription drop next season.

Building meal plans

The plan editor is a day-by-day builder:

• set the plan's title, description, and content-source domain (if you manage multiple sites)
• choose the number of days
• fill each day's slots - Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack, Dessert, and Other - from your recipe library via a searchable recipe picker
• drag and drop meals between slots and days
• write an intro essay for the plan (the pitch and framing readers see first)
• write per-day write-ups - the editorial voice that makes a plan feel authored rather than assembled (“Sunday is prep day: double the grains, they carry Tuesday's bowls”)

Plans can be duplicated (great for seasonal variants), archived, and previewed exactly as readers will see them.

AI-assisted plan generation

You can also generate a draft plan with AI and edit from there. The generator works from your recipe catalog and lets you set:

• which meal slots to fill (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, dessert)
• dietary direction - vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, high-protein, low-carb, or no preference
• difficulty (easy / moderate / any)
• time constraints (under 30 minutes, under 45 minutes, make-ahead friendly, any)

Generated plans are drafts built from your recipes - review, rearrange, and add your write-ups before publishing.

Creating products

A product defines what a reader buys (or claims). For each product you set:

• Overview - name, description, images, and marketing feature bullets shown on the product card
• Access type - see below
• Included content - one or more plans from your Content Library (attach existing plans or create new ones from inside the product)
• Future releases - scheduled content drops for ongoing products

Products move through draft → published → archived states, and can be duplicated.

Access types & pricing

Four access models are supported:

• Free - make selected plans available to all readers. Ideal as an on-ramp: teach readers the plan → shop → cook loop with your content.
• One-time purchase - a fixed price; readers buy once and keep access. Best for evergreen bundles (“Holiday Baking Plan,” “30-Minute Dinners Collection”).
• Subscription - recurring access with monthly or yearly billing, a stated update cadence (weekly, monthly, seasonal, or custom), and subscription policy toggles. Best for ongoing drops: “a new dinner plan every Monday.”
• Included with Allspice Premium - make selected plans available to readers who have Allspice Premium through your site, adding value to the subscription you share revenue on.

Pricing supports USD, CAD, EUR, and GBP. Paid products display pricing to readers on the product card and locked previews.

Releases and scheduled drops

Subscription-style products stay alive through releases: scheduled drops of one or more plans. For each release you choose the included plans, set a date, and manage it through draft → scheduled → published. This is how a “weekly meal plan club” runs operationally - build ahead, schedule, and let drops go out on cadence.

Plans themselves can also be published immediately or scheduled for a future publish date.

Stripe & getting paid

Paid products are processed through Stripe. You connect a Stripe account from the portal; until it's connected, publishing is blocked for any paid product (the portal shows a clear “paid product, no Stripe” state and walks you through connecting). Free and Premium-included products don't require Stripe.

Payouts and revenue share

Meal plan products follow the publisher-products revenue model (see Revenue sharing for full details):

• You receive 90% of net revenue on premium products created by you from your own site content - both one-time purchases and subscriptions.
• Net revenue means revenue after payment processing fees, payment platform fees, refunds, chargebacks, and applicable taxes.
• Plans offered via Included with Allspice Premium participate differently: they add value to Allspice Premium, where you receive 25% of net subscription revenue from Premium subscribers attributed to your site.

Example: you sell a 7-day dinner plan bundle for $12. After processing/platform fees and any refunds, your site receives 90% of what remains - on every sale, indefinitely.

What readers see

Published products appear in the Meal Plans tab of the widget on your site:

• Free plans can be saved and scheduled immediately.
• Paid plans appear as locked previews: the intro essay, plan length, and a few sample preview days are visible, with remaining days locked (“Preview this plan before buying”), alongside price - one-time or recurring with interval.
• Purchase happens in-widget via checkout; entitlement unlocks the full plan instantly.
• Once unlocked, a purchased plan behaves like any personal plan: readers schedule it onto real dates, adjust meals, add notes, jump into Cook Mode from any meal, and generate a consolidated grocery list for the whole plan.

You can preview all of this before publishing - the portal includes a reader-view preview of both individual plans and full product bundles.

For the reader-side meal planning experience, see Meal planning.

Publishing workflow

The typical end-to-end flow:

1. Build (or AI-generate, then edit) a plan in the Content Library.
2. Add intro and per-day write-ups; preview as a reader.
3. Create a product, choose the access type, set price/currency (and billing interval + update cadence for subscriptions).
4. Attach the plan(s); for subscriptions, line up the first releases.
5. Connect Stripe if the product is paid.
6. Publish now or schedule - the widget updates on your site.

Best practices

• Lead with one strong free plan. It onboards readers into the planning loop and becomes the top of your paid funnel.
• Write the essays. The intro and day write-ups are what separate “a list of recipes” from a product worth paying for - they carry your voice and your why.
• Match cadence to your publishing reality. A weekly subscription you can't sustain hurts more than a monthly one you can. Update cadence is shown to subscribers; treat it as a promise.
• Reuse aggressively. Duplicate seasonal plans, rotate evergreen plans into new bundles, and attach strong plans to multiple products.
• Price in your audience's currency where supported.

FAQ

Do I need my own checkout, membership plugin, or delivery system?

No. Checkout, entitlements, access control, and the reader experience are handled by Allspice in the widget. You need a connected Stripe account for paid products.

Can one plan be in multiple products?

Yes - plans are reusable content; products are packaging.

Can I sell plans built from another site's recipes?

Plans are built from your indexed recipe library.

What happens if I unpublish a product?

You can unpublish or archive products; manage transitions thoughtfully for existing purchasers and subscribers, and see the portal's product states for specifics.

Are payouts live?

Payout infrastructure for meal plans is live.

Is there a limit on plans or products?

Build as many plans and products as your content supports; drafts don't appear to readers until published.