Feature

Hosting for a crowd: turn 'Thanksgiving for 12' into a shopping list in one line

Sameer Gupta · August 28, 2026

Hosting flips the usual shopping-list problem around. It's not "what does my household need this week" — it's "what does an entire event need," which is a much bigger blank page than a Tuesday grocery run, and one most people only face a few times a year.

Same feature, bigger scale

The same plain-language description that turns "dinner party for 8" into a real list already works at hosting scale. Describe the event and Shopolit reasons about what it actually needs — proteins, sides, drinks, something for dessert — sized to however many people you tell it, not a fixed template.

A worked example

Describe "Thanksgiving for 12, plus 2 vegetarians" and the generated list accounts for the vegetarian substitution specifically — not just a bigger version of a meat-centric list. You review the full list before anything lands on your shared list, so you can adjust anything that doesn't match what you're actually planning to cook.

Describing a list is part of Shopolit Plus, alongside recipe import. See what's in Plus.

Common questions

Does it plan the actual menu for me?

Not exactly — it generates a shopping list sized for the event you describe. You can steer it toward a specific menu by being more specific in the description, but it isn't a standalone recipe-planning tool.

What if I already have some of what I need?

Nothing is added automatically — you review the generated list first and remove or adjust anything you've already got, the same as any other description-based list.