FoodPilot does it for you. Here's exactly how.
You pick your grocery store
In your preferences, you set your usual banner: Maxi, Super C, Metro or IGA. That's it. No loyalty card to connect, no grocery account to link. FoodPilot now knows which store it's planning for.
Every week, FoodPilot reads the flyer for you
As soon as the new flyer comes out, FoodPilot extracts the week's best deals: product name, price, format (per pound, per kilo, per unit) and — most importantly — the validity period, Thursday through Wednesday, as it should be in Quebec.The result is kept until the flyer's validity period ends, then automatically replaced with the following week's flyer. You never cook with last week's specials.
Smart matching between deals and ingredients
This is where the magic happens — and where most tools fail. A flyer says "Fresh chicken breasts – $5.49/lb". Your recipe calls for "2 chicken breasts". A human connects the dots instantly; software, not always.FoodPilot's matching engine was built specifically for the French of Quebec grocery flyers:
- Singular and plural — "filet de truite" in the flyer still matches "2 filets de truite" in the recipe.
- Accents and spelling variants — "bœuf", "boeuf", "œufs": whatever the spelling, the match holds.
- False friends eliminated — a potato ("pomme de terre") will never be linked to an apple ("pommes") deal. Ground pork will never be confused with pork tenderloin.
We made a deliberate choice: a trustworthy badge beats a frequent badge. If FoodPilot says an ingredient is on special, it really is.
Your weekly meals display the specials
When FoodPilot generates your weekly menu, it favours recipes that take advantage of current deals at your banner. On each recipe, a badge On special this week at Maxi (or Super C, or Metro) appears, and every matching ingredient is flagged.So before you even approve your week, you can see which meals are riding the current deals.
Savings are confirmed, not just estimated
When you approve your menu, FoodPilot freezes the state of the specials with it: even if the flyer expires in the meantime, your badges stay accurate for the week you're shopping.Then, when your grocery list is generated, FoodPilot checks real-time pricesdirectly on maxi.ca, superc.ca or metro.ca. The "on special" estimate becomes a confirmed dollar savings amount, displayed on each recipe. No theoretical projection: the real price, from the real site, of your real grocery store.
Why other apps don't do this
Melio, Mealime, DinnerPlanner and the other meal-planning apps are fine products but they're built for a global market. Their model relies on generic recipes and price-free grocery lists.
Integrating Quebec flyers demands the exact opposite: reading French pages whose structure changes every week, understanding that "10 for $2.40" is a price, handling Thursday-to-Wednesday validity periods, and querying the transactional sites of Metro Inc. and Loblaw in real time. It's an entirely local engineering investment that doesn't translate to their market.
That's precisely why FoodPilot exists: meal planning designed for Quebec, plugged into Quebec's real flyers.