One grocery list for everyone at home.

How sharing works in Hedgehog Chef

Everything in Hedgehog Chef belongs to a kitchen: the recipes, binders, meal plan, shopping lists and pantry. Everyone in the kitchen shares all of it, and each person signs in with their own account, so nobody passes a password around.

You can be in one kitchen at a time. How many people a kitchen can hold depends on its plan; the pricing page has the numbers.

Step 1: invite your household

1. In Hedgehog Chef, open Settings → Kitchen & members and choose Create invite.
2. Send the invite link, or choose Share invite on a phone. The code is easy to read out too: it starts with a food word, like BASIL or THYME.
3. The link opens the sign-up page with the code filled in. They create their own account and land in your kitchen.

Anyone in the kitchen can make an invite. Each code works once and expires after 7 days, and unused ones can be revoked from the same screen. The kitchen's owner can remove someone there too.

If they already have an account

They open Settings → Kitchen & members → Join another kitchen, choose Use an invite code and enter it. Joining means leaving their current kitchen. If they started a kitchen of their own and saved recipes in it, they're asked to export or clear it first, and told exactly what's in the way. To bring those recipes along, export them in Settings → Import & export as a Paprika recipe file, then import that file into the shared kitchen under Import → Other apps.

Step 2: fill the list

A shared list only works if adding to it is quicker than texting someone. There are several ways in:

• Type it. “2 lb chicken thighs” becomes an amount and an item, filed under its aisle. Add the same thing twice and the amounts merge (2 cups of milk plus 1 cup is 3 cups). Move an item to a different aisle once and it goes there from then on.
• Paste a list. Paste several lines at once and each becomes its own item.
• From a recipe. On any recipe, choose Add to list and set the servings. Things already in your pantry can be skipped, and you're told what was left off.
• From the meal plan. Shop for this week in the planner adds every planned recipe at once. Planning the week first? See how to plan a week of dinners in 15 minutes.
• Without opening the app. An iPhone Shortcut adds to the list by voice (“Hey Siri, add to Hedgehog”; the steps are on the integrations page), and Claude can add items once it's connected.

Step 3: shop together

Check an item off and it's checked on every phone in the house straight away. When someone else checks something, it shows as checked where it is and only moves to the cart once you've stopped touching the list for a moment, so nothing jumps under your thumb.

• Split the shop. One person takes produce and dairy, the other the rest. Each sees what the other has already found.
• One list per store. Make separate lists for the supermarket, the warehouse store and the farmers market. The starred one is the kitchen's default.
• Store mode. From the list's ⋯ menu: bigger rows for one-handed shopping, with the screen kept awake.
• Your store's layout. Edit aisle order in the same menu puts aisles in the order you walk them.
• No signal by the freezers? Items you check off sync once your phone is back online.

Back home, Move checked to pantry puts what you bought into the pantry in one go, so recipes you add to the list later can skip it.

Sending the list to someone outside the kitchen

For a neighbor doing a pickup run, or a grandparent who'd rather have paper, there's no need to invite them. In the list's ⋯ menu, Share list sends what's still to buy as plain text through your phone's share sheet (or copies it), and Print gives a clean two-column list with circles to tick. Both are snapshots: they don't update when the list changes.

House rules that keep a shared list working

• Use the last one, add it. Whoever finishes the olive oil puts it on the list, right then.
• Lists by store, not by person. A list per person brings back the double milk.
• Write amounts when they matter. “Eggs” starts a debate; “2 dozen eggs” doesn't.
• Check off, don't delete. Checked items show everyone what's already in the cart. Clear them when the shop is done.
• Plan first, then shop. A list built from the week's plan is shorter than one built from memory in the parking lot.