A mate who cooks
Warm, specific, never cute. Pantri talks like the friend who always knows what to do with half a pumpkin, and is straight with you about money.
Five principles
- Warm
- Kind, plain and on your side. “Seven dinners from what you’ve got.”
- Specific
- Numbers first, real foods, real shops. “Broccoli’s $1.49 a head at Coles this week.”
- Calm
- No exclamation marks, no urgency, no streaks. Money is stated, not judged.
- Honest about gaps
- Say exactly what’s missing, with a number. Vague hedging costs trust; specific gaps don’t.
- Australian
- Trolley, serve, best-before, the weekly shop. en-AU spelling: colour, organise, favourite, centre, catalogue.
Seven dinners, about $3.85 a serve.
Nothing on the list yet. Plan this week and we’ll write it for you.
That spinach had dreams! 🥬
Three steps. Zero stress.
Sort My Kitchen!
Same voice, different moments
| Moment | Tone | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Landing page | Confident, concrete | Use what you’ve got. Spend less, waste less. |
| Setup | Brief, explains why | Who do you cook for? We use this to size the serves. |
| Plan and list | Factual, dense | 41 items from this week’s 7 dinners |
| In store | Terse, reassuring | Saved on this phone · 3 changes waiting to sync |
| Empty state | Warm, one next step | Nothing planned for Thursday. Plan Thursday |
| Errors | Plain cause, plain fix | This password has appeared in a data breach, so it can’t be used. Choose a different one. |
| Price changes | Neutral, both sides | 40c more than last time. Coles $4.90, was $4.50 |
| Food safety | Careful, never alarming | Check before using: bought 13 Aug |
Small rules that add up
- Case
- Sentence case for everything: headings, buttons, tabs, menu items. “Plan this week, free”, not “Plan This Week, Free”.
- Punctuation
- No exclamation marks in the product. Full stops on sentences, none on buttons or labels. Middle dot ( · ) separates meta.
- Words we use
- Sign in, sign up, trolley, shop (verb and noun), list, dinner, serve, pantry, best-before, use-by, checked.
- Contractions
- Yes: we’ll, you’ve, can’t. They’re how people talk.
- Emoji
- None in the product or on the landing page.
- “We”
- Pantri is “we” only when explaining what Pantri did: “We matched this by barcode.”
Sixteen rules, with examples
Never show $0.00, — or N/A for data we don’t have
Four meanings, four strings.
Not stocked at ALDI
No price yet
Price unavailable
A displayed price is a price representation (ACL s.18, s.29). Only a genuine $0.00 shows as $0.00.
$0.00
—
N/A
Every total carries its coverage
In the same block, every time.
$106.01 for 41 of your 50 items
$106.01
Total: $106.01*
Below 60% coverage, a shop is never ranked
Disclose it instead.
Prices for 6 of 50 items · not enough to compare
This must hold on every surface at once: list, sheet and landing.
ALDI $14.20 (shown first)
Estimates use a whole word
About $84
Estimated $84.20
Markers behave like tooltips and about half of people never open one.
est. $84
~$84
approx. $84
≈ $84
$84*
No bare hedge
Any hedging word carries a figure on the same line.
About $3.85 a serve, from typical prices
Prices may vary
Confidence is three named buckets with a reason
Never a percentage. Say it once per section, not on every row.
High confidence, matched by barcode
Estimated from the category, chicken keeps about 2 days
We’re not sure about this one
87% confident
Estimated from the category (on every row)
Features are named for the job
Four everyday words at most.
Plan this week
Compare your list
Plan my week around $120
Banned in all copy: Smart, Intelligent, Magic, Auto, AI, Powered by, Generate. DESIGN-V2 rule 7 still lists “Cheapest basket” as an example; replace it with “Compare your list”.
Smart Planner
AI meal generator
Magic list
Powered by AI
“Other” is not a category
Not categorised (12)
Make it tappable so people can fix it.
Other (12)
Comparisons state amount, direction and both sides
Use less or more, not a bare sign.
40c less at Coles. Coles $4.90, Woolworths $5.30
−40c
Cheapest at Coles
Savings in dollars, never percentages
$12.40 less than last week
Save 12%
Australian throughout
$4.20 · 50c · 30 September 2026 · 2:14 pm · colour, organise, favourite
Australian Government Style Manual.
A$4.20 · $0.50 · Sep 30 · 2:14 PM · color, organize
Facts, never verdicts
Money is personal. State it and stop.
Your groceries came to $106.01
$12.40 more than last week
Also banned: you spent, too much, wasted, should have, only, just, cut back.
You overspent by $12.40
Oops, over budget again!
You only saved $3
Every price carries provenance
Shop and date, inline.
$2.98 · Coles, checked 30 Sep
$2.98
Use-by and best-before are different
Use-by is safety; best-before is quality. Never the bare word “expired”.
Use by Saturday
Use-by was 2 days ago
Best before Saturday, still fine to check and use
Check before using: bought 13 Aug (raw meat past best-before)
Have the food-safety wording checked before launch.
Expired
Best-before was 7 weeks ago, likely still fine (on raw chicken)
Never call a shop the cheapest
We compare; we don’t crown.
Compare your list
ALDI · for 31 of your 41 items · $119.85
Totals cover different items, so “cheapest” is rarely true and always a claim we would have to defend.
Cheapest shop
Find cheaper
Best deal
One call to action, in sentence case
Everywhere on the landing page, and its app twin.
Plan this week, free
Plan this week (in the app)
Sign in
Sort My Kitchen
Plan My First Week Free
Create My Free Account
Login
The pre-publish check
Run this list over every screen, capture and landing page before it ships, as a CI check across both apps. Each one is banned in product and marketing copy. This book uses them only inside “Don’t” examples.