Best Free Meal Planning Spreadsheet Templates for Google Sheets (2024)

Meal planning spreadsheet templates in Google Sheets are becoming essential for everyone. This powerful spreadsheet tool can be used to create a comprehensive meal planner that includes weekly meal plans, recipes, and grocery lists.

Mostly, busy moms are going to enjoy these templates so much.

A meal planner helps everyone stay healthy and figure out the amount of food they are buying and how much of it goes to waste.

In this article, let us discuss the top meal planning spreadsheet templates that users can download and use for free. We will also create a meal planner from scratch using Google Sheets. So, make sure to read the article till the end.

What are the benefits of using Meal Planning Spreadsheet Templates?

While few people think that using a meal planner will be time-consuming, I may say yes, of course, but in the long run, it will surely save a lot of time for you.

Benefits of Meal Planner

Saves Time – A meal planner will eliminate the time spent on pondering what to cook for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Moreover, a meal planner containing a grocery list checklist will save both your time and money spent on trips to the grocery store.
Saves Money – It gives you an idea of the amount of food bought and wasted over time. So, it helps you save money spent on extra groceries. On the other hand, when you have a meal plan ready for a month, you can go ahead shopping for grocery items in bulk to save money.
Reduce Food Waste – A meal planner helps you determine the amount of food wasted by you over a week or month. It ensures that you either buy grocery items in less quantity or find alternatives for them.

Apart from the above benefits of a meal planner, we noticed that people always mention that after using it, they automatically avoid going out for lunch or dinner.

It saves a lot of money for them as ordering food from a restaurant is far more costly than cooking food at home.

Benefits of using Google Sheets to Create Meal Planner

Now, let’s understand why you should use Google Sheets for making a meal plan.

Google Sheets is an online spreadsheet program used by millions of users across the world.

Easy to Use – You can download one of the free Google Sheets templates discussed below and edit it as per your requirements. It would take time initially to set up the template. Afterwards, all you need to do is make a few changes on a weekly basis, which may take several minutes.
Online Editor – Google Sheets is a web-based program. Users can access it from anywhere in the world as long as they have an internet connection. Both desktop and mobile devices support it.
Collaboration – A meal planner designed in Google Sheets can be shared with unlimited users. They can edit meals, add grocery items to the list, and much more. All the changes are made in real-time and can be viewed using the option named “Version history” in Google Sheets. Additionally, you can assign specific roles to every user, such as edit, comment, and view.
Powerful Data Organization Tools – Google Sheets is popular as one of the best alternatives to Microsoft Excel. You can easily sort and filter data without any limitations. There are a range of functions and tools, such as conditional formatting, which helps you identify and organize your grocery list and recipes in a moment.

You can print Google Sheets Meal Planner to use at your home.

Finally, Google Sheets templates are highly customizable. The program offers an intuitive user interface.

Top 3 Meal Planning Spreadsheet Templates using Google Sheets

There are tens of meal planner templates available online. However, not all of them are useful.

It will be really hard for you to try each one of them to see if it meets your requirements.

We compiled a list of top meal planner templates using Google Sheets to make your life easier.

1. Meal Planner by SoftwareAccountant

Click Here to Use the Template!

It is easy to use the Google Sheets template by Software Accountant. You can download it for free and customize it without any limitations.

The weekly planner can be printed and used at home.

Users can decide and plan meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

SoftwareAccountant’s advanced meal planning template allows users to select the food using a dropdown.

It contains several spreadsheets to help you manage recipes and shop grocery.

How to use this template

Here’s the link to copy this template to your Google Drive.

You will be landed on the Weekly Planner spreadsheet as soon as you click on the “Make a copy” button.

The template contains three spreadsheets as follows,

Weekly Planner: This is the main spreadsheet that lets you decide what to eat over the week. It contains weekdays along the vertical axis and meal times along the horizontal axis. To add the meal, all you need to do is click on the dropdown and select one of the meals from the list.
Meal Planner: The dropdown you use in the Weekly Planner spreadsheet depends upon the data in this spreadsheet. It holds a list of meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Whenever a meal is added to any of the lists, it will automatically appear in the dropdowns of the Weekly Planner spreadsheet.
Grocery Planner: The content of this spreadsheet is supposed to aid your monthly shopping and save you money. It contains a list of grocery items that play a crucial role in preparing tasty meals from the Meal Planner spreadsheet. Along with the list, it also contains the number of particular grocery items and checkboxes in separate columns.

It is pretty straightforward to use. You can share this template with your family and assign specific roles as per your requirements to make sure that your kids won’t mess up with the list of meals from the Meal Planner spreadsheet.

2. Meal Prep Planning Google Sheet

Click Here to Use the Template!

This template was designed by a random folk on Reddit. It is available for free. Anyone can download and customize the template without any restrictions.

Though it is not aesthetically pleasing, the template is really comprehensive.

You can add meals for breakfast, snack, lunch, and dinner. It allows you to add meals for each person in your family.

It also uses the dropdown to let you choose the meal.

Note that if you are new to Google Sheets, you may feel lost looking at the huge table. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back.

Read the following section to understand and customize this template.

How to use this template

Click here to make a copy of this template. Further, you need to click on the “Make a copy” button.

Here is the list of spreadsheets in this Google Sheets template:

WeekPlan – This is the main spreadsheet that contains a huge table. On the vertical axis, you will find the meal type and list of persons. At the same time, the horizontal axis holds dates and weekdays. You need to edit the dates and add the names of your family members to this table. Then, use the dropdown to add the specific meal for each family member throughout the week.
Shopping List – As it is clear from the name itself, this spreadsheet is created to aid your shopping trips. It contains a table which has columns as Ingredients, sum Total Amount, Units, Ounces, and Checkbox. You can print it and take it with you while shopping to tick the box once you add the item to the cart.
Meals – It is an important spreadsheet in this Google Sheets template. It holds a list of meals that are displayed in the dropdowns of the WeekPlan spreadsheet. The table contains blank cells where you can add meals. As soon as you add a meal to one of the lists for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Snacks, it will be instantly displayed in the respective dropdown of the WeekPlan spreadsheet.
Recipes – We didn’t find this spreadsheet very useful at our end. However, in your case, we suggest including the recipes, which will surely speed up your meal preparation. Recipes can be hard to describe in a cell, but make sure to use the cells to list down the required ingredients, their quantity, and estimated cost. Moreover, this spreadsheet will help you save time by allowing other family members to cook a few basic meals without your help.
Ingredients – You need a complete list of ingredients required for your meals. You can compare this list with the available items at your home and prepare the shopping list accordingly. The spreadsheet contains two main columns: the name of the ingredient and the amount.

This spreadsheet is comparatively hard to begin with for the people who have just started using Google Sheets.

But once you master this template, it will be easier for you to manage meals, save money, and avoid repetitive trips to grocery stores.

3. Basic Weekly Meal Planner

Click Here to Use the Template!

This is our final pick on this list. It comes with a beautiful design and an easy-to-use interface.

In contrast to others, this template allows users to enter the meals manually instead of selecting them using a dropdown.

At the end of the weekly planner, there is space to prepare a short shopping list.

This is a printable template for basic use.

If you are just starting with the meal planners, then we highly suggest downloading this template.

How to use this template

As mentioned earlier, it is made for beginners. The design is quite straightforward.

It contains only one spreadsheet and doesn’t use any dropdowns for selecting the meals.

Click here to copy this template to your Google Drive.

Once you open this template, you will notice that it contains the meal types on the horizontal axis and weekdays on the vertical axis.

First, delete all the entries put in the spreadsheet for demonstration by selecting all the cells as shown below and pressing the “Delete” button on your keyboard.

Then, simply click on any cell and start typing. If there is something critical that needs to be highlighted, make sure to use Google Sheets formatting capabilities.

For example, you can highlight something by increasing the font size or changing the cell background color. You can even change the font type and add specific comments or draw a shape to make your weekly meal planner more attractive and interactive.

How to Create a Meal Planning Template in Google Sheets

Let’s learn to create a meal planning template in Google Sheets. We will focus on two things, including planning meals for the week and preparing a shopping list.

In contrast to other programs, Google Sheets is quick and easy.

Our goal is to create an attractive and easy-to-use meal planner considering its long-term usage. It should not take significant time each week for you to update this planner.

Now, let’s get started.

STEP #1 – Create a header for the Weekly Meal Planner

A meal planner should be attractive because there may be times when we feel the need to print it and put it on the wall.

A header is crucial in this case.

Follow the steps below to create the header:

Open a new Google Sheet by clicking here
Increase the height of the first row as shown below
Select all the cells from A1 to E1
Hover to the main menu and click on “Merge cells”
Type “Meal Planner”
Change the font size to 26
Make the font bold
Select “Poppins” as the font type
Change the font alignment to the middle
Now, change the cell background color to dark green (Hex Code – #395c20)
Change the font color to white
Here’s how our header looks after following the above steps
Now, to make it attractive, we can use any meal icon image in the header. You can download free images from the internet. Make sure to use the PNG file format
Follow the steps below to insert a meal icon image into the header
Hover to the main menu and click on “Insert” tab
Select “Image” from the popup
Next, click on “Insert image over cells”
A new dialog box will appear, as shown below
Click on the “Browse” button to image the image from your local computer
Resize the image to fit the first row

Finally, our header will look as follows.

STEP #2 – Design a weekly meal planner

We will be creating a table where you can add meals for the given days, as shown below.

Let us start with adding column headers.

Click on the cell “B2”
Type “BREAKFAST”
Next, click on the cell “C2” and type “LUNCH”
Repeat the above process and type in the column headers as shown below
Select the second row and increase the height as shown below
Select all the cells from A2 to E2
Change the font alignment to the middle
Make the font bold
Increase the size of the font to 11
Change the cell background color to dark red berry (Hex Code – #A72C13)
Change the font color to white
Select the font type “Poppins”

Here’s how our table header looks,

Now, we will create the vertical section of the table. You can call it the row headers of the table.

Click on the cell “A3”
Type “Sunday”
(Here, I am starting the week on Sunday. You can choose any other day, like Monday if you want.)
Click on the cell “A4” and type “Monday”
Repeat the above steps to complete the vertical section of the table, as shown below
Increase the height of the rows for the weekdays
Select the cells from A3 to A9
Change the background color to dark red berry (Hex Code – #A72C13)
Change the font color to white
Increase the font size to 11
Select the font type “Poppins”
Change the font alignment to the middle
Make the font bold

Here’s how our table row header looks after following the steps above,

Next, we need to allow users to enter the meals in the following section of the table.

We will create a dropdown to let users select the predefined meals. For this dropdown, we need to use the “Data validation” feature of Google Sheets.

The dropdown will pick up the values from a table. We will choose to create this table in a new spreadsheet.

Let’s get started,

Click on the “+” icon on the lower-leftmost side of the screen, as shown below
Add the table headers as shown below
Increase the height of the first row
Select the cells from A1 to D1
Change the cell background color to black
Change the font color to white
Make the font bold
Change the font alignment to the middle
The table header should look like below
Next, click on the cell “A2”
Type “Breakfast 1”
Click on the cell “A3”
Type “Breakfast 2”
Now, select the cells A2 and A3
Hover to the lower-rightmost corner of the cell A3 over the Fill Handle
You will notice that a “+” icon appears
Click on that “+” icon and drag it till the cell “A11”
Repeat the steps from 10 to 18 and complete the table as shown below

We will use this table to create dropdowns for our weekly planner.

Here are the steps,

Go back to “Sheet1”
Click on the cell “B3”
Hover to the main menu and click on the “Data” tab
Select the “Data validation” from the popup
A new dialog box will appear on the right side of the screen, as shown in the following image
Click on the “Add rule” button
Next, click on the dropdown below the option “Criteria”
Choose the second option, “Dropdown (from a range)”
An empty box will appear, as shown below
Click on the table icon from this empty box
A new popup will appear
Click on the empty box of this new pop-up
Go to the “Sheet2”
Select all the entries from the Breakfast list
Click on the “Ok” button
You will see all the option populates in the “Data validation rules” dialog box, as shown in the following image
Scroll down to see the button “Advanced options”
Here are your options
Click on the circle before “Show a warning” and “Arrow” as shown below
Press the “Done” button in the green
Now, go back to the “Sheet1”
You will see an arrow appears in the cell “B3”
Click on that arrow to see the dropdown
Select “Breakfast 1” from the list
Finally, simply select the cell “B3”
Hover over the Fill Handle of the cell B3 until you see the “+” icon
Click and drag this “+” icon to the end of the table. Google Sheets will instantly create the dropdown for all the cells of the column Breakfast. Refer to the following image
So, the dropdowns for the Breakfast column have been created successfully
You can repeat the above steps to create the dropdown for the columns, including Lunch, Dinner, and Snacks.

The output should look like the following,

STEP #3 – Apply formatting to the weekly meal planner

Finally, let’s apply formatting to our table to make it more attractive.

Select all the cells as shown in the following image
Change the font alignment to the middle
Hover to the toolbar section and click on the “Borders” icon
Select the first option from the popup
Change the border color to light gray
Now, select the columns B to E
Increase the width of the column as shown below
Adjust the logo placement and resize it to look better

So, after applying the formatting to our weekly planner, it appears as follows.

One more step is remaining here. We need to turn off the gridlines for this spreadsheet.

Here are the steps,

Hover to the main menu and click on the “View” tab
Select “Show” from the popup
Click on the “Gridlines” option to disable the Gridlines

Our Weekly Meal Planner is ready!

STEP #4 – Create a grocery list spreadsheet

In this step, we will create a new spreadsheet for the grocery items we need to cook meals.

It will help you with shopping and at the same time unable you to save money by avoiding buying extra things.

Let’s start,

Click on the “+” icon at the lower-leftmost side of the screen to add a new spreadsheet
Click on the cell “A1”
Type “ID”
Select the cell “B1”
Type “Item Name”
Repeat the above steps and complete the table header as shown below
Select all the cells from A1 to E1
Change the cell background color to dark red berry (Hex Code – #a72c13)
Change the font color to white
Adjust the font alignment to the middle
Make the font bold
Next, add sample data to the table as shown below
Click on the cell “E2”
Hover to the main menu and click on “Insert” tab
Select “Checkbox” from the popup
Hover to the lower-rightmost corner of the cell “E2”. You will see a “+” icon appears over the Fill Handle
Click on that “+” icon and drag it to the cell “E6”
Now, select all the cells of the table except the header, as shown in the following image
Change the font alignment to the middle