Like many, I use Slack for a good chunk of the day as a way to communicate and collaborate with coworkers.
But now thanks to Whisk, I can start using the ubiquitous work communication platform as a way to manage grocery shopping lists and access recipes.
Announced via a blog post by Samsung NEXT (the company which acquired Whisk last year) head of product Travis Bogard, the Whisk app is available to anyone with Slack.
Interestingly, while there are plenty of food-related apps available to use on Slack, most of them are for things like ordering from food trucks or managing a work-group catering order. The Whisk app, from what I can tell, is the first one for recipe sharing or grocery lists.
This lack of personal meal journey management apps for Slack probably shouldn’t be surprising since it is, after all, a work tool. That said, the line between work and personal time has become blurry in these work-from-home pandemic times, and nowadays many of us are seamlessly switching back and forth between work projects and personal stuff like meal planning or grocery shopping.
So why not do it in Slack?
I decided to try the app out and added Whisk to our workplace Slack.
For anyone not familiar with Slack apps, using them means typing in command prompts reminiscent of DOS or, for anyone under 40, like those you might tap into an app like Terminal to run scripts or basic web prompts.
Once I had the app running, I used the register prompt to log into Whisk and authorize it to work with Slack. I then used the add item command to add a couple things to my grocery list. I then hopped over to my Whisk browser tab and there were the milk and eggs I had just added to the list.
I also used Whisk Slack app commands to bring up recipes and check out the items on my shopping list.
Would I use it in the future? Maybe. Since I use Slack all day, I like how easily accessible it is. That said, I’ve always found Slack apps a little annoying since every app has a different set of commands and I usually have to look them up when I use them. I also use voice assistants like Alexa to add items to my list (Whisk also has an Alexa integration), so I’m not sure this would replace that.
But if you are a Slack or Whisk user, you can try it out for yourself.
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