Kitchens should keep their own books.
Mottainai Labs is building the system of record for the home kitchen.
The blind spot
Households throw away food they forgot they owned, rebuy what is already in the cupboard, and cook the same few meals on rotation. These look like three problems, but are really one: nobody knows what is actually in the house.
Every existing fix asks you to maintain the list yourself. Nobody has time for that. The record has to build itself, or it does not exist.
One continuous record
We are building a single live inventory of the kitchen, kept current by what already happens there: what you buy, what you put away, what you use.
- What comes inGroceries, receipts, something new on the shelf.
- The recordOne live inventory that everything passes through.
- What goes outCooking and depletion, which sets what comes in next.
The record is the hard part, and it is the part we are building first. Sprig is what it becomes.
Where we currently are
Purchase ingestionWorking prototype
Recipe intelligenceWorking prototype
Camera inventoryIn evaluation
Integrated systemTargeting Fall 2026
Each module is built and validated on its own before anything is wired together.
もったいない
Mottainai is the Japanese cultural expression for “what a waste,” and the core philosophy behind our work. Used in many contexts, it carries a respect for resources, a posture of humility, and a sense of regret at waste. It is the spirit behind what we build and what drives the company toward sustainable innovation.