Platform 2 Guide — This article applies to the new platform. Looking for classic platform docs? Browse the Platform 1 collection.
Why: Streamline your meal planning process by generating professional PDF documents for your meal plans and recipes. This feature enhances the presentation of your content, making it easy for your members to access and use.
Navigate: App Station > Settings > Content Settings > Templates > PDF
Quick Start
Go to the App Station and navigate to Settings.
Click on Content Settings and select Templates.
Choose PDF to access the PDF generation settings.
Customize your PDF templates as needed.
To generate a PDF, open a meal plan or recipe and click Download PDF.
Plan Size Limits
Before diving into PDF generation, it's important to understand the limits on meal plans:
Meal plans are capped at 100 recipes total. This cap applies to everyone, including admins, and serves as a safety net to ensure smooth functionality of the editor and shopping list.
PDF export is only available for meal plans with 50 recipes or fewer. If a meal plan exceeds this limit, it remains fully editable but cannot be exported as a PDF.
When a meal plan crosses the 50-recipe threshold, a persistent warning banner appears at the top of the meal plan tab, advising you to split the plan into smaller ones and link them using the Related Content property.
If an admin or member attempts to open the PDF export modal for a plan that cannot be exported (due to too many recipes, lack of permissions, or daily export limits), the modal will display a neutral message: "This meal plan is not available for PDF export." It will only show a Close button, ensuring that members do not learn about any recipe ceiling.
Customizing PDF Templates
Admins can customize PDF templates to control the layout and appearance of the generated documents. Here are the key features:
Density Preset: Adjust the vertical spacing between blocks using the Density preset options: tight, compact, normal, comfortable, and spacious. Use tight to fit more content on a page or spacious for more white space.
Page Break Behavior: Page breaks are hardcoded and cannot be configured. Each recipe will attempt to render on a single page, while each section of the meal plan (header, schedule, prep-aheads, shopping list, and recipes) starts on a new page.
Image Options: Customize cover images and header blocks with options for aspect ratio (1:1, 4:3, 16:9, etc.), fit (cover/contain), width percentage, alignment, max height, and border radius. This ensures consistent image sizing across your content.
Standalone Cover Image Block: The
pdf-meal-plan-cover-imageblock mirrors the recipe cover-image block, allowing for consistent styling.
PDF Generation Process
When generating a PDF, the following sections are included based on your selections:
The Plan: This includes the header and meal schedule.
The Recipes: Each recipe is displayed on a separate page, with component recipes included as full pages (de-duplicated).
Prep Ahead Notes: Consolidated prep-ahead tips grouped by recipe.
Shopping List: Ingredients organized by aisle.
Yield-Based Recipes
PDFs correctly display yield-based recipes, showing the yield amount and unit (e.g., 'Makes 500 g') instead of servings. Nutrition information is also displayed per unit of yield.
Additional Features
The editor opens to the Blocks tab by default, respecting the Show heading toggle on ingredients, instructions, notes, and prep-aheads.
Recipe titles in the meal plan schedule will wrap instead of truncating, ensuring clarity.