According to WRAP, the average UK family of four throws away around £800 worth of food every year — and most of it is perfectly edible. The most common reason is not carelessness: it's simply that food gets pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten until it's too late. A food expiry reminder app solves this directly — it tracks what you have and notifies you before anything expires.
Fango is a food expiry reminder app for iPhone that goes one step further: instead of adding items manually, you photograph your grocery receipt and AI adds everything to your digital fridge automatically — with estimated expiry dates. You get a push notification 1–14 days before each item expires, with timing you control.
- A food expiry reminder app tracks your fridge and notifies you before food expires
- Fango scans your receipt automatically — no manual item entry needed
- Set reminders 1–14 days in advance — you choose the timing for each product
- No account required — works immediately, all data on your device
Why manual tracking doesn't work
The idea of tracking expiry dates manually sounds reasonable — until you try it. After a weekly shop of 20–30 items, entering each one with a name and date takes 10–15 minutes. That's every week. In practice, most people do it twice and then stop.
Even when you do add items, checking them daily requires opening the app and scrolling through a list — which is easy to skip. By the time you remember, the item has already expired.
The only system that works long-term is one that requires minimal effort to maintain and actively reminds you — not one that requires you to remember to check it.
What a food expiry reminder app actually does
A food expiry reminder app does two things: it keeps a record of what's in your fridge with dates, and it sends you a push notification before something is about to expire. The notification arrives on your phone — just like a calendar reminder — with enough advance notice to actually use the food.
The best apps let you customise the advance notice window. Fango lets you set it anywhere from 1 to 14 days before the expiry date. For raw meat you might want a 1-day reminder; for yoghurt or cheese, 3–5 days gives you more time to work it into meals.
Scan your grocery receipt when you get home — AI identifies the products and adds them to your fridge with expiry dates. You get a push notification 1–14 days before anything expires. No sign-up, all data stays on your device.
Download Fango for free
How Fango's expiry reminders work
Most food expiry apps require you to add each item manually — which is why many people stop using them. Fango solves this with AI receipt scanning:
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Scan your grocery receipt with your phone camera. You do this once when you get home from the shop. The full receipt, including multiple pages, can be scanned in one go.
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AI identifies the products automatically. Fango reads the receipt and adds each food item to your digital fridge — with an estimated expiry date based on the product type.
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Review and adjust if needed. The app shows you all recognised items before saving. You can edit dates for items where the packaging shows a specific date.
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Receive push reminders before anything expires. Fango notifies you 1–14 days before each item's expiry date — you set the timing once and the app handles the rest.
What to look for in a food expiry reminder app
Not all expiry reminder apps are equally practical. Here are the features that matter most:
Fango vs. other food expiry reminder apps
The main alternatives are BEEP, NoWaste and Fridgely. All send expiry notifications — the differences are in how you add items and what happens to your data.
| Feature | Fango | BEEP | NoWaste | Fridgely |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Push expiry reminders | ✓ 1–14 days | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI receipt scanning | ✓ | — | ~ unreliable | ~ basic |
| No account required | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Data stays on device | ✓ | cloud | cloud | cloud |
| Adjustable reminder timing | ✓ 1–14 days | limited | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free to try | ✓ 5 free scans | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
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Why food expiry reminders reduce waste — and save money
The maths is straightforward. WRAP estimates that UK households waste around £800 per year per family of four. Most of that food was edible when it expired — it simply wasn't used in time. A push notification before the expiry date gives you the one thing you were missing: advance warning.
Even catching two or three items per week that would otherwise have been thrown away adds up to meaningful savings over a year. And the habit compounds: once you're used to getting reminders, you naturally start planning meals around what's about to expire — which reduces waste further.
The key is making the system as frictionless as possible. Scan your receipt when you get home, and Fango handles everything else — no daily check-ins, no manual date entry, just a push notification when you need it.