"Every recipe, in Bulgarian": how a 77-rating App squeezed into the top 5 of Bulgaria's food charts

Zdravko: Meal Planner & Recipes (ios_6751572541) research report

Research date 2026-11-06. Which stores we checked: in our library this app has only charted in the Bulgaria (bg) store (appstore library app_day, 2026-10-28 to 11-06); the other 114 stores never listed it. Google Play and the Meta ad library don't index it.

One line

A Bulgarian digital marketing firm doing local SEO and Google Ads (Infocall OOD, founded 2015) built an "AI recipe collection + weekly meal plan + shopping list" app with an EU innovation subsidy (total budget 320k leva, of which EU 192k leva). Its pitch is fully in Bulgarian, plus scoring against the Bulgarian Regional Health Inspectorate (РЗИ) nutrition standards for children aged 3–7. The reason it could "break through" is that Bulgaria's category has almost no localized competition and the entry bar is low: 77 ratings was enough to reach #4 on the Food & Drink free chart and #2–4 on the grossing chart. In absolute terms, it's still a very small product.

1. Data (how big it is now)

• Ratings: bg store total 77 (2026-11-06), average 4.87 (iTunes lookup, bg store). 10-28 is 59; it went up 18 over 9 days. Over the last 7 days it gained 17, or 0–6 per day (appstore library app_day). It launched 2026-09-07 and collected 77 in two months.
• Rankings (appstore library app_day, bg):
  • Its best Food & Drink category rank ranged from 2 to 5 each day. Most days the best rank came from the grossing chart, at #10-28, #3,11-01, #2,11-05, #4; on other days it came from the free chart (#4–5).
  • On the overall free chart it bounced between 132 and 209.
  • On 11-06, the top 3 of the bg Food & Drink free chart were Wolt, Bolt Food and Fantastic, with it at #4 and McDonald's at #5. It was the only non-delivery app in the top 10.
• The bar to chart in Bulgaria is very low: 11-06 Mob, at #1 on the bg Food & Drink grossing chart, has only 15 ratings in bg, and Honeydew, at #2, has 12. ReciMe, the global leader in this category (328k ratings in the US, #177 US grossing), has only 80 in bg. So "grossing #2–4" does suggest real subscription revenue, but the absolute amount may be only a few subscriptions a day (inferred).
• How it makes money: the app is free to download, with monthly and annual Premium subscriptions (the Google Play description says "unlimited AI recipe scanning, unlimited meal planner…"). The website also sells "42 founding spots, one-time €28, lifetime access" (zdravko.co). The website FAQ still has pre-launch copy saying "Pro plans billed monthly or yearly, with a free trial", so two pricing models are running at the same time.
• Android: package name zdravko.app.com. Our googleplay library doesn't index it (it never charted in any of the 30 stores we track, and those 30 stores don't include Bulgaria). The recall card says 100+ installs, unverified.
• Self-reported on the website: "12 000+ saved recipes" (Instagram bio @zdravko.co, seen in a search summary); unverified.

2. Competitors: who's doing the same thing

Verdict: Globally this category is crowded (the US store has dozens of competitors, and TapCook, mise and NeatEat all launched this year). But in Bulgarian, only Zdravko and Zastillia offer the full set: social/photo import, automatic translation into Bulgarian, weekly meal plans and shopping lists. Zastillia has no ratings in the bg store.

3. Where users come from (growth levers)

1. The developer is itself a digital marketing firm: Infocall OOD (Инфокол ООД, EIK 203778332,2015-11-11, founded in Sofia, 2 shareholders) sells Google local optimization, AdWords campaigns, email marketing and website building to small businesses (jobs.bg, infocall.bg, papagal.bg). Customer acquisition is its core trade. Confirmed.
2. Bulgarian-language SEO content: the official blog has a set of long-tail tutorials, "How to save recipes from Instagram: 6 ways" (2026-07-20, published even before the app launched), "How to save recipes from TikTok / Facebook / websites / photos" (all 2026-10-09). Each post ends with "save it in 10 seconds with Zdravko" (zdravko.co/blog). There are also two pages, /menyu and /principi-na-hranene, a "3–7 year-old children's healthy menu" and "РЗИ nutrition principles", aimed at parents searching for health information. Searching Bulgarian terms like "Здравко приложение рецепти" with Brave and Jina, the top result is the official site. Confirmed that SEO was done; how much traffic it brought is unknown.
3. Owned Instagram / Facebook accounts: @zdravko.co on Instagram, posting Reels such as "А ти помниш ли любимите рецепти?…"; Facebook page id 61593358285499, posting a "grandma's recipes" video series with the caption "Коя е любимата Ви рецепта на баба от детството?". The pitch is emotional: grandma's handwritten recipes plus viral TikTok-style dishes. Accounts confirmed; follower counts not seen (Instagram requires login).
4. Meta paid ads: a company that runs ad campaigns, with subsidy money and its own FB page, very likely ran ads. But the Meta Ad Library page can't be read without logging in, and our metaads library doesn't cover it (it only tracks advertisers who appear in the first screen of keyword results). Unverified.
5. Influencer promotion: a recall card says "find local influencer Stephen Pavlov to promote it", but I couldn't find matching content (there's an X account with the same name, 133 followers). Unverified.
6. TikTok: searching TikHub for "zdravko" and "zdravko рецепти" returned only unrelated results, such as Balkan singer Zdravko Čolić. I found no videos from @zdravko.co that took off. No evidence.
7. Store search / chart flywheel: the Bulgarian Food & Drink chart is almost entirely taken by delivery apps, so a utility app in the top 5 stands out. Its store title uses the English keywords "Meal Planner & Recipes", and the subtitle and first line of the description read "EVERY RECIPE, IN BULGARIAN". Inference: chart visibility and keyword search probably bring some organic traffic. Unverified.
8. Media / X / TrustMRR: no media coverage found. Searching "zdravko" in x-radar only returns unrelated content. No public revenue.

4. Why it took off

• Timing: by 2026, the US category of turning Reels/TikTok into recipes had already been shown to make money by ReciMe, Honeydew, mise and TapCook, but none of them support Bulgarian. Bulgarian users mostly watch recipe videos in English, Italian or Turkish, so "automatically translate it into Bulgarian" is a real need. Zdravko turned this gap into a one-line pitch: "EVERY RECIPE, IN BULGARIAN".
• Where the money came from: an EU "business innovation" subsidy (BG16RFPR001-1.001), project period 2025-02 to 2026-08, total budget 320 000 leva ≈ €164k, of which the EU contributes 192 000 leva ≈ €98k (figures from the website footer). In other words, R&D and early promotion don't have to pay back from revenue, so the team can work on local details: 80+ local seasonal recipes, a local nutrition database for ingredients, importing from local recipe sites like bonapeti.bg and gotvach.bg, and children's nutrition scoring.
• Low barrier: Bulgarian iOS users are few, and a handful of ratings is enough to reach the Food & Drink Top Grossing chart. Two or three new ratings a day plus a few subscriptions can keep it steadily in the top 5 of its category. It looks like it's trending clearly in our recalls, largely because this small market amplifies it.
• Reasons users stay or pay (inference; there are no review samples, as the bg store is outside our review collection): the parent audience (positioned as "helping 3–7 year-old kids eat healthier") plus weekly meal plans and shopping lists are used every week. A one-time €28 "founding member" offer gives early users a strong reason to pay. The average rating of 4.87 is high, which may mean in-app rating prompts were used (unverified).

5. Differentiation

1. Fully Bulgarian + automatic translation on import: this is the fundamental difference from global leaders like ReciMe, and the direct reason it ranks ahead of them in the bg store. But the moat is shallow: Zastillia already supports Bulgarian, and it would take ReciMe only a few weeks to add a language.
2. A "Zdravko Score" with local authority backing: it scores recipes from 0 to 100 against the five nutrition standards the RZI (regional health inspectorate) sets for 3–7 year-olds, 0 being the top. This is the hardest part of the localization to copy. It turns a generic recipe tool into a tool for parents who want their children to eat healthily, and gives SEO and parent communities a topic. Its contribution to growth can't be quantified; I infer it's a plus, not the main reason.
3. Local content: 80+ traditional Bulgarian seasonal dishes, import from local recipe sites, and digitizing "grandma's handwritten recipes" from photos. This is the emotional selling point and the main thread of its social content.

Is this why it took off: yes. In a small-language market where neither big companies nor global leaders have localized, "native language + local standards" is enough to reach the top 5 of the category. But "took off" is only relative to a small market; the absolute scale is very small.

6. How many people know about it

• Few people know about it yet: no media coverage, nobody on X mentions it, and neither TrustMRR nor the founder has shared revenue. It isn't discussed abroad at all. Even inside Bulgaria, you can only find its own website, store pages and social accounts.
• Copycats: none found that deliberately imitate it. Other Bulgarian-language or multilingual competitors exist in the same period (Zastillia 2026-05, a local recipe library app 2026-07/08), but they either predate it or are unrelated.

7. What to take from it

• "Proven global category × small-language native version × local official standards": take AI tools already proven to make money in the US (recipe import, bookkeeping, homework helpers...), build a native version for a small language, and attach a local authority standard (health ministry, school curriculum, tax law). That can quickly reach the top of local store charts. Suits teams with local marketing capability.
• Subsidies fund the early stage: Eastern and Southern Europe have many EU "business innovation" grants that can cover R&D and promotion costs, so there's no rush to break even.
• SEO before launch: the Instagram tutorial blog went live about 7 weeks before the app, capturing native long-tail searches like "how to save recipes from Instagram".
• A one-time "founding member" offer: limited (42 spots) with a lifetime price, suited to early cash flow and feedback in a small market.
• Be clear about the ceiling too: the Bulgarian iOS market is tiny, so the revenue cap for this approach is the size of a local small company. To grow bigger, it would have to be replicated across several small languages (Romanian, Greek, Serbian...).

8. What's still uncertain

• Whether Meta ads were run and how much was spent: the ad library couldn't be read.
• The real Android install count (the recall card says 100+), subscription conversion rate and revenue amount.
• Whether influencer deals like Stephen Pavlov's are real, and how much reach they brought.
• Whether "12 000+ saved recipes" is accurate.
• Whether the ratings include any incentivized reviews.
• Whether the subsidy project 2026-08 has ended and whether investment will continue.

Sources

• appstore library (agent-im, app_day / app_profile / app / app_name, 2026-10-28 to 11-06)
• iTunes lookup: id 6751572541, 6761322310, 6789844195, 6790095428, 1444787530 (country=bg/us, 2026-11-06)
• Official site zdravko.co/, zdravko.co/blog (including the footer subsidy information), zdravko.co/menyu
• Google Play play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=zdravko.app.com
• Infocall OOD: www.jobs.bg/en/company/227315, infocall.bg/contacts/, papagal.bg/eik/203778332/db3c
• Instagram www.instagram.com/zdravko.co/, Reel www.instagram.com/reel/DeQ9jJSCr4A/; Facebook page 61593358285499 (Jina search results)
• Zastillia zastillia.app/bg ;Брутално вкусно brutalnovkusno.bg/ ;Euronews Bulgaria 2026-01-18 euronews.bg/programs/kulinarniya-s-ai-balgarski-ekip-sazdade…
• TikHub TikTok search, x-radar search (neither returned relevant content), metaads / googleplay libraries (neither covers it)