Recipes from your feed straight into your supermarket cart: a Dutch founder got an app into the top five charts with zero ad spend

Teije Keesmaat, a Dutch solo builder, made SlimMandje: you spot a dish on TikTok, share it to the app, and within seconds the ingredients become real products and prices at Albert Heijn or Jumbo, added to your supermarket app cart in one tap. Three-plus months after launch, it has stayed in the top seven of the Dutch App Store Food & Drink chart. It doesn't rely on technology; it relies on the founder posting food short videos himself every day. Below: how it took off, how much money it makes, who it's up against, and whether the playbook can work in your country.

A WhatsApp bot that Meta shut down

2026 年夏天,Teije 在 LinkedIn 上发了一条帖子:「一个 WhatsApp 上的 AI 代理,250 万次播放。差不多每 10 个说荷兰语的人里就有 1 个看到过我的产品。」那时候 SlimMandje 还不是 App,是一个 WhatsApp 机器人:把社交媒体上的菜谱链接发给它,几秒后返回一份能直接在超市下单的购物清单。他发视频讲这个机器人才两个月,换来 7,000 个用户、20 万条消息、125 个付费用户。

Then, "while I was on vacation, Meta shut the whole thing down for spam, with no explanation." 7,000 users vanished overnight. In the same post he announced: no more WhatsApp, we're building an app instead.

App 在 2026 年 7 月 26 日上了 iOS,中间被苹果拒审了几次。这一个月他没怎么发新视频,老视频照样有约 50 万播放,攒下的人等 App 一上线就涌进来了。按他的说法,上架几天就到荷兰美食饮品分类第 10(8 月 13 日的帖子,约 1,500 次下载),又过了五天到第 2,荷兰免费总榜第 46,「全部自然流量,零广告费,就我一个人」。

What it actually does

The first line of the store page reads: "SlimMandje turns every recipe you find on social media into a shopping list." The flow has three steps:

1. See a dish on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook or a recipe site, tap share, choose SlimMandje;
2. AI pulls the ingredients from the video and matches them to real products on the Albert Heijn or Jumbo shelves, with prices, and shows the two totals side by side;
3. Tap once and the whole list goes into the AH or Jumbo app cart. Change the servings and the quantities adjust.

Pricing is a 7-day free trial, then €9.99 a month or €34.99 a year.

Many international apps do "social recipe import": ReciMe, Paprika and Samsung Food can all turn a video into a list, but the list says "200 g chicken breast," not "that specific AH pack, and how much it costs." The Dutch supermarket market is concentrated in AH and Jumbo, and SlimMandje connects that last step, so a recipe becomes an order directly. This step is also the ending of every one of his videos.

Where users come from: a founder account that looks like a food creator

The main channel is Teije's own TikTok @teijek: 5,232 followers, 192 posts, 276k likes in total (TikTok, 11-06). Not many followers, but individual videos get high views; several have passed 500k since August, the top one from Sep 21 at 735k.

Every video follows the same formula: cook a trending dish (beef tacos, cheeseburger wraps, Nutella sandwich cookies), and halfway through pull out your phone to demo "share → SlimMandje → into the AH cart." The captions sound like an ordinary person, not a developer pitching a product:

• "When will you actually cook the recipes you've saved?" (10-3.33M views)
• "No more screenshots of 1000 recipes, sounds nice, right?" (9-19.3M)
• "Cheeseburger wraps. How to make them: share it over, and you know the rest" (10-29.3M)
• "I really should have known about this sooner 😭😭" (10-25.2M)

The bio reads "Making social media recipes / try SlimMandje." He also rides local celebrities: one from Oct 31, "going to cook all of Monica's recipes," cooks dishes by Dutch influencer Monica Geuze, 231k views. A Nov 3 video used a comment hook: "comment 'app' and I'll post exactly how to use it." His only advice on LinkedIn was one line: "Look at which format already works in your niche, copy it, and keep trying until one goes viral." He posts 1 to 3 videos a day.

Two other channels are supporting: building in public on LinkedIn, posting his rankings, user counts and the story of being shut down by Meta, with two or three hundred likes per post, which is how the Dutch startup scene got to know him; in early September he recruited paid UGC creators on TikTok, scale unknown. The brand account @slimmandje has only 2,346 followers and a best video of 59k views; the founder's personal account is what's doing the work.

One thing to note: the 8 videos he posted from Nov 2 to 6 mostly got between 400 and 2,000 views (TikTok, 11-06 scrape). It's unclear whether new videos haven't taken off yet or the formula is starting to fatigue; but all his growth rests on this one account, which is its most fragile point.

How big it is now and how much money it makes

#4 on the Top Grossing chart sounds big, but the bar in the Netherlands Food & Drink chart is low. Most of the top ten are Vivino-type wine apps and a few recipe apps. Rough math at 15k users and €35 a year: a few thousand euros a month (estimate, not public). This is a business one person can make decent money from, not a big market.

The reviews make the paywall problem clear. The good ones say it really gets people cooking: "Finally actually cooking the recipes, more variety, my cooking has improved a lot" (5 stars, 9-02); "Connects really well to Insta and TikTok, and it links straight to grocery shopping, really great" (5 stars, 8-22). The bad ones are almost all about money: "Yet another subscription app... you go through every step and only then tell me it's €35 a year, why not say so at the start! Deleted immediately" (1 stars, 8-16); "I wanted a free trial and it asked me to pay for next week right away" (1 stars, 11-01). One 3-star review says Instagram freezes after import and you have to fully close and reopen it. Dutch users are sensitive to subscriptions. Putting the price at the end of onboarding earns one-star reviews.

Who it's competing with

In the US, Instacart has long connected recipe to cart. In the Netherlands nobody had done real products plus one-tap ordering. SlimMandje's edge is that local gap, not the tech. The tech has no moat, and the supermarkets can build it any time. The way it connects to supermarket carts doesn't look official from outside (inference: likely unofficial), so if it gets shut off, the product is just a list.

It works because a few things come together

• The product is the content. "Saw a recipe, saved it, never cooked it" is a pain everyone has. The demo itself is an attractive food video, and every video is an ad.
• The founder posts often, on camera. The Dutch-language market is small. Posting 1 to 3 videos a day, a few hitting 500k views, stands out in that market.
• Validated payment with a chatbot first. The WhatsApp version had 125 paying users in two months, proving people would pay. When Meta banned it, the audience it built went straight into the app.
• Local supermarkets are highly concentrated. Two chains cover most people. Connect those two carts and you have connected most of the country.

If it were you

B: You can follow, but copy the approach, not this product. Copying it into the Netherlands makes no sense, since AH is already doing it. Take the model of "social recipe → real local supermarket products → one-tap order" to a country where supermarkets are concentrated and nobody has done it yet. Start it with the founder filming short videos. One person could reach a few thousand to ten-plus thousand euros a month (estimate). The ceiling is low and supermarkets could build it themselves any time, hence B.

Who it suits: One or two people living in the target country who speak the local language and are willing to film cooking videos every day. Some reverse-engineering or scraping skills to match recipe ingredients to the local supermarket product catalog and cart.

Who it doesn't suit: People who won't show their face, or who expect to grow through ads or app store search (this only pays off when you make the content yourself). People aiming at the big English market (the UK already has Quickle, the US has Instacart and many others). People wanting to build a big company (the supermarkets own the chain).

How to do it: Pick a market with concentrated supermarkets and little local-language short-video competition. Germany (REWE, Edeka have online shopping), Nordics (Sweden's ICA), Australia (Woolworths, Coles) and the French-speaking part of Belgium are worth checking for existing players (inference, these markets haven't been verified). Like Teije, start with a chatbot or web version to test payment before building an app. Don't put all users on WhatsApp, though. Cold broadcasts get banned. In the app, state the price on the first screen. Annual plans in the €30–40 range. Don't require a card for a trial. Most Dutch one-star reviews are about exactly this.

How to get users: Open a personal account that looks like a food creator and post 1 to 3 times a day. Cook a dish that's trending locally, demo "share → add to cart" halfway through. Use hooks like "Why did I only just find this?" or "Stop screenshotting recipes to save them." Riff on local food influencers' recipes. Drive traffic from the comments. Also post the numbers on LinkedIn or in local startup circles to find partners and people at the supermarkets.

When to move: Before major supermarkets in the target country launch the same feature in their own apps. AH started piloting in July. Other supermarkets will likely follow once they see results, probably within 2027 year (inference). Ideally get the video channel running before the January "eat better" resolution season.

Signs that would mean you read it wrong:

• AH's recipe scan goes fully live and within a few months SlimMandje drops out of the Dutch top ten. Shows that once a supermarket moves, third parties have no room. Same would happen in other countries.
• Teije's recent videos, getting a few hundred to two thousand views, keep flatlining, and rating growth has dropped to single digits a week. Shows this content formula burns out fast and depends on a few hits.
• Your target country's supermarket cart won't connect, or gets banned once connected. The core step is gone, and what's left is just another recipe-list app.

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Data and sources: App Store chart and ratings for the Netherlands and Belgium (10-28 to 11-06). Google Play install counts (11-06). App Store Netherlands reviews (7-30 to 11-01). Public posts and view counts for TikTok @teijek and @slimmandje (11-06). Teije Keesmaat's LinkedIn posts (WhatsApp-stage numbers, Meta ban, chart positions, all self-reported). slimmandje.nl. Comparison pages on mijnmandje.nl and kortify.nl. GitHub open-source clone. quickleapp.com. Revenue is estimated, no public data.