Vegans only: an Italian dev turned a hit AI menu app into a vegan version, and it's on the Top Grossing chart with 141 ratings

In 2026 summer, a wave of "AI writes your weekly meal plan + budget grocery list + doesn't work unless you pay" apps hit the top ten of the US Food & Drink chart. In September, an Italian developer turned the same thing into an app only for vegans, called Vego. It's small, with just 141 US ratings, but it's been on the Top Grossing chart for ten days. Below: what it does, where the users come from, where the money comes from, and whether you can follow this "generic template + narrow niche" approach.

A one-star review

2026 Sep 20, nine days after Vego launched, a US user left a one-star review on the App Store:

"Completely unusable without paying, what is this. This is obviously vibe coded. I'm now thinking about building an open-source vegan menu app myself, lol."

Two weeks later, on Oct 7, another user left a five-star review with a long write-up:

"This app has genuinely changed my life. I'm busy, I hate cooking, and I was sick of veggie nuggets and fries because I had no idea what else I could eat. After using it I'm willing to try new foods, I can be sure what I buy is actually vegan, and I've found restaurants with vegan options I'd never noticed... totally worth the price."

These two reviews tell the whole story: a one-person app, AI-generated, with a hard paywall; it solves a few very specific problems for a very specific group, and that group will pay.

What it is

The developer is JACOPO GIANNETTI, in Italy, and this is the only app under his name. It launched in Sep 11 and updated to version 1.2 in Oct 8. The first line of the store page makes the positioning clear:

"Going vegan rarely fails for lack of willpower. It fails on logistics: the supermarket, restaurant menus, and the meat-based recipe on TikTok. Vego handles all three."

The features map to those three problems, plus a ready-made template:

• Swipe to pick the week's meals: choose cuisines, enter what's in your kitchen, set a budget, then swipe left and right. Recipes are written by AI based on your inputs, and several dishes share ingredients so nothing rots in the fridge. After swiping, it merges everything into a grocery list sorted by supermarket aisle, with an estimated price on each item. This part is the same template as TapCook and mise.
• Turn TikTok / Instagram dishes vegan: tap share in TikTok, pick Vego, then keep scrolling. The converted version waits for you in the app: ingredients on the left, substitutions on the right, with a reason for each change. One user said, "It doesn't just give one fix, it gives several for every dish."
• Order from a restaurant menu: photograph the menu (up to 6 pages) and it tells you which dishes you can order as-is, which need a small change, and the exact words to say to the waiter.
• Barcode scan: scan a product in the supermarket and it tells you whether you can eat it and which ingredient is the problem (data from the open-source Open Food Facts).

There's also a small extra: the grocery list syncs in real time between two phones, such as a partner's or a roommate's, and appears on the lock screen and Dynamic Island.

It won't work without paying. The store page says "SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED", and the in-app purchases list 9 price points: weekly at $7.99 and $9.99, annual plans from $19.99 to $49.99 across six tiers, plus a $34.99 PRO tier. Its privacy policy says it uses Superwall to "display and test subscription offers", so all these tiers are price testing.

How much it grew

(App Store, US storefront.) On Oct 1 a review said "I want to find those 34 reviews to see for myself," so at three weeks after launch it had only about thirty ratings. It now adds 3 to 5 a day, and based on typical iOS rating rates, that suggests a few hundred new downloads a day (inferred). It hasn't charted on the overall chart and hasn't charted in other countries.

It reaches the Top Grossing chart because each user pays a lot, not because it has many users. The Food & Drink category chart's 50–70 rank threshold isn't high, so a few hundred weekly subscribers is probably enough (inferred; Apple doesn't publish revenue). Compare it with the generic version of the same template to see how small it is:

It came two or three months later and is an order of magnitude smaller. It didn't open a new category. It took a template already proven to make money and aimed it at a narrower group of people.

Where users come from

Meta ads, small budget. Searching "Vego vegan meal planner" in the Meta ad library (US, currently running) shows 3 ads, all started in Oct 8, the same day as version 1.2. The copy reads:

"Pick what you want this week, set your budget, and Vego plans your meals and grocery list in seconds. No more standing in the aisle wondering what to make."

Its privacy policy says that once users consent to tracking, it uses AppsFlyer to send install and subscription data back to ad platforms like Meta; the store's privacy label also lists "data used to track you". Only 3 ads are running, so the budget is probably small. Notably, the homepage of its website says "no ads, no tracking", which contradicts the privacy policy.

Vegan micro-influencers on TikTok. Two accounts posted in early October: @jessfrazer (26k followers, normally posts vegan content) posted "I love you Vego omg" on Oct 4 with 1,202 views; @sophrickingamazinglol (2,056 followers, vegan creator) posted "that's dinner sorted x #Vego" on Oct 1 with 2,651 views, and another post carried #targetaudience in its tags. Neither is marked as an ad, but the timing overlaps with Meta spend starting, so it looks like a free-subscription-for-a-small-fee collab (inferred). View counts are low and it's not bringing in many people. The onboarding survey asks "how did you hear about Vego (TikTok, App Store, friend)", which suggests TikTok is a channel it wants.

Store search. The title and subtitle are "Vegan Meal Planner" and "Grocery List & Plant Recipes". Searching "vegan meal planner" on the US App Store, the top results are older apps with few ratings and generic menu apps (11-06 checked), so almost nobody is bidding on that term. Its actual rank is unknown (unverified).

What I didn't find: press coverage, "best vegan apps" roundups (there's a 2026-year-old roundup from Sep 29, but I didn't count it), Reddit, X, or Product Hunt. Very few people know about it.

Where the money comes from

Subscription only, no free tier, no ads. The AI part uses Google Gemini, the backend is Firebase, barcode data comes from an open-source library, and TikTok / Instagram videos are pulled by a third-party downloader (per the website's privacy policy). One person can finish a build with these off-the-shelf pieces in two months, at low cost.

The cost shows in reviews. Both one-star reviews hit this point: one is the "obviously vibe coded" line above; another from Oct 30 says "The setup asks a ton of questions and then aggressively pitches an app I already installed. It's full of AI-generated images, looks lazy and untrustworthy. I never even got to a point where it worked." A hard paywall with a long onboarding survey is standard for this kind of template app. It can raise revenue, but it also turns some people away.

Who it's competing with

A few new vegan tools launched around the same time: Plantchemy (said on TikTok in Nov 5 that Android is live, iPhone is coming), Vex Vegan (running TikTok ads in November). Haven't seen anyone building a direct copy of Vego.

The full stack of vegan + AI budget weekly meal plan + rewriting social media recipes + menu ordering + barcode scanning: as far as I can see on iOS, Vego is the only one doing all of it.

If it were you

B: Worth a test. The opportunity is there, but this single sample is too small and the ceiling looks low. What's certain: a proven generic AI subscription template, pointed at a group with a strong identity and a fear of "eating wrong", still got 141 ratings and charted in its category, and the search terms and ad audience aren't crowded. What's not certain: how big this business can get. Vego's own generic version is only a tenth of its size, and retention isn't visible yet.

Good fit for: solo indie devs who can build "AI generation + hard paywall + price testing" in a month or two and are willing to spend a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month testing small Meta budgets.

Not a fit for: people who won't run ads and only want organic store traffic, and people hoping for one big hit. A narrow audience means a built-in ceiling; this is a small business that makes money.

How to build it: don't make another vegan version. Vego already has that, and SO VEGAN is moving in the same direction. Follow its approach but swap the audience: halal, gluten-free (celiac), low-FODMAP, diabetic, pregnancy, kidney diet... Pick a group for whom "getting it wrong has a cost" and who will pay to avoid mistakes. Keep the core of "budget weekly meal plan + grocery list" and add two or three features specific to that group: photograph a menu to ask what's safe to order, scan a label to check ingredients, and turn a dish from TikTok into a version they can eat. The social recipe rewrite is especially worth copying: via the iOS share sheet, time spent scrolling TikTok becomes uses of your app. You could also change language: Vego's interface is English-only and has only charted in the US. Vegan audiences in German, French and Spanish don't have a matching product (inference, not verified country by country).

How to get users: On day one, wire up price testing (Superwall-type) and attribution (AppsFlyer-type), and send install and subscription data back to Meta. Put audience keywords in the title ("Halal Meal Planner", "Gluten Free Meal Planner") to capture search terms nobody is fighting over. Then find a few micro-creators in this niche with a few thousand to tens of thousands of followers, give them free access or a small payment, and have them post "saw a dish → turned it into something I can eat in one tap". Add a question to the onboarding survey asking where they heard about us.

Deadline: These AI meal planner apps launched in a cluster from June to September 2026. The generic versions are already crowded, and the niche-audience versions are only starting to appear. Locking in search terms and ad placements for an audience before early 2027 is fairly safe. Around New Year's, "healthy eating for the new year" is the best paid-acquisition window of the year, so catching it would be ideal (inference).

Where the read could be wrong: ① Vego's ratings stalled at two or three hundred by December and it dropped off the top charts, which suggests niche paying users can't carry paid acquisition, so this path only supports a small side income for one person. ② Big players like TapCook and mise adding "vegan / halal / gluten-free modes" would erase the niche advantage. ③ On the flip side, if Vego's ratings accelerate clearly after more ad spend and it reaches the top 20 of Top Grossing, that means the niche is bigger than expected and it's worth moving faster.