Two Portuguese engineers built an app for "what to cook this week and which supermarket is cheapest", and used one press push to hit #1 on the national free overall chart
What it is A Portuguese weekly family meal-planning app: based on household size and who's home when, it plans a week of lunches and dinners, builds a shared shopping list, and calculates what that list costs at Continente, Pingo Doce, Lidl and Auchan. It can import recipes from TikTok and Instagram and shows the price per serving.
Why it took off The two founders, both growth engineers by background, prepared a full press package and pushed it from tech sites all the way up to the national daily JN (11-01). It landed just as Portugal was debating the cost of living. Whole-basket price comparisons across four supermarkets gave journalists a "help you save money" angle, and a small market's chart has a low bar, so the push reached #1.
BHow you could follow it In local-language markets like Spain, Italy or Poland, first build a solid price catalog for three or four major chains, then add a weekly menu that scales portions by headcount and attendance. Follow its path from small outlets up to national dailies, and prepare rating prompts and server and payment flows before the chart push.
- Data (updated daily) · First launched 2026-09-08 · Portugal score 29 · 11-08 charted in 1 stores
iOS · Overall Top Free rank · by store Data 2026-11-03 → 2026-11-07 (5 days, 5 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that dayiOS · Number of stores charted (top 200 on any chart) Data 2026-11-03 → 2026-11-07 (5 days, 5 observations)iOS · ratings · Portugal Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.
PlanMyMeals plans a week of lunches and dinners for your family, generates a shopping list, and tells you what that list costs at Continente, Pingo Doce, Lidl and Auchan. It launched in September, and in Nov 3 it hit #1 on Portugal's iPhone free overall chart. What pushed it up wasn't paid acquisition or a TikTok hit. It was a round of national media coverage the two growth-background founders pitched themselves. Three days later it had dropped to #65. The two things worth taking are a local supermarket price catalog and a media playbook for small countries.
40 packed lunches
The story starts in Duarte Cruz's kitchen. He and his girlfriend cooked two weeks of packed lunches at once, and when he worked it out, that's 40 meals to plan ahead. They tried several meal-planning apps, even paid for one, then cancelled. By his account, most apps make you enter recipes one by one, and the shopping list they spit out is no better than a phone notes app (The Next Big Idea, 10-19).
So he wrote his own. The first version had only about 50 dishes the two of them actually cooked, installed on their two phones. Friends and family saw it and asked for it, and Lucas Vicente, who works in software too, came on board. It took about two and a half months from first prototype to the App Store (TEK Sapo, 10-08).
On 2026 Nov 1 at 7:14 pm, the national daily JN ran a piece titled "Há uma aplicação criada por portugueses para poupar no supermercado" ("There's an app made by Portuguese people to help you save at the supermarket"). The PlanMyMeals website's press page went live the same day, with a headline word-for-word the same as JN's.
What it is
An iPhone and Android app, called "Ementa Semanal" (weekly menu) in Portuguese, developed by a one-person company under Lucas Vicente, launched in Sep 2026 8.
- You first enter how many people are in the household, their tastes, allergies, budget, and how much time each day goes to cooking. Then you mark who's not home for which meal this week. From that it plans lunches, dinners and packed lunches for the week, scales portions to the number of people actually eating, and moves leftovers into the next day's lunch.
- The meal plan becomes a shared household shopping list. It subtracts what you already have at home, then calculates the total at each of the four supermarkets.
- You can import recipes from TikTok, Instagram or YouTube links, or photograph a recipe book page. Once imported, it shows the price per serving.
Pricing is the grind. For the three supermarkets with online stores, it scrapes public catalog prices daily, cleans them up, and matches them to specific ingredients. Lidl has no online store in Portugal, so its prices are entered one by one from in-store flyers (official press page).
Pricing: the free tier covers 2 person's household, 4 new weekly plans per month, 1 recipe imports per week, and price comparison at 1 supermarkets. Plus is €6.99/month, Pro is €14.99/month (Google Play store page, The Next Big Idea). On the App Store, Plus is tiered by household size at €6.99 to €12.99 per month.
How big it got
| Date | Portugal free overall chart | Food & Drink Top Free | Food & Drink Top Grossing | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10-28 | Not charted | 17 | 23 | 21 |
| 11-02 | Not charted | 20 | 14 | 21 |
| 11-03 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 22 |
| 11-04 | 1 | 1 | 14 | 26 |
| 11-05 | 9 | 1 | 25 | 27 |
| 11-06 | 65 | 2 | 5 | 28 |
App Store Portugal chart and ratings, 11-06.
The numbers the founders report grow faster: Oct 8 500 households (Lucas's LinkedIn), Oct 19 3,500 households and 350+ new signups a day (The Next Big Idea), Nov 3 22,000+ users, 39,000+ meals added to plans, "currently adding 10k+ signups a day", and it calls itself "the most-installed app in Portugal" (official press page, figures as of 11-03).
Two caveats apply. First, the hype is Portugal-only: the US store page exists, but its rating is 0. Second, there are only 28 ratings against 22k users, far from what you'd expect, which suggests almost no rating prompts. The earliest five-star ratings all arrived on day two after launch (9-09), most likely from people the founders know (inference). Ranking #5 on the Top Grossing chart shows some people are paying, but the bar on Portugal's grossing chart for this category is low, so monthly revenue is probably small (estimate, not public).
Where users come from
A carefully prepared press package, the main channel. Coverage climbed step by step: tech site TEK Sapo (10-08) → 4gnews (10-14) → PCGuia's "App of the Day" (10-16) → startup outlet The Next Big Idea (10-19) → weekly Sábado (10-31) → national daily JN (11-01) → a string of regional sites reprinting it, including Postal do Algarve, O Influente and Hora-H (11-02, 11-03). The website's press page had ready-made material: a fact sheet, 14 phone screenshots, 4 vertical videos journalists could use directly ("7 dinners, 0 ideas", "Which supermarket is cheapest?"), and a changelog listing up to version 1.13. A reporter could write from it straight away.
Both founders have a growth background. Duarte does product and growth at the cybersecurity company TryHackMe, and Lucas's LinkedIn tagline reads "Growth Engineer | AEO SEO". With each article, the two shared thank-you posts on LinkedIn.
The angle was well chosen. Every headline hinged on two phrases: "Portuguese engineers" and "saving at the supermarket". In those weeks Portuguese media were debating the cost of living and the 2027 year budget. A whole-basket comparison across four supermarkets gave journalists a reason to write about it.
The chart push itself brought another wave of traffic (inference). The store title now carries the phrase "Ementa Semanal" directly. In Nov 5, another app that launched in August, Mealbird, also renamed itself "Mealbird: Ementa Semanal", jumping from category #149 into the overall top 29, which suggests search volume for that term spiked in those days.
Site content is searchable. There's a Portuguese "Supermarket Savings Guide" and a "9 Portugal Meal Planning Apps Compared" post, written for search engines and AI assistants.
Ads: no evidence of paid spend. Of the 4 videos on its press page, 3 are labeled "Ad". One uses September 10–11 prices, so creative was made in September, but whether it was run or how much was spent is unknown (unverified). No TikTok videos of its own turned up, and nobody has mentioned it on X in the last two months.
After the surge
users flooded in and the app struggled to keep up. A one-star review from Nov 1 said only: "A aplicação vive travando" (the app keeps freezing). A five-star review from Nov 2 said the concept was great but that "after upgrading to Plus it got really slow, the Plan page won't open, and generating a new menu gets stuck," and said they wouldn't pay for now. By Nov 3, someone came back to edit their review: "Too many people started using it and there were some problems… the team fixed it right away and it's fully working now."
Earlier reviews repeat the same two points. "Finally an app that plans meals around my actual situation and lets me compare prices across stores, which no other app does" (10-25); "I love that I can import recipes straight from TikTok and Instagram" (10-10). One user asked for a feature: "Portugal has lots of Brazilians, please add Brazilian food" (10-15).
Who it's competing with
| Competitors | What it is | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Super Save Preços | Portugal's veteran supermarket price-comparison app, launched 2022 years ago, 2,821 ratings | Covers more chains, but only compares individual items, no meal plans |
| ReciMe | Global leader in "import social recipes + meal planning". US store 328k ratings, #2 Top Grossing in the Portugal Food & Drink category | Closest feature match, but no Portuguese supermarket prices |
| Bimby / Cookidoo | Thermomix recipes and planning, #1 Top Grossing in Portugal's Food & Drink category | Tied to one machine, no price comparison |
| Organiza-te | A nutritionist's personal brand with weekly Portuguese meal plans, #6 Top Grossing in the category | Relies on the nutritionist's following, no price comparison |
| Mealbird, Disha, Cestio, Tofu and others | A batch of 2026-year-old Portuguese weekly meal plan apps, many using AI to generate plans | None compare full baskets across four supermarkets |
| Supermarkets' own apps | Continente, Pingo Doce, Lidl Plus | Only show their own store's prices |
App Store Portugal storefront, 11-06.
Weekly meal plan apps are not in short supply, and Portuguese supermarket price comparison has been done before. The only publicly findable app that combines both in one product, and prices imported recipes, is this one. The UK equivalent, What's For Dinner, already published "WFD vs PlanMyMeals" in Nov 4, so peers are starting to notice it.
Next door in Spain, a group of Spanish-language weekly meal plan apps (Pick, Yuma, Cuanto Basta) is growing through TikTok creators (Pick's top video has about 100k views), but no one has been seen doing full-basket price comparison yet.
If it were you
Verdict: The differentiation is real. A local supermarket price catalog is hard for others to copy quickly. But the surge was a one-off event pushed by media, dropping from #1 to #65 in three days, and there is no evidence yet of retention or paying users. Meal planning is a hard category to retain users in. You could replicate it in another country, but first work out what keeps people around after the chart spike.
Who it suits: Indie devs or 2–3 person teams living in a mid-sized or small country, who know the local supermarkets and are willing to do messy data work, ideally with someone who can write press releases and knows a few local tech journalists. Markets in local languages like Spain (Mercadona, Carrefour, Dia, Lidl), Italy (Esselunga, Conad, Coop), Poland, Greece, and Czechia fit best: big-company meal plan apps don't do local prices, and local media like to cover "a homegrown app that saves you money."
Who it doesn't suit: People who don't want to maintain scrapers daily or manually enter flyer prices; people who can't handle a supermarket redesign or anti-scraping blocks cutting off a chunk of data; people who want to head-to-head ReciMe or Mealime in the big English market.
How to build it: Get the pricing right first: at least three major chains, with each price recorded with its source and date, and flyer entry where there's no online store. Then build in the portion logic: household size, who's home, leftovers. Importing recipes from TikTok and Instagram and showing the cost per serving is the easiest selling point to explain. Charge the way it does: the free tier covers 2 person and 1 supermarkets, and comparing more stores or a bigger household requires paying, with tiers by household size. Set up rating prompts before launch so you don't end up like it, with over 20,000 users and only 28 ratings.
How to get users: Follow its path and push up step by step, from small media to big media: first tech sites and "app of the day" sections, then startup media, and finally national newspapers. Keep a press page on the website with fact cards, screenshots, vertical videos, and consistent headlines. Headlines should say only two things: made by a local, and how much you can save at the supermarket. Publish when the country is talking about prices, budgets, or back-to-school season. During the chart-spike days, servers and payment flows must hold up.
Launch timing: Spanish weekly meal plan apps are multiplying, and whoever first builds full-basket comparison gets the media headline. Aim to launch before the first half of 2027. PlanMyMeals already has an English version and a US store page, and it could move to its next country at any time.
What would show you got it wrong: ① By late December, PlanMyMeals can't hold a top-20 spot in Portugal's free category charts, and its rating doesn't reach 100, meaning the people media brought didn't stick; ② a supermarket blocks its scrapers or sends a legal letter; ③ Continente or Pingo Doce builds cross-store comparison themselves, or a global player like ReciMe starts pulling in prices from supermarkets in each country; ④ conversely, if it expands to Spain or the UK within two or three months and hits the charts again, that means this playbook can be copied, and you'd need to move faster.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Super Save Preços iOS 2022-05 Portugal iOS 2,821 rating Compares individual item prices only. Covers more chains, but has no meal plans or portion conversion ReciMe iOS 2021-11 US 328k ratings; #2 Top Grossing in Portugal's F&D category Can also import social media recipes and make plans, but has no Portuguese supermarket prices and doesn't schedule by household member attendance Bimby / Cookidoo iOS 2014 #1 Top Grossing in Portugal's F&D category Recipes and plans tied to Thermomix, no price comparison Organiza-te iOS 2025-05 Portugal 70 rating, #6 Top Grossing in F&D A nutritionist's personal brand weekly meal plans, relies on the nutritionist's followers, no price comparison Mealbird: Ementa Semanal iOS 2026-08 Portugal 55 rating, #11-05 overall Top Free chart 29 A multilingual budget and macronutrient planner built by an overseas team, with no local real-price catalog Disha / Cestio / Repa / Tofu / Magic Pot iOS 2026 Each 0 to 19 rating Portuguese AI weekly meal plans, with no full-basket comparison across four supermarkets Mealime / Samsung Food / Plan to Eat iOS Years Large globally Mainly English-speaking market, no Portuguese supermarket prices Pick / Yuma / Cuanto Basta / AutoMenú iOS 2026 Spanish TikTok creator promotion, top single video about 100k views Spanish weekly meal plans, acquiring users through TikTok, no full-basket comparison seen Supermarkets' own apps (Continente, Pingo Doce, Lidl Plus) Big-company features Years Portugal nationwide Only shows its own store's prices, doesn't compare across stores (details unverified) - Where users come from
- Confirmed Self-pitched media coverage / press releases: TEK Sapo 10-08 → 4gnews → PCGuia → The Next Big Idea → Sábado → JN 11-01 → Postal, O Influente, Hora-H 11-02 to 11-03. The press page headlines match JN word for word, with data cards and ready-to-use videos prepared.
- Confirmed LinkedIn and personal networks: Friends and family were asked to use it. Both founders reposted each article on LinkedIn; Duarte's post got 10-20 likes 49.
- Inferred Store search + organic traffic from chart climbing: The title includes "Ementa Semanal"; the time it reached #1 overall coincides with its self-reported surge; Mealbird used the same keyword to climb the charts at the same time.
- Confirmed SEO / AEO content: The site has Portuguese savings guides, a "best meal planning apps in Portugal" comparison page, and an editorial-team page. Lucas's LinkedIn tag is "AEO SEO".
- Inferred Paid social ads: The press page has 3 vertical videos labeled Ad; the metaads library doesn't track it, so whether and how much was spent is uncertain.
- Inferred TikTok / X / Reddit: TikHub found no videos of its own; x-radar has 0 posts; one r/portugal thread shared the news.
PlanMyMeals: Ementa Semanal (iOS id6803866194) research report
2026-11-06 | Channel iOS (Portugal) | Developer LUCAS VICENTE, UNIPESSOAL LDA (single app) | Listed 2026-09-08 | Android package com.felllabs.planmymeals
One line
A Portuguese family weekly meal planning app: it generates a week of lunches and dinners based on how many people are in the household and who's home on which day, turns that into one shared shopping list, then calculates what the list costs at Continente, Pingo Doce, Lidl, and Auchan. It imports recipes from TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube links, and shows the cost per serving right after import.
Verdict
What sent it up was a round of Portuguese press coverage, and the founders pushed it themselves, not paid acquisition, not a TikTok hit. Both founders are growth engineers by trade (Duarte Cruz runs User Acquisition & Growth at TryHackMe; Lucas Vicente calls himself Growth Engineer | AEO SEO on LinkedIn). They took the local angle "two Portuguese engineers built an app to save you money at the supermarket" from a tech outlet (October) up to a national paper, JN (11-01), and local sites reprinted it (11-02, 11-03). The timing matched the national debate over Portugal's cost of living and 2027 budgets. From November 3 to 4 it hit #1 overall on the Portugal iPhone free chart, then fell fast (11-06 dropped to #65), but it still holds #2 in Food & Drink free and #5 in Top Grossing. The product's edge is putting a weekly menu plus shopping list and whole-basket price comparison across four Portuguese supermarkets into one app. That gave the press a "save you money" headline, which is why the coverage kept going. Whether users stick around, the data can't show yet.
1. Data (our database + public self-reports)
App Store Portugal (appstore database app_day / chart_rank)
| Date | Free overall chart | F&D free chart | F&D Top Grossing | Score | Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10-28 | — | 17 | 23 | 21 | 1.10 |
| 10-31 | — | 22 | 54 | 21 | 1.13 |
| 11-01 | — | 18 | 61 | 21 | 1.13 |
| 11-02 | — | 20 | 14 | 21 | 1.13 |
| 11-03 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 22 | 1.14 |
| 11-04 | 1 | 1 | 14 | 26 | 1.15 |
| 11-05 | 9 | 1 | 25 | 27 | 1.15 |
| 11-06 | 65 | 2 | 5 | 28 | 1.15 |
- Only charted in Portugal. The US store page exists (named "PlanMyMeals: Meal Planner"), rated 0; no UK store page at the time (checked whatsfordinner.uk 11-04).
- Only 28 ratings (average 4.75), far off from the self-reported 22k users: they probably never prompted for reviews. So estimating downloads from rating counts would badly undercount.
- Google Play is not in our googleplay library (never tracked on a chart); the AppBrain page shows 1,000+ downloads (date not verified).
Self-reported growth curve (founders' LinkedIn and website)
| Timeline | Scale | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Around 2026-08 | 2 users (the founders and their girlfriends) | Duarte Cruz on LinkedIn 10-20 |
| 10-08 | 500+ households | Lucas Vicente on LinkedIn 10-08 |
| 10-19/20 | 3,500+ households, 350 to 400+ sign-ups a day, F&D #7 at the time | thenextbigidea.pt 10-19; Duarte on LinkedIn 10-20 |
| 10-31 | 3,500+ users | Sábado 10-31 |
| 11-03 | 22,000+ users, 39,000+ meals planned, "currently adding 10,000+ sign-ups a day", claiming to be "the most-installed app in Portugal (App Store and Google Play)" | planmymeals.ai/press |
Over the three days from November 1 to 3, users rose from about 3,500 to 22,000, exactly matching the period it sat at #1 on the App Store overall free chart.
Paid
Free tier: up to 2 accounts, 4 new weekly plans a month, 1 recipe imports a week, prices from only 1 supermarkets. Plus is €6.99/month or €49.99/year (on the App Store, Plus is tiered by household size, €6.99 to €12.99 a month); Pro is €14.99/month or €99.99/year (Google Play store page, thenextbigidea, whatsfordinner.uk). Monthly Plus and Pro may have a 7-day trial. Charting at F&D #5 to #6 shows real people pay, but the Portuguese F&D Top Grossing bar is low, so absolute amounts are probably small (unverified).
II. Competitors
| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from PlanMyMeals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Super Save Preços(CLOUDSYNCRO) | iOS / Android | 2022-05 | Portugal iOS 2,821 rating, F&D free chart around 123 | Long-running Portuguese supermarket price comparison tool, covering more chains (including Mercadona, Intermarché, Minipreço); compares individual items only, with no menus or portion scaling |
| Bimby / Cookidoo(Vorwerk) | iOS / Android | 2014 | #1 Top Grossing in Portugal's F&D category | Also has recipes and weekly plans, but tied to Thermomix, with no supermarket prices |
| ReciMe | iOS / Android | 2021 | US 328k ratings; Portugal F&D Top Grossing #2, free chart #15 | Global leader in "social recipe import + planning", closest in features; no Portuguese supermarket prices, and doesn't sort by who is eating at home |
| Organiza-te(Bárbara Oliveira Nutrição) | iOS | 2025-05 | Portugal 70 rating, #6 Top Grossing in F&D | A nutritionist's personal brand with Portuguese weekly menus, relying on her followers; no price comparison |
| Mealbird: Ementa Semanal(Lusson LLC) | iOS / Android | 2026-08 | Portugal 55 ratings; 11-05 suddenly surged to #29 on the overall free chart | An overseas developer's multilingual "budget + macros" planner that also claims to price by budget and supermarket, focusing on protein targets; no real local price catalog |
| Disha, Cestio, Repa, Tofu: Refeições Baratas, Magic Pot | iOS | 2026 | All small (0 to 19 ratings) | A batch of Portuguese weekly menu apps, some AI-generated; none compare a full basket across four supermarkets |
| Mealime, Samsung Food, Plan to Eat, eMeals | iOS / Android / web | Years | Large globally | Mainly English-speaking market, no Portuguese supermarket prices |
| Spanish equivalents (Pick, Yuma, Cuanto Basta, AutoMenú) | iOS / Android | 2026 | Pushed by TikTok creators and UGC; a single Pick video has 100k views | Spanish "weekly menu + shopping list" apps are crowding in, a sign the category is heating up across southern Europe |
| Supermarkets' own apps (Continente, Pingo Doce, Lidl Plus) | Big-company features | Years | Portugal nationwide | Has recipes, lists and coupons, but only compares prices at its own store (individual features not checked one by one) |
Conclusion: The "Portuguese weekly menu" category isn't short of players, and "Portuguese supermarket price comparison" has veterans like Super Save. As far as public sources show, PlanMyMeals is the only one that combines both in a single app and calculates a per-serving price for imported recipes (its website has a "Portugal's nine planning apps compared" SEO post, 11-01).
3. How users came in
- Self-pushed media coverage (confirmed, the main channel). Timeline: TEK Sapo 10-08 → 4gnews 10-14 → PCGuia "App do dia" 10-16 → The Next Big Idea 10-19 → Sábado 10-31 → JN (Jornal de Notícias) 11-01 19:14, headline "Há uma aplicação criada por portugueses para poupar no supermercado" → Postal do Algarve / portugal-news 11-02 → O Influente, Hora-H 11-03. Hora-H wrote that "the project got media attention again on Monday, Nov 2". The press page on the official site is also dated 11-01, with a headline identical to JN's, plus ready-made data cards, screenshots and vertical videos. This suggests an official press release was distributed in a coordinated way (whether it went through the Lusa news agency is unverified). After each article came out, both founders thanked people on LinkedIn by reposting.
- The "made by Portuguese, saves you money" angle (confirmed). Every headline is "Portuguese engineers" plus "save at the supermarket", landing right as Portuguese media were covering the cost of living and the OE2027 budget. The price comparison feature gave journalists a reason to write about it.
- LinkedIn and personal networks (confirmed, small volume). It went from "two people using it" to "friends and family asking for it", and then to LinkedIn posts (49 likes). The first few hundred users mostly came from here.
- SEO / AEO content (confirmed to exist, effect unverified). The site has a Portuguese guide (/pt/guias/como-poupar-no-supermercado), a "best meal planning app in Portugal" comparison page, and an editorial-team page (a credibility signal written for search engines and LLMs). Lucas's LinkedIn tag is literally "AEO SEO".
- Organic traffic from store search and chart climbing (inferred). The store title directly targets "Ementa Semanal"; reaching #1 on the overall chart itself brought more exposure. 11-05 Mealbird also renamed itself "Ementa Semanal" and climbed the overall chart, suggesting search volume for that term spiked during those days.
- Paid social ads (unconfirmed). The press page has 3 vertical videos of 25 to 31 seconds labeled "Ad", one of which uses prices from September 10 to 11, showing ad creative was already made in September. But our Meta ad library hasn't tracked this advertiser, so we can't confirm whether or how much was spent.
- TikTok / X / Reddit (almost none). Searching planmymeals on TikHub returns none of its own videos; x-radar shows 60 posts in the last 0 days; a r/portugal post shared the news story about the "Portuguese-made money-saving app" (content not retrievable, engagement unverified).
4. Why it made the list
- The founders bring growth skills: both have growth and acquisition roles, and used a press release, data cards and ready-to-use videos to get a one-person-company app into national broadsheets, plus a string of reposts.
- Story and timing: "local engineers + saving at the supermarket" is easy to write about under cost-of-living pressure; 11-01 JN published, 11-03 it reached #1 on the overall chart.
- The Portuguese market is small, so chart bars are low: a few thousand downloads a day was enough to top the overall chart (self-reported 10k sign-ups a day, both platforms combined), and media coverage can push it there, with the top spot itself generating another round of exposure.
- The feature mix makes a good story: menus, lists, full-basket price comparison across four supermarkets, importing TikTok recipes and pricing them. Each piece has been done before, but only it combines them with local prices. Lidl has no online store, so its prices are manually entered from in-store flyers. That's the grunt work of the data.
- Fast iteration: 8 weeks, 15 versions (the press page lists up to 1.13, the store now shows 1.15). The timeline given to media makes the product look active.
5. Differentiation
Core difference: a catalog of real local supermarket prices (scraping Continente, Pingo Doce and Auchan daily, with Lidl maintained manually), plus portion scaling by household members and who's out for meals. It answers "what to eat this week, how much of each to buy, and where it's cheapest". Global players (ReciMe, Mealime) have no Portuguese prices; local price tools (Super Save) have no menus; a batch of Portuguese AI weekly-menu apps have neither. Is this why it took off? Partly. The differentiation made the "save money" headline credible, so media wrote about it; but the early-November spike came from press coverage, not word of mouth. After the climb, it fell to #3 within 65 days, and the rating count is still small. There is no evidence yet on retention or paid conversion.
6. How many people have seen it
Buzzing in a small circle (within Portugal). Portuguese media covered it in 10+ outlets (TEK Sapo, 4gnews, PCGuia, The Next Big Idea, Sábado, JN, Postal, O Influente, Hora-H), the founders publicly gave interviews, and self-reported user numbers. But revenue hasn't been disclosed (neither TrustMRR nor the founders have shared it), and there's zero discussion on X or in English-language tech circles. The UK competitor WFD (What's For Dinner?!) 11-04 wrote a "WFD vs PlanMyMeals" SEO piece, so rivals are already paying attention.
7. Copycats and riding the wave
- Mealbird (Lusson LLC): uses "Ementa Semanal" as its name in Portugal; 11-05 jumped from F&D #149 to #29 on the overall free chart, with its rating rising from 43 to 55. The timing lines up with PlanMyMeals' peak, suggesting it's riding the same search term, or buying traffic at the same time (unverified). It launched in August, so it's not copying, just riding the wave.
- Haven't yet seen anyone replicate "whole-basket local supermarket price comparison + weekly menu" in another country.
8. What others can borrow
- In small-language, small-country markets, a "local team + saving money" story paired with a complete press kit (data cards, screenshots, ready-to-use vertical videos, a consistent headline) can move national broadsheets and reposts, and push it to #1 on the overall chart with zero paid acquisition.
- Local price data as a moat: scrape a few chains' online prices, and manually enter flyers for chains with no online store. It can be copied in other countries and with other chains (Spain's Mercadona and Carrefour, Italy's Esselunga and Conad, etc.). Spanish weekly-menu apps are crowding onto TikTok, but nobody has been seen doing whole-basket price comparison yet.
- The free tier is capped at "2 accounts, prices from 1 supermarkets", and paid tiers are tiered by household size: want to compare more stores or have more people use it, and you pay.
9. What I'm still unsure about
- Whether the self-reported "10k sign-ups a day" and "most-installed in Portugal" held up only on the one or two days around 11-03; the actual Android install count.
- Whether it bought Meta, TikTok or Apple Search Ads, and whether the press release went through Lusa or paid PR.
- Retention, paid conversion and actual revenue after the chart climb (Top Grossing #5 only shows the Portuguese F&D bar is low).
- Whether scraping supermarket websites for prices gets blocked, and whether there's legal risk.
- Whether the English version (already live in the US store) can replicate the Portuguese playbook.
Sources
- App Store lookup (pt / us), 2026-11-06; appstore library app_day, chart_rank, app_profile (pt, 10-28 to 11-06)
- www.planmymeals.ai/press(2026-11-01, data as of 11-03), /about, /pt/melhores-apps-para-planear-refeicoes
- tek.sapo.pt/mobile/apps/artigos/planmymeals-aplicacao-portug…(10-08)
- 4gnews.pt/esta-app-portuguesa-planeia-as-refeicoes-e-diz-qua…(10-14)
- www.pcguia.pt/2026/10/app-do-dia-planmymeals-ementa-semanal/(10-16)
- thenextbigidea.pt/fartos-de-decidir-o-jantar-dois-engenheiro…(10-19)
- www.sabado.pt/vida/detalhe/sem-vontade-de-planear-refeicoes-…(10-31)
- www.jn.pt/nacional/artigo/ha-uma-aplicacao-criada-por-portug…(11-01)
- postal.pt/nacional/nova-aplicacao-desenvolvida-por-portugues…(11-02), oinfluente.pt/itech/compras-portugueses-aplicacao-poupar--su…(11-03), hora-h.pt/noticia/dois-engenheiros-portugueses-criaram-aplic…(11-03)
- LinkedIn: Duarte Cruz 10-20 posts (49 likes), Lucas Vicente 10-08 posts
- whatsfordinner.uk/blog/wfd-vs-planmymeals-built-for-portugal(11-04)
- Google Play store page com.felllabs.planmymeals; AppBrain
- TikHub search, x-radar search (0 results), metaads library (no hits tracked)