A baby food app hit #3 on Bahrain's grossing chart with only 1 global ratings: the chart is misleading, and the playbook is worth copying
What it is A week-by-week baby food planning app for 6–24 month olds, with recipes, per-allergen tracking, a PDF for doctors, and halal/kosher filters. Subscription-based.
Why it took off It didn't really: Apple Search Ads and multilingual ASO brought a handful of subscriptions in a few small countries. Because the bar on those countries' grossing charts is so low, the ranks looked high.
CHow you could follow it Stop building a cheap English Solid Starts. Copy its attribution, pricing experiments, and cancellation-save flow, and apply them in markets English baby food apps don't serve, like Muslim families and smaller language markets.
- Data (updated daily) · Launched 2026-09-13 · KE rating 0 · 11-08 charted in 4 stores
iOS · best category chart rank · by store JapanBHPhilippinesData 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 11 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that dayiOS · Ratings · KE Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-10-31 (4 days, 4 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.
Tastling is a subscription baby food planning app for 6–24 month olds. In Nov 5 it reached #3 on Bahrain's App Store Food & Drink grossing chart. But it has only 1 global ratings, so the rank came from a few subscriptions hitting the low bar of small-country charts. The product itself never broke through, and the category has been crowded for 2026 years. What's worth looking at is the playbook of its Turkish indie developer: from day one, they could calculate payback by channel.
"Is there an app like Solid Starts that doesn't cost $100?"
On Jan 28, 2026, a mom in a US Facebook group called "Baby Led Weaning For Beginners" posted: her baby won't eat purées, only wants to grab real food, and she's looking for an app to guide her, "something like Solid Starts but without the $100 price tag?" The post drew 12 replies.
Solid Starts is the category leader, with 47k ratings on the US App Store and an annual fee of about $100. Many parents found it too expensive, so in 2026 a wave of "cheaper Solid Starts" apps appeared. Tastling was one of them.
Ironically, Tastling's only US rating (3 stars, Sep 21, in Russian) made the same complaint: "Subscription too expensive. There are cheaper similar apps."
What it is
a weekly baby food planner app. It follows WHO, AAP, NHS and CDC guidelines, split into six stages, with recipes for 150 different foods (the age each can start, how to cut them by 6/9/12 months, choking risk). It also tracks the 9 major allergens one by one with dose counts and spacing reminders, can generate a PDF to show a pediatrician with one tap, and offers halal, kosher, vegetarian and vegan options that apply to every recommendation once chosen. Sign-in is Apple ID only.
It's subscription-only: weekly, monthly, annual, and lifetime tiers, with a discount on the first week. The store page says "Available options may vary," and the visible prices range from $5.99 a week to $99.99 lifetime, with several tiers shown at once, clearly running price experiments.
It launched in Sep 13 as Baby Plates. In Oct 22, version 1.0.5 renamed it Tastling and changed the icon. The App Store already had a "Baby Plates" app, first listed 2025 years earlier, with 492 ratings. Whether the rename was to avoid the name clash or to adjust keywords can't be determined from the outside (inference).
How the chart rankings came about
| Storefront | Food & Drink grossing chart |
|---|---|
| Bahrain | 11-05 #3,11-06 #5, not on the chart before |
| Philippines | 10-28 #71 → 11-01 #166 → 11-03 #24 → 11-06 #55 |
| Japan | 10-28 #156 → 10-31 #198 → dropped off |
| Turkey | 10-28 #120 → 11-02 #200 → dropped off |
| Uzbekistan | Stayed between #127 and #128 for 10 days; the chart has only 133 spots in total |
(App Store category chart, 10-28 to 11-06)
Every store follows the same shape: it shoots up, then drops a little more each day, with nothing holding it up in between. In the Philippines it went from #166 to #24 in two days, most likely a couple of annual plans or one-time purchases. The Uzbekistan chart only has 133 spots, so a single paying user can keep it there. In Bahrain, #3 to #5 sits next to ReciMe and NYT Cooking, which don't bring in much revenue there either.
The better signal for scale is rating count: 1 ratings in the US, and 0 in Bahrain, Turkey, Japan, the Philippines, the UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE (App Store, 11-06). From Oct 28 to Nov 6, no new ratings came in anywhere in the world. Downloads are very small. A third-party estimate puts monthly revenue at $1K–5K, but we can't verify it. Even if true, that's normal for a small app.
A caution on reading charts: in small countries, a category chart rank tells you very little on its own. Look at rating counts too, and check whether it stays charted across several stores over time.
Where users come from
Almost all of it comes from inside the App Store.
- Apple Search Ads: in Sep 25 its privacy policy added a line about pulling install attribution (which campaign and keyword drove each install) from Apple's AdServices and matching it against subscription data. How much it spent is unknown. Sporadic payments in several small stores fit a "small budget, test keywords across many stores" approach (inferred).
- Store search: the title uses "Baby Led Weaning", a phrase people actually search for, and the app is localized into 8 languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish). The developer, Mustafa Kendigüzel, wrote an open-source ASO tool called aso-workbench (120 stars on GitHub). It tracks keyword rankings, has AI write multi-language titles and keywords, publishes straight to App Store Connect, and shows per-keyword Apple Ads results and subscription revenue.
- Outside the store: searches on TikTok for both the old and new names return 0 results, nobody has mentioned it on X in the last two months, and apart from the store page there is no press or Reddit coverage at all.
The app also has a few hooks: new users are asked "where did you hear about us?" with a referral code, and anyone who cancels gets a free month of membership if they write at least 10 words explaining why. The first splits out acquisition channels; the second tells you why people leave and keeps a few of them.
Who it's competing with
| Product | Scale (App Store rating count, 11-06) | Compared with alternatives |
|---|---|---|
| Solid Starts | US 47k | Category leader, with the most content and food library, about $100/year; some food pages are free |
| Annabel Karmel Kids Recipes | 1,937 | Recipes from a famous UK chef, with celebrity backing |
| Baby Plates (a different app) | 492 | The original name of Tastling |
| BLW Meals | 325 | Mostly recipes and meal plans; recommended by people in the Reddit BLW community |
| Starting solids – Baby Foods + | 74 | A small team that launched in 2025, also charting in small stores |
| Mamelo, Feedee, First Spoon, Nibble, First Bite, Feedy, Little Bites and others | Mostly 0–8 | A batch launched in 2026, almost all with the same setup: weaning log + allergen tracking + subscription |
| Huckleberry and other big parenting apps | Big | Weaning is a side feature |
Tastling's real differences are halal/kosher filters and multiple languages; everything else is standard for this kind of app. The sporadic payments in Bahrain and Turkey match the halal angle, but the sample is only a handful of purchases, so we can't credit it to Tastling.
If it were you
The verdict: don't build another cheap English version of Solid Starts. Over a dozen people have already tried that route over 2026 years, and Tastling is one of the more serious ones, with 1 ratings worldwide. What you can take from it is its playbook, not its market.
Who it suits: indie developers who want to run a "one person, many subscription apps" business and copy this setup as a template, or people who know a market that English apps overlook (Gulf states, Turkey, Indonesian or Malay Muslim families, or Spanish- and Russian-speaking parents).
Who it doesn't suit: anyone trying to build a parenting brand through content and word of mouth. That takes years of content and community, as Solid Starts shows. Also anyone without budget to test Apple Search Ads.
How to do it:
- Build the infrastructure first: AdServices attribution + RevenueCat + a "where did you hear about us" survey, so every subscription can be traced to a specific channel and keyword.
- When picking topics, look for categories where people complain the leaders are too expensive, and build cheaper versions based on the exact complaints in Facebook groups and Reddit.
- Switching markets is cheaper than adding features. Go in with the local language and local food habits (halal ingredients, the first foods parents usually introduce) instead of competing with a dozen copies in English.
- Run several price tiers at once, and offer a free month to anyone who cancels and gives a reason. Within two to three months you'll know which tier pays back.
How to get users: run Apple Search Ads on local-language keywords, testing across many stores on a small budget, and put the words users actually search for in the title. For a parenting app, you can also make content in local parent groups and on Instagram parenting accounts, which Tastling has not done at all.
How soon to move: there's no deadline. The category won't disappear, but the English market is already crowded. The smaller language markets are still less contested, and the earlier you get in, the cheaper the keywords (inferred).
Signs this read is wrong: (1) in six months, Tastling or one of the newer apps in its batch reaches over a thousand ratings in the US, which would mean the English market still has room and I underestimated it; (2) a weaning app in a local language (Arabic or Indonesian, for example) stays on its local category chart and its ratings keep growing, which would mean the market-switching route works; (3) conversely, if Apple Search Ads tests in these smaller language markets still fail to pay back, parenting subscriptions don't have enough willingness to pay there, and switching markets won't fix it.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Solid Starts iOS 2021-05 US 47k ratings; best overall grossing rank in one store #29,82 in that store's charts Category leader, built on content and a food library, about $100/year; Tastling is cheaper, focusing on weekly plans, allergen counting, doctor PDFs and religious diet filters BLW Meals iOS 2020-11 325 ratings, charted in 100 stores, #64 in US category grossing Mostly recipes and meal plans, with no religious diet filter Annabel Karmel Kids Recipes iOS 2010-12 1937 ratings, charted in 98 storefronts Celebrity chef recipes, with no tracking or planning Baby Plates(Maksim Bliznetsov) iOS 2025-01 492 ratings, #7 in the uz category grossing chart Same name as Tastling's old name; Tastling changed its name in 2026-10-22 Starting solids – Baby Foods + iOS 2025-12 74 ratings, #3 in the uz category grossing chart Also a small-team weaning subscription app, with similar features A batch launched in 2026 (Mamelo, Feedee, First Spoon, Nibble, First Bite, Feedy, Little Bites, sito and others) iOS 2026-02 to 2026-10 Most have 0–8 ratings Almost the same template; Tastling adds halal/kosher and 8 languages Huckleberry / MadeForMums and others Big-company features Earlier Big Weaning is offered as a side feature or free content in big apps - Where users come from
- Verified Apple Search Ads: since 2026-09-25 the privacy policy states it pulls campaign and keyword attribution from AdServices and syncs it to RevenueCat; sporadic payments in several stores
- Verified Store search ASO: developer built and open-sourced an ASO tool, aso-workbench (120 stars); title uses the high-volume keyword Baby Led Weaning; 8 languages; renamed from Baby Plates to Tastling and changed its icon 6 weeks after launch
- Verified Pricing experiments and cancellation win-back: weekly, monthly, annual and lifetime tiers, with a first-week discount; a free month for a cancellation reason of at least 10 words
- Inferred Referrals and word of mouth: the app has referral codes and a "where did you hear about us" survey, but there are no mentions online, on TikTok or on X
- Inferred Meta / TikTok ads: no hits in the metaads library; 0 TikTok results (not finding something doesn't mean it wasn't run)
Tastling: Baby Led Weaning (iOS id6810338901) research report
Date 2026-11-06. Sources: our appstore database (chart_rank / app_snapshot / app_profile, from 2026-10-28), Apple's lookup API, commit history and privacy policy in the developer's GitHub repo mustafakendiguzel/app-legal, Jina / TikHub / x-radar searches, and the metaads library.
Bottom line
It hasn't really broken out yet. What got it charted were its rankings in a few small-store category grossing charts, where the bar is very low: Bahrain (bh) Food & Drink grossing #3–5, and Uzbekistan (uz) #127–128 (that chart has only 133 spots in total). Looking at the global rating count (1 in the US, 0 in other stores) and how it rises briefly up the chart and then falls, this is a handful of subscriptions landing in low-threshold small stores. The more useful thing to study isn't this app but the playbook behind it: the developer is Mustafa Kendigüzel, a Turkish indie developer who runs a "factory" of subscription apps by himself. He built an open-source ASO tool (aso-workbench, 120 stars), uses Apple Search Ads with AdServices attribution, RevenueCat for subscriptions, multi-tier pricing experiments, and localizes into 8 languages to cover the world. This parenting and weaning app is the newest product from that factory.
1. What the data actually shows
Chart (appstore database chart_rank, Food & Drink genre 6023)
| Store | chart | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| bh Bahrain | Top Grossing | 11-05 #3 → 11-06 #5 (not charted before); 11-05 Top Free #199 |
| ph Philippines | Top Grossing | 10-28 #71 → 11-01 #166 → 11-03 #24 → 11-06 #55 |
| jp Japan | Top Grossing | 10-28 #156 → 10-31 #198 → dropped off |
| tr Turkey | Top Grossing | 10-28 #120 → 11-02 #200 → dropped off |
| uz Uzbekistan | Top Grossing | 10-28 to 11-06 it stayed at #127–128 (this chart had only 133 spots that day) |
| Kenya | Free | 10-28 #44 → 10-31 #203 |
Takeaway:
- Every store follows the same pattern: a spike, then a steady slide, with no sustained paid acquisition holding it up. Philippines 11-03 jumped from #166 to #24, which looks most like a handful of annual or lifetime one-time purchases, then a daily fade.
- Uzbekistan's rank barely moved for 10 days, and the chart only has 133 entries. That means the category Top Grossing chart there has almost no competition, so one paying user can keep an app listed for a long time.
- Bahrain #3–#5 sits next to Gronda, ReciMe, Annabel Karmel and NYT Cooking (library 2026-11-06). None of them are big-revenue apps, so the absolute dollar amounts in that category are tiny.
- Ratings: US 1 (3.0 stars); Bahrain, Turkey, Japan, Philippines, UK, Saudi Arabia and UAE are all 0 (Apple lookup, 2026-11-06). The
new_ratingsfor the library from 10-28 to 11-06 are all 0. Rating growth roughly tracks downloads, so downloads are very small. - The recall card says "third-party Searvia estimates $1K–5K monthly revenue." We haven't verified this number. Even if true, it's normal for a small app.
Versions and renames (GitHub app-legal commit history)
- 2026-09-09 "legal: babyplate pages": originally called Baby Plates / BabyPlate, listed in Sep 13.
- 2026-09-25 privacy policy v3 now covers: Apple Search Ads install attribution (AdServices), a "where did you hear about us" survey with a referral code, and a one-month membership for writing 10 words on why you're canceling. It also logs App Store country and app version, so paid conversions can be tracked by channel.
- 2026-10-21/22 "app renamed to Tastling, 1.0.5 live": renamed to Tastling with a new icon (the 1.0.5 update notes also say "A fresh new name and icon").
- Likely reason for the rename: an app with the same name, "Baby Plates" (developer Maksim Bliznetsov, listed 2025-01-28, 24 US ratings, #7 on the same category Top Grossing chart in uz, library 2026-11-06), already existed on the App Store. The change may have been to avoid a name clash or trademark issue, or an ASO test. Unverified.
2. Competitors (same job: baby-food / BLW guidance + food tracking)
Numbers come from the appstore library's app_profile (rating_count = highest across stores; best_cat_gross = best category Top Grossing rank), as of 2026-11-06.
| Product | Platform | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Tastling |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solid Starts | iOS/Android/web | 2021-05 | US 47k ratings; best overall Top Grossing rank #29,82 in one store that charted; US category Top Grossing #28 | The category leader, with a huge Instagram content library and food database, priced around $100/year (parents in Facebook groups complain it's expensive and look for alternatives). Tastling sells "cheaper, week-by-week plans, allergen counting, pediatrician PDFs, halal/kosher filters." |
| BLW Meals | iOS/Android | 2020-11 | 325 ratings, charted in 100 stores, US category Top Grossing #64 | Focuses on recipes and meal plans; recommended by people on Reddit r/BabyLedWeaning |
| Annabel Karmel Kids Recipes | iOS | 2010 | 1937 ratings, charted in 98 storefronts | A recipe app from a British celebrity chef, with celebrity backing |
| Baby Plates(Maksim Bliznetsov) | iOS | 2025-01 | 492 rating | Exactly the same as Tastling's old name |
| Starting solids – Baby Foods + | iOS | 2025-12 | 74 ratings, #3 in the uz category grossing chart | Also a newly entering small team, also charting in smaller stores |
| Eat&Grow / Recetas Bebé / Baby Led Weaning Cookbook, etc. | iOS | 2023–2025 | 100–400 ratings | Spanish-language, localized spin-off |
| A big wave of new launches in 2026: Mamelo (10-21), Feedee (09-07), First Spoon (07-14, Russian), Starting Solids: BLW (07-09), Nibble (07-02), First Bite (06-18), Feedy, TinyBite, Little Bites, sito, and more | iOS | 2026 | Mostly 0–8 ratings | Almost the same "solids tracking + allergens + subscription" template as Tastling. This niche has been flooded with copycat indie apps for 2026 years. |
| Huckleberry, MadeForMums, etc. | iOS/Android | Earlier | Big | Solid-food features or free apps built by big companies or media brands on the side |
Takeaway: baby-food apps are a mature niche. The leader, Solid Starts, is already big, and over the past 2026 years a dozen new apps have piled in. Tastling is just one of them.
3. Growth tactics (evidence found)
- Apple Search Ads: the privacy policy explicitly says it pulls "which ad campaign and which keyword drove the install" via AdServices (added in 2026-09-25). This confirms the ad infrastructure, but we don't know how much was spent. Sporadic paid users across several small stores fit a "low budget, many-store keyword test" approach (inference).
- ASO: the developer wrote an open-source Mac tool,
aso-workbench(built in 2026-09-22, 120 stars). It tracks keyword rankings and Apple popularity, uses AI to write multilingual titles and keywords, publishes to App Store Connect, shows Apple Ads performance by keyword, and pulls MRR from RevenueCat. Tastling supports 8 languages (EN/FR/DE/IT/PT/RU/ES/TR), puts the high-search-volume term "Baby Led Weaning" in its title, and changed its name and icon 6 weeks after launch. This is a textbook store-search traffic play. - Pricing tests and retention: weekly, monthly, yearly and lifetime tiers, with a first-week discount (the store description says "Available options may vary"). The recall card shows prices from $5.99/week up to $99.99 lifetime. Giving a free month for a cancellation reason is a common retention tactic in the RevenueCat ecosystem.
- Referral codes and the "where did you hear about us" survey: the infrastructure is there, but we found no sign of any outbound promotion.
- Content and social: TikTok searches for "tastling" and "baby plates app" returned 0 videos; x-radar found 0 posts in the last 60 days; Jina search found no coverage beyond the store pages, and no mentions on Reddit or blogs; the Meta ad library (metaads) has no matching advertiser (this library only tracks keyword-matched advertisers, so no result doesn't mean no ads).
- Takeaway: traffic almost certainly comes only from store search and Apple Search Ads. There's no word of mouth and no content channel.
4. Differentiation
- Claimed differentiators: a six-stage weekly plan (based on WHO/AAP/NHS/CDC guidance), 150+ food guides, allergen exposure counting for 9 major allergens with reminders for spacing, hints on "which rejected foods are worth retrying," a one-tap PDF for the pediatrician, halal/kosher/vegetarian/vegan filters, Sign in with Apple only, and photos aren't uploaded.
- The halal/kosher filter is rare, and it lines up directionally with the sporadic paid users in Bahrain and Turkey. But the sample is just a few purchases, so this can't prove it caused them. The other features are standard for this type of app.
- The differentiators are not why it's charting. Charting comes from the low bar of small-store grossing charts, plus the occasional paid user from ASO and ASA.
5. How many people have seen it
Almost nobody knows about it yet. No public revenue (we found nothing on TrustMRR or from the founder), no media or X discussion, and no TikTok content. The developer has some following on GitHub (claude-code-ui-agents 779 stars, aso-workbench 120 stars), but has not promoted Tastling.
6. Copycats
We found no one specifically copying it. Looking at it the other way, it is itself one of the many followers in the baby-food tracking app wave of the past 2026 years.
7. What to borrow
- Infrastructure for a factory-style subscription app: AdServices attribution + RevenueCat + first-party event tracking + a "where did you hear about us" survey, so a new app can calculate payback by channel from day one.
- An in-house ASO tool, with multilingual launches all at once, and repeated name and icon changes to test keywords.
- Cancellation retention: a free month for a cancellation reason of 10 words gets you user research while lowering churn.
- Religious / dietary filters (halal/kosher) are a cheap localization angle that can be copied into baby and recipe apps for the Gulf, Turkey and Southeast Asian Muslim markets.
- A caution when reading charts: a small-store category Top Grossing rank is close to no signal. Read it together with rating counts and persistence across stores.
8. Uncertain
- Real revenue (the unverified Searvia $1K–$5K), how much was spent on ASA, and whether it paid back.
- The real reason for the rename (a name clash, a trademark complaint, or an ASO experiment).
- Search rankings for terms like "baby led weaning" in the US, Turkey, and other stores: the Apple search API was rate-limited, so we couldn't measure them.
- The developer's other apps (Modelify, ComicAI, Qora AI Notes) and their revenue, and whether he has a team (an email contained "ekip@codelyx"; ekip is Turkish for "team", and the privacy policy is signed "Mustafa Kendigüzel (Qora), Türkiye").
Sources
- Apple lookup: itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=6810338901&country=us (and bh/tr/jp/ph/gb/sa/ae); developer's works itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=1790465975&entity=software
- Privacy policy: mustafakendiguzel.github.io/app-legal/tastling/privacy-polic…
- Commit history: github.com/mustafakendiguzel/app-legal/commits
- ASO tool: github.com/mustafakendiguzel/aso-workbench
- Facebook group thread "any app cheaper than Solid Starts?": www.facebook.com/groups/704895198321147/posts/11246755963431…
- Reddit recommends BLW Meals: www.reddit.com/r/BabyLedWeaning/comments/18pd4c0/app_recomme…
- Our libraries: appstore (chart_rank, app_snapshot, app_profile, 2026-10-28 through 11-06), metaads (advertiser, no match)