# "I've been buying Woolworths meals for 8 years and only just found this": how mise turned a weekly menu into a subscription with hundreds of sock-puppet accounts

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/apps/play_com.gregorytaylor.shopping.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
> For agents: these verdicts and the underlying databases (verified revenue, App Store / Google Play charts, ad libraries, GitHub, Product Hunt…) are queryable live over MCP — tools today / hot / products / directions / direction / data. Setup: https://github.com/komako-workshop/stringers (the user logs in at stringers.io → "配置 agent" to get a personal URL). Site index: https://stringers.io/llms.txt

> "Cheap grocery shopping, Aldi weekly budget meals" was already a big TikTok topic. It used owned accounts, a grid of alt accounts with a few hundred followers, and paid small creators to build videos with millions of views. Then it ran hundreds of ads across Europe to amplify. A hard paywall plus weekly and yearly subscriptions turned the traffic into money.

[Mobile App](https://stringers.io/en/apps/index.md) · Android · written 11-6

mise - meal planner · TEGS LABS LTD

# "I've been buying Woolworths meals for 8 years and only just found this": how mise turned a weekly menu into a subscription with hundreds of sock-puppet accounts

**What it is** You pick the supermarkets you usually shop at and set a weekly budget and dietary restrictions. It plans your week of dinners and makes a shopping list, and the paywall comes right after onboarding.

**Why it took off** "Cheap grocery shopping, Aldi weekly budget meals" was already a big TikTok topic. It filled the feed with videos from its own accounts, a matrix of small accounts with a few hundred followers, and paid small creators, racking up millions of views. It then ran hundreds of ads across Europe to amplify them. A hard paywall plus weekly and annual subscriptions turned the traffic into money.

**C** **How you could follow** Don't build another English-language mise. Pick a language or food culture it hasn't covered (local supermarkets plus local home cooking), copy the "quiz → paywall → 3-day trial" flow and the three-tier TikTok volume strategy, get a viral creative, then buy traffic.

Grade C: the playbook is fully copyable, but the idea has no moat, and the revenue has already been publicly dissected. Within six months Potto, TapCook, Whipp, and three same-named apps followed, and the English market is competing on creative and bids. Only small gaps remain: switching languages or cuisines. Publicly known / widely discussed

Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-08-03 · 11-07 installs 213,647

Android · Total installs worldwide

Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.

Android · Ratings count (cumulative)

Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations)

mise is a menu-planning app from a small UK company, built by two 2000-born founders, launched this June. You pick the supermarkets you usually shop at and set a weekly budget, and it plans your dinners for the week and gives you a shopping list. The paywall shows up on the first screen. In under five months it reached #1 on the Food & Drink Top Grossing chart in the Australian App Store and made the top 100 on the overall Top Grossing chart in the German iPhone store. What drove it wasn't the product. It was a TikTok seeding playbook anyone can copy. And because anyone can copy it, the field is already crowded: for this same idea, at least six more have appeared between 6 and October. Below, we cover how it was done, where the money comes from, and what's left for the people following it.

### A 912-follower account, 1.13M views

2026 年 8 月 22 日,一个叫 @nourishwithstassi 的 TikTok 号发了一条视频,配文就一句:「8 years of shopping at Woolworths and NOW I FIND THIS ?!?!?!」(在 Woolworths 买了 8 年菜,现在才发现这个?!)。这个号只有 912 个粉丝,这条视频放了 113 万次(TikTok,11-06)。Woolworths 是澳大利亚最大的连锁超市,视频里那个「这个」就是 mise。

Two weeks ago, another account with 301 followers, @naimameals, posted nearly the same thing: "When i tell you i rannn to Lidl right after this😭", 920k views. Earlier still, in Jul 14, @carla.eatsss (1,810 followers) posted "This app is changing my life! Mise meal planner AD #misepartner", 8.26M views and 636k likes, with AD openly stated in the caption.

Search "mise meal planner" on TikTok and you see the same picture: dozens or hundreds of accounts with names like "xxx.eatsss", "xxx.meals", "xxx.cooks", with tens to a couple thousand followers. The captions say "why didn't anyone tell me" and "the app is called mise btw", and the supermarket changes: Aldi, Lidl, Woolworths, Coles, Walmart, Costco.

### What it is

Open mise and it first asks a few questions: which supermarket you shop at, how much you want to spend a week, how many people you're feeding, whether you're vegetarian, what allergies you have, whether your kitchen has an air fryer or just a stove, and whether this week you want "Fakeaway" (takeout-style food made at home) or "high protein". Once you answer, it gives you up to 7 dinner recipes, reusing ingredients across the week as much as possible, then merges everything into one shopping list sorted by supermarket. The website says "plan your week in 5 minutes" and "usually saves $30+ a week" (misemealplanner.com, 11-06).

That's all there is. Functionally it's no different from Mealime from a decade ago, Samsung Food, or the popular recipe app ReciMe. It stands out in one way: it doesn't ask you to pick recipes first, it asks where you shop and what you budget. That order matches how "cheap grocery shopping" is talked about on TikTok, which makes it easy to film.

The company behind it is TEGS LABS LTD, registered in Bridport, Dorset, England in 2026 February, both shareholders born in 2000 (UK Companies House). It had two other iOS apps with single-digit review counts before mise, which was its first to take off.

### How fast it grew

|  | Metric | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Google Play cumulative installs | 192k(10-29) → 214k(11-06), +22k in 7 days | Google Play,11-06 |
| iPhone US review count | 4,566, avg rating 4.72, +506 in the last 7 days | App Store,11-06 |
| iPhone Germany | #100 overall Top Grossing, #1 Food & Drink Top Grossing | App Store,11-06 |
| iPhone UK / Australia | #171 / #168 overall Top Grossing | App Store,11-06 |
| Play Australia Food & Drink Top Grossing | #1 consecutively from 10-30 to 11-02, then #2 | Google Play,11-06 |

It launched on iPhone first (June 10), and Play came later in August. Going by review counts, iPhone users far outnumber Play users; the main battlefield is the US, Germany, the UK and Australia.

### Where users come from: three layers of TikTok, plus one layer of ads

**Layer one: its own accounts posting daily.** The official account @misemealplanner has posted 1,037 videos; its June 13 post "This has helped me so much 🙏" got 880k views. The other official account, @misefoodplanner, had a June 24 post with 1.17M views.

**Layer two: a matrix of small accounts.** These are the accounts with a few hundred followers from the start: uniform naming style, uniform hooks, all tagged #mise. @millie.eatssss (1,493 followers) got one video to 1.95M, @mealsbygigi (372 followers) got one to 3.01M. Small accounts don't rely on followers; they rely on volume to hit a viral post. One in a hundred hitting a million views is enough. From the outside, we can't tell whether these accounts are run in-house or outsourced to a UGC studio.

**Layer three: paid micro-influencers.** The batch tagged #misepartner: @carla.eatsss 8.26M, @cookingwlil (2,634 followers) Sep 4 "this is ACTUALLY insane 🤯" 8.39M, Oct 15 "Aldi explain yourself NOW" 6.54M. Several accounts used the exact same caption word for word, which suggests they were recruited in bulk and given one shared script.

**Layer four: paid amplification.** From Sep 18, TEGS LABS ran TikTok ads under its company name targeting the UK and Germany, with landing pages going straight to the App Store. From Nov 2 to 5, it ran 558 to 703 ads a day, adding 1,000 to 2,000 new ads a week, almost all video (TikTok European Ad Library). This is the classic pattern: test which creatives can break out using small accounts, then spend money to scale them. The public library doesn't show US or Australia spend. There is also a batch of newly created, pseudonymous Facebook pages posting mise videos, and one Play negative review opens with "Saw ad where…", but Meta spend could not be confirmed.

Its German result (#100 overall Top Grossing) was not organic spillover: the onboarding offers 7 languages, and Germany was one of the first two countries it bought ads in. The inference is that it was pushed deliberately.

### Where the money comes from, and why the ratings look so good

After download, users go through a questionnaire, then hit the paywall: 3-day free trial, then a weekly or annual subscription (App Store listing). On Play, in-app pricing is $10.99 to $49.99. You can't see the menu without paying.

Revenue estimates are scattered: ScreensDesign lists "$300k/mo", ideawave writes a modeled MRR of $1.1M, and appsprint estimates $100k per month (estimates, all third-party). A conservative read: somewhere between a few hundred thousand and a few million dollars a month. The range is wide.

One detail is worth noting. Before the paywall appears, the onboarding flow pops up "Enjoying Mise?" and "Write a Review" (recorded iOS flow from ScreensDesign). Users are asked to rate it before they've used it. The result: an overall store rating of 4.6 (Play) and 4.72 (iPhone US), yet on the Play Australia store the recent 150 reviews average only 2.56 stars, with 1 one-star reviews totaling 65. The complaints are concentrated:

> "It doesn't have Asia only European countries and northern America I hate it" "there is no option for india I think adding an Indian option would be helpful" "im allergic to fish and bell peppers but couldnt select that as an allergy"

(Google Play Australia store, 10-29 to 10-31)

Another big complaint is "you have to link a card before you can try it." The hard paywall makes money, but it also earns one-star reviews.

### Who it's competing with

The older competitors aren't much of a threat: Mealime, Samsung Food (3.84M Play installs), ReciMe (3.23M), Eat This Much, KptnCook. They rely on recipe libraries and long-time users, and they don't run this short-video playbook. The real pressure comes from new apps that look exactly like it:

| Product | Launched | How big it is now | Its relationship to mise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Potto - meal planner | iPhone 2026-06-12 | US 2,363 ratings | Launched two days after mise, with nearly identical copy: "your supermarket, your budget," plus a fridge-photo-to-recipe feature. On TikTok, @madimugc444 (2,589 followers) "I wish I found this sooner" got 29.3M views. |
| TapCook: Budget Meal Plans | 2026-09-21 | Play 66k, +21k in 7 days | Enter your postcode, pick a supermarket, get a menu by budget, seeded through #TapCook accounts |
| Whipp: Meal Planner & Recipes | 2026-09-27 | Play 68k, +41k in 7 days | The same "we plan your week for you" pitch, grown to this scale in six weeks |
| Three apps directly named "Mise" | 2026-07 / 08 / 10 | The biggest one has 17k on Play | Riding the name, and one of them also pushes content through the @meals_by_mise account on TikTok |

Add Appy Pie publicly posting on Facebook "mise is estimated at $400k/month, so we cloned one," a YouTube tutorial titled "How to Make a Meal Planner App Like mise," an Indian startup account on Instagram breaking it down as "₹17 Crores in 3 months," and ideawave giving it a "replicability" score. Anyone in the indie app scene knows about it by now.

TapCook and Whipp each reached 60,000 to 70,000 installs within six weeks, which shows the playbook is replicable. It also means that if you enter now, you're the seventh or eighth.

### If it were you

**Verdict** : You can learn a whole playbook from it (TikTok small accounts + micro-influencers + paid ads + hard paywall). But copying a "weekly dinners by supermarket and budget" app as it is isn't a good bet. The idea has no moat, the revenue has been publicly dissected, and six copies already exist within half a year. The next step is competing for the same TikTok audience on creatives and bids.

**Who it suits** : small teams who can make TikTok creatives and dare to test hundreds of ads a week; or people whose native language is one mise hasn't seriously tackled, who know the local supermarkets (the negative reviews name missing Asian and Indian cuisines; whether anyone is covering French, Spanish, Dutch, Nordic, Japanese or Korean local-supermarket versions is unverified).

**Who it doesn't suit** : people who can only write code and can't make short videos (the product can be built in a week; distribution is the hard part); people who want to make English their main market (the US, UK and Australia already have four apps spreading at once: mise, Potto, TapCook, Whipp); people counting on organic store search (the word "mise" is contested by a dozen apps, and it relies on video lines like "the app is called mise").

**How to do it** : don't build "another mise." Build the piece it hasn't done well: one country, one food culture. For example, a "week of home-style dinners by local supermarket (Woolworths, Tesco, Asian grocers) and budget" for overseas Chinese or Indian diaspora, or a local-supermarket version for France, Spain or Japan. Copy the flow: questionnaire → paywall → 3-day trial → weekly plus annual subscription. Make the allergy options complete and get the cuisines right. Those two complaints in the reviews are your selling points.

**How to acquire users** : mirror mise's three layers. One official account posting daily; a dozen to a few dozen small accounts in one consistent style, with the hook "I've shopped at X for N years and only just found out"; then a few dozen micro-influencers with a few thousand followers each, given one shared script. Once a creative hits several hundred thousand views on its own, scale it with TikTok ads, testing 20 to 30 new creatives at a time (inference).

**How early to be** : the earlier the better. New Year is the season for "save money, cut takeout, start meal prepping." Launch before the first week of January, and start warming up accounts in December.

**Signs you've misread it** : ① mise's running ads on European TikTok (550 to 700 a day in early November) were cut in half by 2027 January, which suggests paid acquisition is getting too expensive; don't follow. ② mise or Potto got to the language or cuisine you want first. ③ The reverse: if followers three months behind, like TapCook and Whipp, keep adding tens of thousands of installs a week, the English market is wider than it looks, and copying it as-is might still earn a living.

---

Data and sources: Google Play installs, ratings and charts (10-29 to 11-06); App Store ratings and charts (11-06); TikTok video views and captions (11-06); TikTok European Ad Library (9-18 to 11-05); misemealplanner.com, App Store listing (11-06); recorded iOS onboarding flow from ScreensDesign; UK Companies House filings (transcribed by kronaxis.co.uk); revenue estimates from ScreensDesign, ideawave, appsprint and AppGazers, all third-party estimates; Google Play Australia reviews (10-29 to 10-31). Places marked "inference" or "estimate" are inferences and estimates.

[Android store page ↗](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gregorytaylor.shopping)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung Food (formerly Whisk) | Big-company features | 2019 | Play 3.84M installs | Big-brand recipe collection + planning; full-featured but heavy, doesn't start from supermarkets and budgets |
| ReciMe | Android | 2023-05 | Play 3.23M; 7-day +79k | Focused on importing social-media recipes, users pick their own; mise plans the whole week for you |
| Eat This Much | Android | 2016 | Play 2.64M | Plans by calories and macros, leans toward weight loss |
| Mealime | iOS | About 2013 | Long-established (not verified) | Mostly free, recipe-library driven, no supermarket or budget flow |
| KptnCook | Android | 2016 | Play 2.57M | Editor-picked recipes, partners with supermarkets, doesn't generate by budget |
| Mob | Android | 2024-08 | 277k on Play | UK recipe content brand, relies on content rather than generation |
| Measy | Web | Not verified | Not verified | Positioning nearly identical (UK supermarkets, cheap dinners), but I haven't seen comparable-scale user acquisition |
| TapCook | Android | 2026-09-21 | Play 66k, +21k in 7 days | Almost copies mise's flow and playbook, launched 3 months later |
| Whipp | Android | 2026-09-27 | Play 68k, +40.7k in 7 days, peak Top Grossing #83 | Chasing the same "we plan your week of dinners" approach |
| General AI like ChatGPT | Big-company features | — | Big | Can generate a menu, but has no supermarket, budget or shopping-list flow, and doesn't proactively push it to users |

Where users come from

- **Verified** **TikTok owned account + small-account matrix** : @misemealplanner has posted 1,037 videos; @millie.eatssss (1,494 followers) one video at 1.95M views, @mealsbygigi (372 followers) 3.01M, @kamile.eats (273 followers) 936k; uniform #mise and "I wish I knew sooner" hook (TikHub 2026-11-06)

- **Verified** **TikTok paid creators #misepartner** : @carla.eatsss "Mise meal planner AD #misepartner" 8.26M views / 636k likes; @cookingwlil "Aldi explain yourself" 6.54M views; several small accounts used the same caption template

- **Verified** **TikTok paid ads (Europe)** : tiktokads library: advertiser TEGS LABS LTD, linking to the iOS listing, started running in 6777471316,2026-09-18 (UK, Germany); from 11-02 to 11-05 running 558–703 ads, adding 1,000–1,960 new ads over 7 days, 99% video

- Inference **Meta / Facebook pseudonymous pages posting videos** : found a batch of newly created pages starting with 61593… posting mise videos (Lindsay June, Aldi reaction videos, etc.), with comments like "Saw ad"; the advertiser doesn't appear in the metaads library

- **Verified** **Pre-paywall onboarding ratings** : the onboarding screens recorded by ScreensDesign pop up "Enjoying Mise?" and "Write a Review" before the paywall; the recent 150 reviews on the Play AU store average 2.56 stars, while the overall store rating is 4.6

- **Verified** **multi-language / store expansion** : onboarding offers 7 languages; iOS Germany overall Top Grossing #100, category #1, paired with German TikTok ads

## mise - meal planner (TEGS LABS LTD): why it broke out

- Google Play: com.gregorytaylor.shopping, store shows listed 2026-08-03; iOS: id6777471316, listed 2026-06-10 (iTunes lookup)

- Developer: TEGS LABS LTD, a UK company registered in Bridport 17050049,2026-02-24. Shareholders Gregory Sebastian Taylor (born 2000) and Charles Pope (born 2000, joined 2026-07-07) (Companies House info transcribed by kronaxis.co.uk). The same developer has two other iOS apps, Cryptic Coach and Vocaro, both with single-digit ratings (iTunes lookup). So mise is the first product from this studio that took off.

### One line

mise is an app that builds a weekly dinner plan and one combined shopping list from your usual supermarket, weekly budget, diet and allergies, kitchen equipment and taste preferences. The paywall hits right at launch (3-day trial, annual and monthly plans). It took off mainly through heavy TikTok distribution: on one side a large group of food accounts with a few dozen to a few hundred followers using "xxx.eatsss"-style names, on the other #misepartner creator collabs, plus paid TikTok ads. The product itself has an easy-to-film hook: "pick Aldi / Walmart / Coles, get a weekly menu and list."

### 1. Data (from our database)

- Play (googleplay library): 2026-10-29 191,857 → 11-06 213,647 installs, up 21,790 in 7 days (about +11%); ratings count 4,652 → 5,001, adding 22–61 per day.

- Play category Top Grossing (chart_rank): Australia Food & Drink Top Grossing ranked 10-30 to 11-02 for 1 straight days, then #2; Australia overall Top Grossing at 149–195; UK Food & Drink Top Grossing #5–6, US #6–8. India, Hong Kong, Nigeria and a dozen other countries all sit at #3–4 with nearly identical ranks, most likely a shared aggregate chart the store uses for smaller countries, so it shouldn't be read as those countries actually paying.

- iOS (appstore library, 11-06): US ratings count 4,566, +506 in the last 7 days, highest category Top Grossing #3; Germany rating 1,778 (+213 in 7 days), overall Top Grossing #100, category Top Grossing #1; UK 1,649, overall Top Grossing #171, highest category #2; Australia 1,205, overall Top Grossing 168, category #1; Ireland category #1. US ratings add 74–234 per day (10-29 to 11-06).

- Main markets are the US, Germany, UK and Australia. On Play, Australia is strongest (all Play reviews come from the au storefront sample); on iOS, the US and Germany are strongest.

### 2. Competitors

| Product | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from mise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mealime | iOS / Android | Around 2013 | Long-running free meal-planning apps (scale unverified) | Mostly free, recipe-library driven, not organized around supermarkets and budgets |
| Samsung Food (formerly Whisk) | Android / iOS / big companies | 2019 | 3.84M installs on Play (googleplay library) | Big-brand recipe collections plus planning: full-featured but heavy; doesn't lead with supermarkets and budgets |
| ReciMe | Android / iOS | 2023-05 | Play 3.23M installs, +79k in 7 days, highest Top Grossing #122 | Built around importing recipes from TikTok / IG, the user picks; mise builds the plan for you |
| Eat This Much | Android / iOS / web | 2016 | Play 2.64M | Auto-plans by calories and macros, aimed at people cutting weight |
| KptnCook | Android / iOS | 2016 | Play 2.57M | German recipe app, partnered with supermarkets, but content is editor-curated |
| Mob(Mob.co.uk) | Android / iOS | 2024-08 | 277k on Play | UK youth recipe media turned app, driven by content brand |
| Measy | Web / App | Not verified | Not verified | Nearly the same positioning (UK supermarkets Aldi / Lidl / Tesco, cheap dinners), but 480+ fixed recipes, and no comparable-scale TikTok seeding seen |
| Whipp: Meal Planner & Recipes | Android / iOS | 2026-09-27 | Play 68k, +40.7k in 7 days, peak Top Grossing #83 | Same "plan your week's dinners for you" approach, 3.5 months behind mise, and still catching up |
| TapCook: Budget Meal Plans | Android / iOS | 2026-09-21 | Play 66k, +21k in 7 days | Nearly a copy: enter your postcode, pick the supermarket you shop at, get a menu by budget; also seeded on TikTok with alt accounts using #TapCook (@smallbizshy 208k views) |
| HelloFresh / Gousto and other meal kits | Other | Already around | Big | They ship ingredients; mise's site literally pitches "the planning brain for meal kits, without tiny portions and big bills" |
| General AI like ChatGPT | Big-company features | — | Big | Can generate menus, but has no supermarket, budget or combined-list flow, and doesn't push itself to you |

Bottom line: this space is crowded, with decade-old incumbents and big companies. mise's features aren't unique. What's different is that it (a) starts from "which supermarket do I shop at and how much per week" instead of making you pick recipes first, and (b) is designed from the start to convert from TikTok short video.

### 3. Growth tactics (evidence)

1. **TikTok owned account + sub-account matrix (confirmed)** . Searching "mise meal planner" on TikHub: the official account @misemealplanner has posted 1,037 videos, with the caption "Download "mise - meal planner" on App Store & Android." 2026-06-13 of them got 879K views; @misefoodplanner's 2026-06-24 one got 1.17M views. There's also a big batch of sub-accounts with the same naming: @millie.eatssss (1,494 followers, one video at 1.95M views), @kenzieeatsss, @maddiesmealz, @kamile.eats (273 followers, 936K views), @mealsbygigi (372 followers, 3.01M views), @jaya.eatss and others. They have tens to a few hundred followers each, and the captions all run the same playbook: "I wish I knew about this sooner / WHY has nobody told me," all tagged #mise. This is a classic faceless / UGC sub-account matrix: break out hits through volume, not through any one big account.

2. **Paid creator collabs #misepartner (confirmed)** . @carla.eatsss's "This app is changing my life! Mise meal planner AD #misepartner" (2026-07-14) has 8.26M views and 636k likes, and its bio also says to download mise; @cookingwlil (2,634 followers) "Aldi explain yourself NOW #misepartner" has 6.54M views. Others like @andymomcooks, @misewithashley and @asmin.cooking use the same template caption plus #misepartner, which suggests small creators recruited in bulk and given one script.

3. **TikTok paid ads (confirmed, European scope)** . In the tiktokads library the advertiser is TEGS LABS LTD (the payer is itself, registered in the UK), and the landing page is App Store id 6777471316 (mapping confidence high). The first European ad ran on 2026-09-18, targeting the UK and Germany; active ad counts were 11-02 609, 11-03 558, 11-04 703, 11-05 679 (11-06 only counted to a floor of ≥192), with 1,000–1,960 new ads in the last 7 days, 99% video, and the largest single-ad reach tier at 400k. This is high-volume creative testing. The library shows no US or Australia spend.

4. **Meta / Facebook (leads, not verified)** . Searches turn up a batch of newly created Facebook pages with fake-sounding names (IDs starting with 61593…) posting mise videos, such as "Lindsay June", a video titled "Aldi Meal Plan on Mise App: Shocking Grocery List Reaction", and a "game changer" review post from Sharday Amison; one 1-star review says "Saw ad where...". Our metaads library hasn't captured this advertiser yet, so Meta spend is unconfirmed.

5. **In-store review prompts (confirmed)** . A ScreensDesign recording of the iOS flow shows an "Enjoying Mise?" rating prompt and a "Write a Review" button appearing during onboarding, before the paywall. On Play, the recent au-storefront reviews we pulled average 2.56 across 150 reviews (1 one-star, 65 5-star 39), while the overall store score is 4.6; the iOS US score is 4.72. Users are asked to rate before they've actually used the app, which is a major reason the overall score is high.

6. **Store search / riding the name** : "mise" is kitchen shorthand for mise en place, and the App Store has a dozen apps called Mise (see the copycats below). mise doesn't own the word, so most discovery comes from videos saying "the app is called mise btw" that send people to search the store.

7. **Multi-language expansion** : onboarding offers 7 languages (ScreensDesign); iOS Germany overall Top Grossing #100, paired with TikTok ads in Germany. That shows the German market was won on purpose.

Where the money comes from: downloads hit a hard paywall with a 3-day trial, plus options for 1-day / 2-day reminders. Play in-app purchases run $10.99–$49.99 (googleplay library), mostly annual. Many negative reviews say "you have to subscribe before you can try it" and "the trial needs a card," which confirms the paywall is hard.

### 4. Why it took off

- **Timing** : with the cost-of-living squeeze in the US and Europe, "cheap groceries, Aldi swaps, weekly budget meals" has been a long-running TikTok topic. mise turned that topic directly into its selling point (the site says "save $30+ a week on average", and Aldi / Walmart / Coles / Costco all appear in video titles).

- **Easy to film** : enter a supermarket and budget, get a week of dinners and a list. That process alone makes a 15-second "I wish I'd known" reaction video, well suited to copying across an alt-account matrix.

- **Monetization** : a hard paywall plus annual plans, paired with cheap TikTok traffic. The unit economics work, which is why in September they were willing to run hundreds of ads in Europe at once.

- **Ratings** : prompting for reviews before the paywall pushed the score to 4.6–4.7, which makes the store page convert well.

### 5. Differentiation, and whether that's why it took off

There's little product differentiation. The main difference is a flow that starts with supermarket and budget, plus clean visuals and "meal vibes" taste tags (Fakeaway, British Staples, Protein Packed). The real difference is distribution: after launching in 2026 June, they ran a TikTok alt-account matrix plus paid creators, then from September launched heavy ad testing in Europe, and moved early on multi-language support. Compared with rivals: established players like Mealime and Samsung Food rely on SEO and existing users, not this short-video playbook. So mise broke out mainly because of its distribution playbook and timing, with the product as the vehicle that was just easy enough to film and just strong enough to pay. Later copies like TapCook and Whipp have also gained traction using the same playbook, which suggests the playbook, not the product, is the real moat.

### 6. How well known: the revenue has already been widely discussed

- ScreensDesign lists "$300k/mo" (page title "72 Screens, $300k/mo"); Fluxbuilder estimates $300K a month and 305k downloads; ideawave.io writes "$1.1M modeled MRR" and gives a "copyability" score; AppGazers estimates iOS revenue of 10-04 to 11-03 at $155.6K–$1.2M; appsprint estimates $100K a month.

- An Instagram reel from @startupgully, "How a Simple Meal Planner App Generates ₹17 Crores in 3 Months," says $510K+ a month on iPhone and $118K+ on Android (source @usamalatif.ai). Appy Pie posted on Facebook: "mise is estimated to bring in $400K a month. So we rebuilt an app like it," and YouTube has "How to Make a Meal Planner App Like mise."

- In other words, it's already a publicly discussed teardown case in indie and app circles. We found no revenue posts from the founders, no TrustMRR listing, and no big X accounts discussing it (x-radar search over 60 days, 0 posts).

### 7. Copycats

- Riding on the name: Second Shift Ventures LLC's "Mise: Meal Plan & Grocery List" (iOS 2026-07-02, Play 2026-07-07, Play 17k installs), with @meals_by_mise on TikTok promoting TheMiseApp.com; Shuhei Horio's "Mise: Meal Planner & Recipes" (iOS 2026-08-23); Mohamed Fakiri's "Mise: Weekly Meal Planner" (iOS 2026-10-27).

- Copying the playbook: TapCook (2026-09-21, zip code + grocery store + budget, TikTok alt accounts), Whipp (2026-09-27,7 days, +40k installs); Appy Pie publicly teaches people to copy it.

### 8. What to borrow

- Use the big topics already on TikTok (saving money, Aldi, a week of dinners) as the product's entry point, so the first screen in the app is the highlight from the video.

- Three layers at once: a matrix of alt accounts (unified naming, unified hook copy), paid small creators (unified hashtags and scripts), and the company's own accounts posting over a thousand videos a day. Once a viral creative is found, scale it with paid ads.

- Hard paywall + 3-day free trial + annual plan; ask for a review before the paywall.

- Localize country by country as the ads go (Germany performed well).

### 9. Still unclear

- Real revenue (third-party estimates range from $100k to $1.1M a month); the effect of refunds and bad reviews on retention (reviews are full of complaints like "pay first", "no Asian / Indian cuisine", "not enough allergy options").

- The scale of Meta / TikTok ad spend in the US and Australia (our library only covers European TikTok; this advertiser isn't in the Meta library).

- Whether those alt accounts are run in-house, or by an outsourced or paid UGC network.

- The gap between the Play launch date 08-03 and the iOS 06-10: did Play list late, or did the info reset?

Sources: googleplay / appstore / tiktokads / metaads libraries (2026-10-28 to 11-06); iTunes lookup; TikHub TikTok search and user profiles (2026-11-06); misemealplanner.com; screensdesign.com/apps/mise-meal-planner; kronaxis.co.uk/company/17050049; fluxbuilder.com/explore/mise-meal-planner; ideawave.io/apps/mise-meal-planner; appgazers.com/reports/apps/ios-6777471316; appsprint.app/apps/6777471316; instagram.com/reel/DerH5PVNPyd; Appy Pie posts on facebook.com/AppyPieInc; getmeasy.com.

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.