"Living alone isn't cheap; what costs is throwing away half of every grocery run": a Spanish journalist's menu app built from Mercadona receipts

Ignacio Amigó in Madrid built an app: pick the supermarket you shop at, enter a weekly budget, and in 30 seconds get a weekly menu and a shopping list sorted by aisle, with that store's prices. In three months it got 38k installs with almost no ads. The growth came from a content account that posts "how much a week at Mercadona" every day, plus a pile of search landing pages built by supermarket and budget. The product itself is easy to copy, and a whole batch of copies showed up at the same time. What's worth taking is his playbook: pick one country and go deep on its local supermarkets.

A video with 980k views

On 2026 Sep 26, TikTok account @cestachef posted a video that opened with: "Vivir solo no es caro. Lo caro es tirar media compra." (Living alone isn't expensive. What's expensive is throwing out half your shopping.)

Below it, six small-pack items: chicken 560 g 4.09 €, 6 eggs 1.80 €, spinach 300 g 1.30 €, cooked lentils 0.90 €, cooked chickpeas 0.80 €, rice 1 kg 1.15 €. Then three dishes cooked from that basket, two portions each: one to eat today, one to pack for lunch tomorrow. At the bottom: "Mercadona prices, checked Sep 26", then "In CestaChef we build a menu and list for one person using your store's prices. Free, link in bio."

By early November this video had 979k views on TikTok 11-06, the account's biggest hit. Four of the top five share the same theme: "Same thing, Mercadona 27.45 €, Consum 32.98 €" (450k), "39.84 € of frozen food from Mercadona, six dinners for two" (340k), "Five dinners for under 16 € at Mercadona" (220k). The last one is a muscle-gain / fat-loss recipe (780k).

What it is

CestaChef (on Play as "CestaChef: Menú semanal", listed Jul 22; on iOS listed Jul 15). Five steps: pick a supermarket, set budget and number of people, choose which meals, enter diet and allergies, get the menu and list, and swap any dish you don't want. Prices cover 18 Spanish chains: besides Mercadona, Carrefour and Dia, also Gadis, Froiz, HiperDino and Bonpreu, which only operate in Galicia, the Canary Islands and Catalonia.

Menus, lists, prices and cross-store price comparison are free. Premium sells calorie targets, multi-store combos and batch cooking: €4.99 a month, €29.99 a year, or €69.99 one-time.

The numbers: not big, but steadily climbing

The curve's shape is worth a look: normally a day of 1,000 to 3,000 installs, rising to a few hundred and jumping every few days (8/14-17, 9/3, 10/3, 10/7, 10/12, 10/22). That lines up with the content account's viral-post rhythm. Paid acquisition curves are smooth upward slopes, and this isn't one.

Little money. Based on 38k installs plus iOS, combined users are estimated at 5~70k (estimate). Subscription revenue is around $1,000 a month (inferred; third-party estimates, not verified). This is a product that's gaining traction, not yet one that makes money.

Where users come from

A daily brand account. TikTok @cestachef has posted 274 videos: 10 in July, 63 in August, 89 in September and 90 in October, about three a day, with roughly 7.1M cumulative views (TikTok, 11-06). The same-name Instagram account has 106k followers and posts the same content. Early on (late July) it ran hook-style clips like "No me lo puedo creer!!"; later everything became practical content with prices and shopping lists. The key point: each post's content is the list the app generates. The app is a content generator, and every post is a product demo.

The person behind it came from content: Ignacio Amigó is a biology PhD, holds a master's in science journalism, and produces podcasts. The headlines read like media writing, for example "Four neighbours, the same shopping, and one of them spends 1,097 € less a year."

A pile of search landing pages. cestachef.es mass-generates pages by supermarket (/menu-semanal/mercadona, /carrefour, /dia…), by budget (/mercadona/presupuesto/25-euros, 45-euros), by diet, by single-ingredient price (/precios/huevos), and by occasion (what to cook tonight, air fryer, packed lunch). There's also a web app at app.cestachef.es. Searching "menú semanal mercadona lista de la compra" in Spain, its Mercadona page ranks #1, and #7 and #8 are also its pages (Brave, Spain search, 11-06).

A few paid creators. Only single digits were found: cocinaconmiriii (52k followers) posted "Publi* this app is blowing up" in Aug 20, with 12k views; plus two or three small UGC accounts. No Meta ads were found, no media coverage, and nobody mentions it on X.

Category charts. The Spain Food & Drink free chart has a low bar. Ranking in the top 15 alone brings a bit of organic traffic.

What users say

Recent iOS reviews from the Spain store (10-22 to 11-04, App Store). The praise is about one thing: "It builds my weekly shopping list, stays in budget, and finds the cheapest across stores, which saves me money."

Complaints and requests are just as focused:

• "Every store is there except one of the big three. Lidl is missing, please add it soon." Another: "Missing Lidl, and no split between adults and kids."
• "Looks like a good idea, but so many bugs I don't dare pay for a subscription: plans won't save, they keep overlapping, and today it fully crashed, even saved recipes wouldn't open."
• "Plan generation is great, but I can't create a new one without overlap; every time I open it, it says nothing was saved; and buying doesn't update the pantry."

One more shows who the users are: "I just moved to Spain and was using it before I came… I asked for a feature and they said yes!" Users care about "my supermarket", and the developer is adding them one by one.

Who it's competing with

CestaChef didn't invent this template. In mid-2026, "tell the app your supermarket and budget → get a weekly menu with a priced list" suddenly became popular, and a batch of nearly identical apps launched one after another:

So in Spain, CestaChef's win is only "most local": it covers regional chains and has its own content account, instead of spreading across lots of sub-accounts. There's no feature moat. Whipp already ranks above it on the Spain Play chart (#3 vs #11). Its 4 version from Nov 1.1.0 expanded it to Mexico, the US and the UK, and the Play listing now names Walmart, Kroger and Aldi. In the US and UK, it runs straight into TapCook and Whipp.

If it were you

B. This spot in Spain is already taken. Six or seven companies are running the same template at once, and the category has not yet been proven to make money. What's worth taking is the playbook: turn the app's output into content, and mass-produce search pages by supermarket × budget, in a country nobody has gone deep on yet.

Who it suits: a team of 1~2 people, with someone who can post short video daily and write headlines locals respond to. Countries with a strong supermarket culture where price talk happens every day, such as Italy (Esselunga, Coop, Conad), Portugal (Continente, Pingo Doce), Poland (Biedronka, Lidl), Turkey (BİM, A101, Migros), or a single Latin American country (inferred; I haven't checked each market for existing players. Piatto already has Portuguese and German versions).

Who it doesn't suit: people who only want to write code and won't post content daily (this product's growth is entirely the content account); people who want English-language, US-market plays (TapCook and Whipp have already locked it down with heavy UGC); people counting on subscriptions paying off fast (CestaChef has been growing for three months and is estimated at about $1,000 a month).

How to do it: start with a single country and enter reference prices for the top dozen or so local chains, including the regional ones. Don't skip a big one the way CestaChef did (its comments are full of people asking about Lidl). Menus, lists and prices stay free. Subscriptions only sell the advanced tier: calorie targets, multi-store combos, batch cooking, portions for kids. Get the basics right first, that plans save and don't overlap. Nearly all of CestaChef's complaints are about that.

How to acquire users: one brand account, 2~3 posts a day, with a single theme: "Spend Y at store X and eat for a week / make Z meals." Every post states the unit price and the date the price was checked, and ends with "Priced for your supermarket, free, link in bio." CestaChef has already tested the best themes for you: living alone, renting your first place, a week for two, the freezer, a same-basket price comparison across two stores. Launch web pages mass-generated by supermarket × budget × diet at the same time, with a web version people can use directly, targeting local long-tail searches like "[store] weekly menu". Creators can be a small supplement, not the main engine.

When to move: the sooner the better. This template only took off in mid-2026. In three months it went from 1 to 6~7 apps, and multi-language players like Piatto are rolling out country by country. Ideally launch before the 2027 January wave of "New Year's diet + January savings", so the content account is already built up.

Signs you've misread it: ① Whipp, TapCook or Piatto launch a local-language version in your target country and reach the top 10 of its category charts. The gap is gone. ② CestaChef still hasn't reached any grossing chart in Spain by early 2027. That would mean these apps have lots of users but few who pay, so it's only a traffic business. ③ A big supermarket (e.g. Mercadona) launches its own budget-menu feature. ④ The reverse: after CestaChef launches in Mexico, its Play or iOS app reaches the top 20 of Mexico's Food & Drink free chart. That would mean this playbook works in another country too, so move fast.