The problem
Many nutrition apps try to cover everything. MyFitnessPal, Cal AI, and others track every macro, meal, and goal. Someone who cares about one number can easily get buried in features they'll never touch.
I saw someone on Twitter share a fiber tracker they had built and became curious about how quickly I could ship a focused version. What began as a speed exercise became a lesson in the work that starts after an app reaches the store.
About
Grove tracks one thing: daily fiber. People can log foods from the USDA database, see their progress toward a daily goal, and keep a streak.
The app is free to download. Grove+ adds paid features for people who want them.
Screens
How it works
Log your food
Search the USDA database and log what you eat. Grove tracks the fiber so you don't have to guess.
Watch your ring
The progress ring fills as you get closer to your daily fiber goal.
Build your streak
Each day you hit your goal adds to your streak.
Key decisions
Focus on fiber alone
Grove tracks fiber rather than trying to replace a full nutrition app. That narrower job shaped the product around people who want one useful number without logging every part of a meal.
Treat App Store search as the marketing channel
Grove is where I learned ASO. Adding 'Fiber Counter' to the subtitle moved Grove to #19 for that phrase. I now use Rankd.dev and AppKittie to track terms that larger apps overlook, and App Store search is the product's main acquisition channel.
Ship in two days, fix in two months
I went from idea to App Store submission in under two days. That got Grove in front of real users quickly, but the first interface was not ready. Their behavior exposed the weak points faster than more private polishing would have.
What went wrong
The vanity-project speed had a cost. The first version wasn't user friendly, and the data made it obvious: people downloaded Grove, started a trial, and cancelled within a day. That pattern is hard to look at when it's your app, but it gave me a clear retention problem to work on.
The last two months have gone into redoing the UI, fixing bugs I never noticed, stripping out bloat. It's still going. Usage shows most people open Grove at lunch, log one food, get their number, and leave. They don't care about streaks or analytics. So the redesign is built around that one-off logger, not the power user I imagined.
Results
- 351 new users
- since launching at the beginning of March.
- 120 monthly actives
- in the last 28 days, with 7 paying Grove+ subscribers. Retention remains the main problem to solve.
- #19 in App Store search
- for 'fiber counter,' earned through deliberate keyword work, not ads.
- Under 2 days
- from idea to submitted for App Store review.
RECEIPTS
Get it
Grove is free to download on the App Store, with Grove+ available as a paid tier.