Foodby

This was my second project. This time I decided to go with Flutter after my bad experience with building Noteit using native iOS since customers complained about not having an Android version. Flutter seemed like a good choice since I would only have one codebase for both Android & iOS apps

What was it about?

Foodby was an app that helped SMBs convert their waste into small profits. The way it worked was the same as Too Good to Go, for those who never tried it, it works like this:

Establishments post on the app that they have excess food (this could be, for example, a bakery at late afternoon, with a bunch of cakes that will not be good for selling on the next day)
Customers receive a notification on their app for establishments in their area.
Customers buy through the app a "surprise bag" which could be anything from a list the establishment filled out.
Customers would go there (no delivery) and pick up their surprise bag showing a code the app generated.
The establishments would enter this code in the dashboard to confirm the delivery, completing the transfer of the money.

The idea was simple: I was going to copy this existing app from overseas and bring it to my home country, Brazil. Adding localization, adapting payment methods, and adapt it to Brazilian customers.

As a developer with little product-building knowledge at that time AND after the success of Noteit's acquisition, I thought the formula for success was simple:

Build -> Distribute -> $$$

I couldn't have been more wrong. The project took about 6 months to build, I had Figma designs, landing page, dashboard for sellers, an app for the customers (both in Flutter) and a backend made with Go and MySQL. During these 6 months, I wasn't working full time on this, since Noteit had just been acquired, and I wasn't in a rush to make it, so I would just work about 4-8 hours a week.

Screenshot of initial landing page design

The launch of the app

After building the whole app, it was time to launch it, but as a B2B2C business, I needed establishments offering their surprise bags. At that time I was actually living in Italy, so I needed someone in Brazil to help me out. That's when I invited my older sister to join this project.

Time was ticking. I had added the app to Google Play & App Store for pre-order, meaning we had 6 months to get as many registered establishments as we could.

How did we market ourselves to small business owners? My sister would go door to door, trying to talk to the owners and explaining we wanted to explain our offer: we would take a 15% cut of their sales (making us pennies for each sale since this would also cover payment processing fees) but with no subscription or registration fee. Some complained about it being too much, others wanted to see it working in other places first. It's really hard to convince people to try something new.

In the end, we had about 6 registered establishments at launch!

What happened next?

The app went live in April 2023. After 2 years and 4 months, in August 2025, I shut it down. The reception was good! Users were loving it! We tried to talk with some press media to get featured, and we even got featured on the local TV. The main problem was getting these SMBs to sign up. I tried everything you could name: Facebook/Instagram ads, flyers, door-to-door, cold calling, cold emailing. I don't know if I'm a bad marketer, but I tried everything I could. Foodby never surpassed 20 registered establishments.

When you have an app that is more like a vitamin than a painkiller, it's hard. Even though customers loved it, you need a lot of scale to make money.

Conclusion: Unless you really know what you're doing and you have strong networking with people in the area, do not go for small-margin businesses.