tapa.
A recipe app that suggests one meal from the ingredients you have, within your dietary rules.
It answers one question: “What can I cook with this?” Type, say or photograph your ingredients and get one recipe back.
Why it exists
68% of Americans say deciding what to eat is their biggest mealtime challenge (Wakefield Research). tapa. makes the decision: show it your fridge and get one meal that fits your diet.
Kept simple
The app is deliberately limited:
- 3 → 1
- Three inputs, one recipeType, speak or take a photo, and get one recipe back.
- 1×
- Settings saved onceAllergies, diet, household size and skill level are set once and applied to every recipe.
- 3
- Short recipe historyEnough to find last night's meal without managing a library.
Recipes are stored per account rather than per device, so people sharing a phone don't see each other's history.
Setting the free tier
The free tier had to be useful without removing the reason to upgrade. It took three changes in two days.
| Iteration | Free recipes per week | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | 3 | The typical cook makes 3–4 dinners a week, so the free tier covered everything. |
| Revision | 1 | Too restrictive. It was live for about an hour before I changed it. |
| Settled | 2 | Useful every week for free; frequent cooks reach the upgrade when they need more. |
Upgrade messages are generated from the same settings that enforce the limits, so they always match what the app does.
The screens
Built with
- React Native
- Expo 57
- TypeScript
- NativeWind
- Supabase
- SQLite offline cache
- Zustand
- Vision + voice input
- RevenueCat
- Claude Code