After Yuka’s success, starting in 2017 and growing to over 55M users by 2024, the food and health scanning app market became a large and coveted vertical, with multiple apps leveraging the market opportunity.
Yuka famously positioned itself by doing no marketing and not paying influencers, which is likely costing them market share now being taken by a growing number of competitors.
From indie players like Oasis and H20Score to Seed Oil Scout, Fig, and Zoe, today we’re diving into some of the TikTok strategies used by these players.
On top of Yuka’s success, these apps are capitalizing on health trends, and there will only be more to come. From water quality to seed oil checks and other food restrictions, many niche apps will be created in the coming months and years.
Green Screen Roasting Strategy
The format we really like at Social Growth Engineers is the Oasis founder roasting water on a green screen:
This format has been super effective — it helped the account grow to over 120K followers and rack up more than 50 million views in just a few months. To shoot the content, he simply visits supermarkets and films himself picking up different water bottles across various aisles. In just one trip, you can capture dozens of clips featuring a wide range of bottles. After that, all you need to do is edit the video by adding your analysis and placing yourself in a greenscreen setup to provide commentary and some light storytelling. It does help to have a good storytelling voice, but that’s something you can improve with practice.
His competitor, H20Score, has been running a similar account and has reached 17M views on TikTok and Reels, with their best-performing video closely resembling one from Oasis.
Oasis launched in 2022, while H20Score started in January 2025. The latter is already generating $30K in revenue, according to Sensor Tower.
This shows that a strong content format (if it hasn’t already hit its full potential) can be reused and remade effectively. You see this not just in short-form app marketing, but also in entertainment content across YouTube and other platforms.
Slideshow Strategy
After building up its first accounts, Oasis has been trying to scale by launching multiple creator accounts alongside a couple of slideshow accounts using the following approach:
This account reached 2.5M views in just one month. Huge gains and clear potential to scale, especially with faceless slideshows.
Fig has been running an aggressive slideshow strategy and is now generating over $100K in MRR:
They run around a dozen accounts that post daily slideshows using different formats. Together, these accounts have pulled in over 40 million views and are still going strong. The formats range from educational Pcos to “healthy” Costco hauls and creator-led slideshows, but they all stick to the same core structure: a strong hook on the first slide, followed by up to 15 slides, each featuring an item with its own hook. Those pages have distinct themes and tap into various verticals:
The call to action is usually placed somewhere in the middle of the slideshow.
UGC Marketing at Scale
Oasis experimented with several accounts to expand, but after limited success, they stopped. They tested different hooks and formats. They gave up on those accounts after around 40 videos on each.
Zoe, on the other hand, has been pushing harder with multiple creators pulling in millions of views. But despite leaning on more traditional creator formats, traction has been weak, they likely had to lean on paid ads. The content feels brand-polished and over-edited, sometimes even forcing a registration “code,” which comes off un-organic and over-promoted.
The accounts are still active, each with 130+ videos, but they look more like ad-footage farms than genuine creator plays.
Seed Oil Scout is also testing with 5–6 UGC accounts but hasn’t yet seen strong results.
We didn’t find many health or calorie trackers managing UGC networks effectively. It’s simply too crowded and too hard to make it viable. That’s why most are exploring other strategies and formats.
Seed Oil Scout
The app is generating over $100K in revenue. This verticalized seed oil checker is wild. They’ve gained traction through some main account views but mostly through memes.
Other Verticals
A Pet Food Scanner app launched recently and is already making a few thousand dollars in revenue. I believe there are strong opportunities for more sub-vertical apps like this, paired with better strategy.
People love their pets, and dog/cat TikTok is a huge niche. Mars, the chocolate company, now generates more than half of its business from pet food, and that segment is consistently growing.
Costco Hot Finds
To wrap up this newsletter, after seeing the Costco Haul format, we came across another one called Costco Hot Finds. One account pulled in over 60M views with the simplest faceless format.
There is an opportunity to build an app on top of Costco Hot Finds, especially since a quick search reveals hundreds of accounts. Some, like this one — @costcohotfinds on TikTok — already have 1.5M followers and millions of views.
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