Why Buen Provecho Shows Impact, Not Just Discounts

In a marketplace selling discounted food, the obvious marketing strategy is to scream about savings. "Save 70%!" "Half-price meals!" "Discounts up to 80%!" But Buen Provecho deliberately chose a different path, leading with environmental impact rather than price. This isn't just feel-good marketing—it's a strategic decision that protects their relationships with premium brands while building a more engaged community.

On the Levels Podcast, Guillermo Martinez, COO and co-founder of Buen Provecho, explained why they position themselves around waste reduction first and savings second, even though most users care primarily about price.

The Brand Protection Problem

When Buen Provecho first started working with stores and restaurants, they encountered resistance from premium brands about how discounted products would be presented.

"For example, we have seen that for a lot of brands, they don't like the fact that you emphasize the cheap aspect because they feel that it erodes the premium brand they might have. So we really focus on the moment aspect."

Think about this from a brand's perspective. You've spent years building a reputation for quality, charging premium prices, and positioning your products as worth the investment. Then a platform comes along selling your products at 50% off. If that platform emphasizes "cheap food" in their messaging, what does that do to your brand perception?

Consumers might start wondering: Is this brand actually worth full price, or is it overpriced to begin with? If I can get it for half off regularly, why would I ever pay full price? Maybe the quality isn't as good as I thought.

These concerns are legitimate. Premium brands have real economic reasons to be cautious about discount platforms. If Buen Provecho wants to work with the best bakeries, restaurants, and food brands, they need to protect those brands' positioning.

Leading With Mission

The solution is to reframe why products are discounted. It's not because they're inferior or overpriced—it's because of timing and waste reduction.

"It's obviously, and it's part of our core values and core tenets, super important for us. But that's also one thing we reflect on our brand. Obviously, we understand that discounts and just basically saving money is kind of like the biggest thing. But we try to communicate in an underhanded manner, like by showing abundances and low prices, example."

This is sophisticated messaging that acknowledges reality while shaping perception. Yes, users save money—that's important and they show it. But the primary narrative is about impact: reducing waste, supporting local businesses, protecting the environment.

The visual language reinforces this. Instead of clearance-bin aesthetics, they show abundance and quality. Tables full of beautiful baked goods. Fresh products from recognizable brands. The message is: this is great food that happens to be available at a discount because we're solving a timing problem, not a quality problem.

The Competitor Contrast

Buen Provecho's approach stands in stark contrast to their competitors in the Latin American market.

"The competitors mainly like, I wouldn't say it in a bad way, but they kind of cloned the model, right? They do the surprise bags. Maybe they adapted the messaging or the branding, of course. For example, the biggest player is called Chief and it's a mix of chef and chief. So they kind of like join those two things and they really target, you know, the discount aspect of the value position."

Competitors lean heavily into the discount positioning. Their branding, their naming, their messaging—it all emphasizes savings and value hunting. This works for attracting price-sensitive consumers, but it also reinforces the perception that surplus food is somehow lesser.

By differentiating on mission instead of racing to the bottom on price emphasis, Buen Provecho creates space for premium partnerships and builds a different kind of community.

The Impact Dashboard

One of Buen Provecho's most effective tools for reinforcing their mission-first positioning is the impact dashboard. This feature shows users the concrete environmental results of their purchases.

"We have a really nice dashboard for our like my impact that says, you know, how much CO2 you avoided, how much money you saved and how many packs you saved from being wasted. And we always have equivalences because if you talk about CO2 to a random person, they don't understand what you're talking about."

The dashboard serves multiple strategic purposes:

Makes impact tangible and personal - Users see their individual contribution to waste reduction

Provides concrete metrics - Specific numbers for CO2 saved, meals rescued, money saved

Uses understandable equivalences - Translates abstract environmental metrics into relatable comparisons (e.g., "equivalent to driving X kilometers")

Balances savings with impact - Shows money saved alongside environmental benefits, acknowledging both motivations

Creates emotional connection - Transforms transactions from "I got a deal" to "I made a difference"

This kind of feature demonstrates that designing engagement mechanics around mission and impact can be just as powerful as traditional gamification elements like points or leaderboards. Users aren't just accumulating points—they're seeing real-world impact from their behavior.

The Reality of User Motivation

Here's the thing: Buen Provecho knows that most users care primarily about saving money. They're not naive about this.

"Obviously, we understand that discounts and just basically saving money is kind of like the biggest thing."

The average user downloads the app because food is cheaper, not because they're passionate about environmental activism. That's fine. The mission-first messaging doesn't deny this reality—it provides a framework that makes users feel good about their cost-motivated decision.

Psychology research on consumer behavior consistently shows that people prefer to view their choices through positive narratives. Users might download the app for savings, but they'll tell their friends about the environmental impact. The mission gives them a story to tell that's more socially valuable than "I'm cheap."

This is why the messaging balances both elements. The discounts are visible and clear—users save an average of 45% on their purchases. But the framing positions those savings as a win-win: save money AND reduce waste. You're not just being thrifty, you're being responsible.

Building the Right Community

Mission-first messaging also shapes who joins your community and how they behave within it.

When Buen Provecho built their initial community through WhatsApp, they attracted people who connected with the mission. These became their most engaged early adopters, the users who forgave early product issues and helped spread the word.

"We worked around it by building trust mission. It's really important, right? When you get people to build a community, like we're trying to do things differently, they already, you know, trust you more."

Users who join because they care about the mission (even if savings are also important to them) tend to be more forgiving, more engaged, and more likely to provide constructive feedback. They want the platform to succeed because they believe in what it's doing.

This creates a virtuous cycle. Mission-driven users become advocates. Their advocacy attracts more mission-aligned users. The community reinforces the mission-first culture, which protects the brand positioning that keeps premium partners on board.

The Long-Term Brand Value

As Buen Provecho thinks about expanding beyond food into other categories like cosmetics and household products, the mission-first brand positioning becomes even more valuable.

"Our core goal is to reduce waste in general. And we think that food waste is the low-hanging fruit, so we started there."

If they'd built their brand entirely around "cheap food," expanding to cosmetics would require essentially building a new brand. But "waste reduction" translates across categories. The same positioning that works for surplus food works for cosmetics approaching expiration dates, household products with damaged packaging, or electronics with outdated models.

The brand they've built has room to grow without losing coherence. That's the long-term payoff of choosing mission over discount as the primary narrative.

Lessons for Mission-Driven Marketplaces

Buen Provecho's approach offers a template for other marketplaces trying to balance user motivation with brand positioning:

Acknowledge price sensitivity without leading with it. Show the savings, but frame them as a secondary benefit of solving a meaningful problem.

Protect premium partners' brands. If you want quality supply, you need to present those products in ways that don't undermine the suppliers' positioning.

Make impact tangible and personal. Abstract missions need concrete metrics that users can understand and feel connected to their own behavior.

Use visuals that reinforce quality. Show abundance and quality in your photography and design rather than clearance-bin aesthetics.

Build community around shared values. Mission-aligned users become your best advocates and most forgiving early adopters.

For product teams building features around impact and mission, tools like Trophy's achievements system can be adapted to celebrate environmental or social contributions rather than just usage milestones. The mechanics of streaks work just as well for "days of impact" as they do for "days of usage."

Key Takeaways

• Lead with mission to protect premium partnerships as brands don't want to be associated with "cheap" positioning
• Acknowledge savings without emphasizing cheapness by framing discounts as a benefit of waste reduction
• Make impact personal and concrete through dashboards that show individual environmental contributions
• Mission-driven messaging attracts better community members who become advocates and forgiving early adopters
• Mission-first brands have more expansion flexibility as waste reduction translates across categories better than "discount food"

Listen to the full conversation with Guillermo Martinez on the Levels Podcast to hear more about building a mission-driven marketplace that balances impact with affordability.