How One 67-Year-Old User Became Buen Provecho's Biggest Customer

On the Levels Podcast, Guillermo Martinez, COO and co-founder of Buen Provecho, shared a story that reveals an unexpected truth about user personas: sometimes your best customers come from segments you never targeted. While most of their users are young professionals and families, their top user for two consecutive years is a 67-year-old woman who orders 2-3 times per day—not primarily to save money, but to stay active.

It's a reminder that products often find their truest champions in places you don't expect, and those stories can become powerful marketing tools.

The Unexpected Power User

When Buen Provecho analyzed their most active users, they found the usual suspects: budget-conscious families, environmentally-minded millennials, and young professionals looking for good deals. But at the very top of the list was someone completely different.

"We have an old lady that's around 67 years old that purchases every day, two to three times a day. And it uses it to go around and just walk. And go around the city and just do some physical activity. So I think she will be one of the top users at least here. She was two years consecutively the biggest user. We send her a gift every year just for supporting us," Guillermo explained.

Read that again: she orders 2-3 times daily. Not because she needs that much food, but because visiting different stores gives her a reason to walk around the city. What started as a food waste solution accidentally became a fitness app for an active senior looking for purpose in her daily routine.

This kind of unexpected use case is gold for any consumer product. It reveals that your product's value might extend far beyond your original hypothesis. More importantly, it shows that sometimes the most engaged users are solving problems you didn't even know your product addressed.

Why This Matters for Product Teams

The 67-year-old power user represents a broader lesson about user segmentation and engagement. Product teams often build detailed personas based on assumptions: young professionals need convenience, families need value, environmentally-conscious users need impact metrics.

But real users resist neat categorization. They find creative ways to extract value that product teams never anticipated. This woman didn't fit any of Buen Provecho's core personas—she wasn't primarily motivated by saving money, environmental impact, or convenience. She was motivated by having a structured reason to stay active.

This raises important questions for any B2C product:

• Are you tracking behavioral patterns that don't match your expected personas?
• What unexpected benefits are users extracting from your product?
• How can you amplify these secondary use cases without diluting your core value proposition?
• Are there untapped markets using your product in ways you haven't marketed?

The Recognition Strategy

Buen Provecho's response to discovering this power user is worth noting: they send her gifts annually to thank her for her loyalty. It's a simple gesture that acknowledges exceptional engagement and creates a relationship beyond pure transactions.

This kind of recognition serves multiple purposes. It makes the user feel valued, creating emotional loyalty that transcends the functional value of the app. It generates word-of-mouth as she tells her friends about the special treatment. And it gives the team permission to learn more about her motivations and usage patterns.

When Charlie and Jason suggested in the podcast that there could be viral potential in her story, Guillermo acknowledged the idea but noted she's "a bit shy." This highlights another consideration: not every great user story translates to great marketing content, especially when dealing with older users who may not be comfortable with public attention.

The Broader Opportunity

While this specific user might not become the face of a marketing campaign, her behavior suggests a much larger opportunity. If one 67-year-old found this value, how many others might benefit from a similar solution? Could Buen Provecho explicitly market to active seniors as a way to stay mobile and engaged with their community?

"There's lots of people that might not be the number one, but even the top 100 people in every city are still pretty active people that you want to talk to and a lot of those people would maybe be more open to being put in front of other people as well," Charlie noted during the conversation.

This points to a scalable strategy: identify your top 100 users in each market, understand their motivations, and find the ones willing to share their stories. Among that group, you'll likely find multiple unexpected personas worth exploring and potentially targeting.

The gamification features Buen Provecho is developing—leaderboards, impact tracking, social sharing—could make these engaged users even more visible and celebrated within the community. Imagine a leaderboard that highlights not just purchases, but kilometers walked or stores discovered. Suddenly, the accidental fitness benefit becomes an explicit feature.

Key Points

• Buen Provecho's most active user for two consecutive years is a 67-year-old woman who orders 2-3 times daily
• She uses the app primarily as motivation for physical activity and to explore the city, not just to save money
• This unexpected use case reveals that products often create value in ways their creators didn't anticipate
• Buen Provecho recognizes her loyalty by sending annual gifts, creating emotional connection beyond transactions
• Her behavior suggests untapped marketing opportunities to active seniors looking for structured daily activities
• The top 100 power users in each city likely represent multiple unexpected personas worth exploring and featuring

Listen to the full conversation with Guillermo Martinez to learn more about how Buen Provecho discovers and serves unexpected user segments in their marketplace.