From WhatsApp Group to 150,000 Users: How Buen Provecho Validated Their Food Waste App

In the middle of the pandemic, while most startups were racing to build their MVP and launch as quickly as possible, Buen Provecho took a different approach. Before writing a single line of code for their food waste marketplace app, they spent months selling surplus food through a WhatsApp group chat. This decision to validate demand manually would prove crucial to their success.

On a recent episode of the Levels Podcast, Guillermo Martinez, COO and co-founder of Buen Provecho, shared how this unconventional start helped them build an app that now connects over 400 stores with 150,000+ consumers across Latin America.

The Bootstrap Mentality That Changed Everything

When Buen Provecho launched in 2021, the concept was straightforward: connect stores with surplus food to consumers interested in buying it at a discount, reducing waste while saving money. The team had seen Too Good To Go working successfully in Europe and believed they could adapt the model for Latin America.

But rather than immediately building an app, they started with what everyone in their market already used: WhatsApp.

"We made a group chat and people share, you know, with the link, with the invite link and got almost a thousand people there at one point before we moved to the beta of the app."

The process was entirely manual. The team would visit stores, negotiate surplus food availability, take photos themselves, and post offerings in the WhatsApp group. Every aspect that would eventually become automated features in their app was done by hand first.

"We basically went to stores at the same time, obviously because it was a pandemic, they weren't selling. The food business was pretty suffering. So we told them, okay, we are doing this. We're selling food at the discount. And we went there and we sold it, we pitched it. We took the pictures and we basically managed the rest."

This hands-on approach served multiple purposes beyond just validation. It helped them understand the operational challenges they'd face, identify what messaging resonated with both stores and consumers, and refine their curation process.

Overcoming the Quality Stigma

One of the biggest challenges Buen Provecho faced early on was perception. How do you convince people that surplus food isn't "second quality or second tier food"?

The WhatsApp group became their testing ground for building trust and community. Because they were a small, mission-driven group rather than a faceless app, users gave them more benefit of the doubt.

"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. They don't think, okay, they're just trying to get a quick buck and just screw us over."

The team invested heavily in curation from day one, ensuring that every product posted met quality standards. This careful attention to detail, even when operating manually through WhatsApp, established a foundation of trust that would carry over when they eventually launched their app.

When Validation Becomes Obvious

The true test of their concept came with each post to the WhatsApp group. The response left no doubt they had found product-market fit.

"Every time we published in the chat and the group chat, it got sold almost immediately, which was amazing. Honestly, it was one of the best experience I ever had."

This immediate sell-through rate gave the team confidence to move forward with app development. They weren't making assumptions about whether people would buy surplus food at a discount—they had concrete proof that demand existed and was strong.

By the end of 2021, after months of manual operations through WhatsApp, Buen Provecho launched their beta app. The first order through the actual app came on December 28th, 2021. From there, growth took off organically, with the core community from the WhatsApp group becoming their first loyal users.

The Advantage of Starting Small

Looking back, Guillermo recognizes that starting with WhatsApp—despite being labor-intensive—gave them advantages that jumping straight to an app wouldn't have provided.

"At the start, obviously now you have a lot of like resources and tools and can use AI agents and many resources that can help you just work smarter and be more productive. But yeah, we just kind of like, you know, the bootstrap mentality. We just did everything and that just worked, right?"

For founders considering a similar validation approach, Guillermo's experience offers a clear lesson: if your concept works even when you're running it inefficiently and manually, you've found something worth building.

The inefficiency actually becomes a feature during validation. If demand is strong enough to overcome a clunky, manual process, imagine what's possible when you build proper systems and automation around it. This is exactly the kind of early-stage user engagement that proves a concept has legs.

From Validation to Scale

Today, Buen Provecho operates across Uruguay and Argentina, with plans to return to Colombia with the lessons learned from their first international expansion attempt. But they still face the fundamental challenge that emerged during those WhatsApp days: balancing supply and demand.

Unlike most consumer apps that can scale user acquisition aggressively, Buen Provecho must carefully match their user growth to the number of stores and products available. Growing too fast means users open the app and find nothing to buy—exactly the kind of experience that kills retention.

This supply-constrained dynamic shapes every aspect of how they grow, from their marketing strategy to their international expansion decisions. But it all traces back to those early WhatsApp days, when the founders learned firsthand what it takes to balance both sides of their marketplace.

Key Takeaways

• Validate before you build: Buen Provecho spent months selling through WhatsApp before developing their app, proving demand existed before investing in development
• Manual processes reveal truth: Running operations manually first helped them understand the real challenges they'd face and what features actually mattered
• Community builds trust: Starting with a small, mission-driven WhatsApp group helped overcome quality concerns that might have derailed a cold app launch
• Immediate sell-through is gold: When products sold "almost immediately" in the chat, they knew they had product-market fit
• Inefficiency as a feature: If your concept works despite being inefficient and manual, you've validated something worth scaling

Listen to the full conversation with Guillermo Martinez on the Levels Podcast to hear more about Buen Provecho's journey from WhatsApp group to regional food waste platform.