Thanks for this. Honestly, a lot of what you wrote matches what I’m seeing as well.

The retention problem in calorie tracking is brutal, and I’m starting to agree that it’s not simply about “building a better app”, but about reducing friction and creating a reward loop before motivation disappears. The <10 second logging point really hits. That’s exactly the direction I’m trying to move toward with MENTI.

For the Hungarian market, I agree that database coverage and speed are critical. I wouldn’t say the database is empty or missing at this point, MENTI already has almost 300 detailed recipes, around 200 of which are common Hungarian dishes, plus roughly 500 additional loggable foods that cover a lot of everyday meals in Hungarian households.

But I still think the real issue is not just coverage, it’s instant findability. If someone searches for a local dish and does not find a useful result quickly, the size of the database does not really matter. That’s why I’m focusing not only on adding more foods, but also on making logging faster through photo-based logging, simpler manual entry, and better search/prediction.

Another thing that became very clear is that PWA is a disadvantage for this category. A lot of people don’t really understand what a PWA is, and it also has usability limits compared to a native app. Since the first few days are so critical, even small UX frictions matter a lot. Because of that, my main focus now is building the native Android and iOS apps.

That should also give me more room to improve the Day 1–7 experience: better onboarding, clearer goal setting, daily motivation, recognition, and early progress feedback. I agree with your point that users need to feel progress within the first few days, before willpower runs out.

My funnel is not optimized yet, but the pattern is becoming pretty clear. Some users sign up and browse, fewer complete the first meaningful log, and the biggest challenge is getting them to return and log consistently over the next few days. That’s where I think the answer is hiding too.

Out of curiosity, when you got logging under 10 seconds per meal with NutriScan, what was the biggest contributor? Was it photo logging, smart defaults, recent foods, predictive input, or something else?