Why it matters:
- Amid the health and wellness boom, product ingredients now play a central role alongside quality and value as the three most important purchase considerations for consumers, who are increasingly tapping digital tools like QR codes and apps to unearth product details, according to the NIQ/FMI Transparency Trends report.
- Leaning into those trends, buzzy product-scanning app Yuka offers its now 73 million global users ratings on 5 million food and personal care products from cereal to bodywash.
- With $7 million in sales, Yuka reached profitability five years after launch without spending a dime on traditional marketing thanks to an independent, ad-free business model that’s unlocked growth via good old-fashioned word of mouth.
Serena Joo remembers she was at a ShopRite in West Caldwell, New Jersey, scanning the nutrition labels on the waffles in the frozen food aisle, when a stranger approached.
The Trust and Estates Attorney is regularly on the hunt for “lurking ingredients like sugar” to help keep her cholesterol in check but also as a matter of lifestyle, growing up in a “health-focused family who was very educated about food,” she said.
She’d been painstakingly scrolling through ingredients when she heard, “Are you aware of Yuka?” The stranger was talking about the food and beauty products ratings app. “He then took the stuff in my cart and started zapping it.”
Joo is now a convert. “I don’t go shopping without it,” she said.
Joo then shared Yuka with her buddy Madeline, who then hipped her diabetic dad to the app, turning him into another Yuka devotee.
“I have a pyramid of people I discussed this with,” Joo said. “I’m obsessed.”
Joo and her pyramid can be counted among Yuka’s 73 million global users, including 23 million in the United States who range from everyday shoppers to medical professionals including doctors and dietitians.
Yuka Co-founder and CEO Julie Chapon says good old-fashioned word of mouth, product ratings generated by scientists, and a business model that eschews brand advertising (think Consumer Reports) has catalyzed growth in the increasingly crowded wellness space.
The startup boasts $7 million in sales and reached profitability five years after its 2017 launch without spending a dime on traditional marketing, Chapon told CO—. “There is no marketing strategy. It’s very simple,” she said. “The main reason for our growth is word of mouth. You heard about it through your family and friends. Generally, when someone uses the app and likes it, they talk about it to 10 to 20 people.”
[Read more: Inside the Viral Growth Strategies That Are Driving 3 Brands' Sales Success]
Yuka’s success reflects consumer demand for ingredient transparency and wellness-measurement tools
Founded in France, Yuka now ranks as the fourth most popular health and fitness app in the U.S. App Store, joining the likes of buzzy health-focused startups like Noom for weight loss and Talkspace for therapy amid a wellness boom.
Yuka allows users to scan the barcodes of 5 million everyday food and personal care products from cereal to body wash. The app evaluates products for their nutritional quality, the presence of additives, and organic claims.
Its success echoes a consumer populace increasingly intent on micro-measuring endless wellness indicators—from sleep quality to stress levels and skin health—hoping to maximize health outcomes via digital technology.
Yuka’s popularity also comes as consumers demand brand transparency from the products and services they buy on factors ranging from sustainability to ingredient transparency and are voting with their dollars accordingly.
“Product ingredients now play a starring role alongside quality and value as the three most important consumer purchase considerations,” according to the Transparency Trends study by NielsenIQ and FMI (the Food Industry Association).
The study revealed that consumers are also placing a high premium on product nutrition and production details, and “even the specific usage of ingredients,” FMI’s VP of Research and Insights Steve Markenson said in the report.
And more than 80% of U.S. consumers said they are somewhat or very likely to use a QR code, website, app, or other tool to seek more product details whether they’re shopping in-store or online.
Mirroring that inclination, the United States is now Yuka’s largest market, representing over 31% of the business and its biggest growth opportunity, Chapon told CO— from its U.S. headquarters in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, where it set up shop in 2022.
[Read more: 3 Founders on the Critical Business Decisions That Proved Pivotal to Success]
A health app conceived by a Co-founder ‘lost in a dietary jungle’
Yuka didn’t start out as an app. It was initially designed as a carrot-shaped internet-connected object that consumers could use to scan and analyze the ingredients in food products.
The startup was conceived due to Co-founder Francois Martin’s frustration over deciphering the nutrition labels on the packaged food he bought for his kids after becoming a father, finding himself “lost in a dietary jungle.”
Website developer Martin, his banking industry brother Benoit Martin, and Chapon, a former business consultant, developed the idea and introduced the device in 2016 at the Food Hackathon, a Paris-based startup contest. It won first place. Yuka officially launched the following year as an app, and today, about 1,200 new products are added to its database daily.
Unlike health-geared apps from influencers who double as self-appointed nutrition gurus, Yuka has amassed its following in part due to product ratings determined by scientists, Chapon said. “Today you have a lot of experts in everything, and they don’t [necessarily] have a scientific background” or nutrition expertise, she said.
By contrast, Yuka’s 18 employees include a full-time toxicologist and food nutrition engineer, it contracts medical experts, and all product findings are backed by its scientists’ studies, which has struck a resonant chord, Chapon said. “Users tell us they value the scientific background of our [product] analysis.”
There is no marketing strategy. It’s very simple. The main reason for our growth is word of mouth. You heard about it through your family and friends. Generally, when someone uses the app and likes it, they talk about it to 10 to 20 people.Julie Chapon, Co-founder and CEO of Yuka
‘We don’t do any marketing’
At the same time, Yuka’s independence, almost unwittingly, became a key ingredient of its customer acquisition strategy.
Because the app is an ad-free platform with zero financing from brands or manufacturers, products are ranked independently and businesses can’t influence its ratings or recommendations. The decision proved critical to differentiating Yuka in the crowded health and wellness space and earning customer loyalty, Chapon said.
“We could easily have taken money from brands and manufacturers, and we could have easily made a lot of money from that, but we refused to do that,” she said. “People trust the app and our [product] evaluations because we’re independent,” Chapon said. “I think we would not have so many users if we [weren’t].”
Yet Yuka has no marketing strategy to speak off. “We’ve never paid for advertising, and we don’t do any marketing,” she said. “We just try to publish content with very high quality. This is what’s working because we get people interested.” For example, popular newsletter posts co-written with topic specialists include The 10 Keys to Healthy Eating and The Amazing Power of Microbiota, which have racked up between 500,000 to 1 million views.
The premium version of the app is Yuka’s main revenue source. For about $10 a month, users can search for products in-app without having to scan items and can set up alerts based on dietary preferences. So if consumers want to avoid ingredients for a gluten-free or vegetarian diet, for example, the app filters for that. But Chapon is quick to say that it does not filter for health conditions, as that’s the purview of guidance from a medical professional.
‘The U.S. very quickly became our biggest market’
Yuka went viral in the United States following a consumer’s TikTok video on the app. Then “word of mouth took over, and the growth never stopped,” Chapon said.
That’s why, in 2022, the Founders moved to New York for a year to study the market. Plans changed when it became clear that American consumers were a big opportunity for the brand. So the Benoit brothers returned to France, and Chapon remained.
Although Yuka serves 12 countries, “the U.S. very quickly became our biggest market,” Chapon said. “Thank God we made the decision to come to the U.S. This was so important to the health of the business.”
Today, Yuka’s sales conversion rates in the United States exceed Europe tenfold, in part because unlike abroad, it’s commonplace for Americans to pay for apps, she said.
While the app boasts a robust following among Gen Z for its beauty ratings, Yuka doesn’t target a particular demographic and instead appeals to consumers navigating various life stages, Chapon said.
“We have a lot of young parents because having a child is a trigger when you want to pay more attention to what you [consume],” she said. “And we also have users 50 and over because when you get older you also try to pay more attention to your health.”
Yuka is now looking to accelerate user growth in the United States by burnishing its bona fides as an authority in the scientific and health care communities. “The main mission is to build Yuka’s credibility and scientific image as a ratings app by collaborating with renowned institutions, companies, and NGOs [nonprofit organizations],” Chapon said.
To that end, the startup began sharing on its site testimonials from its network of 40 worldwide health care professionals ranging from scientists, general physicians, pediatricians, and oncologists to food engineers and registered dietitians, who recommend the app to their patients.
It all ties into Yuka’s biggest opportunity and mission in the United States, Chapon said. The goal is “to give access to more transparent information so that people can make better choices for their health.”
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