Laddaty

From plate scan to smart plan, Laddaty is your AI sous-chef turning every meal into effortless nutrition, guided cooking, and pure kitchen magic.

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"The best products are born from solving your own problems. For me, that problem started with a disastrous attempt at doubling a recipe."

Inspiration: The Culinary Disaster

Laddaty began with a simple kitchen disaster -a failed recipe due to incorrect scaling. But I soon realized that was not my only frustration. Every time I cooked, new challenges emerged: finding a recipe, creating a grocery list, planning the weekly meals, substituting an ingredient, asking random questions while cooking, dietary compliance, nutritional info... I found fragmented solutions, one app for this, another for that, but nothing felt like a true, all-in-one kitchen companion.

At first, I started prototyping in Figma and even joined a national entrepreneurship competition, organized by my university. With just that prototype and a strong belief in its potential, I won first prize, and Laddaty was featured in national press across Morocco in Arabic, in French, in English: a huge moment of validation that pushed me forward.

That is why Laddaty was born: to be the single app that innovatively solves all these problems together. This hackathon gave me the push to accelerate development and turn this vision into reality. As a solo developer, I worked relentlessly to bring it to life, culminating in Laddaty’s official App Store release on September 26th, timed perfectly for this event.

What it does

Laddaty is your personal AI sous-chef, built to turn everyday cooking from stressful to effortless. It goes beyond basic recipes to unify planning, shopping, and cooking in one intelligent app.

  • Ask anything while you cook: get instant substitutions, clarify a technique, or brainstorm ideas with your AI Sous-Chef.
  • Plan smarter, not harder: generate weekly meal plans tailored to your diet, family size, and schedule.
  • Cook with what you have: input your fridge items and discover recipes that use them, reducing waste and saving money.
  • Snap and cook: take a photo of a dish, and Laddaty identifies it, estimates nutrition, and finds a recipe for you.
  • Adapt recipes in real time: swap ingredients based on allergies, diets, or pantry availability, with context-aware explanations.
  • Shop effortlessly: turn plans into categorized grocery lists, complete with unit conversions.
  • Cook with confidence: follow guided step-by-step instructions or go hands-free with audio mode and Thermomix-friendly flows.
  • Stay on track: every recipe includes calories and macros to match your health goals.

Laddaty is not just a recipe app; it is your complete culinary partner, designed to make cooking simpler, healthier, and more joyful.

How we built it

We built Laddaty as a modern, full-stack AI platform that unifies multiple complex workflows into one seamless cooking experience.

On the frontend, we used React Native with Expo to ensure a smooth, cross-platform mobile app available on iOS and Android. The UI was designed with a focus on speed and clarity, with internationalization support (English/French) and real-time interactions like guided cooking and ingredient search.

On the backend, we developed a modular Node.js + Express service connected to MongoDB Atlas. Our architecture separates controllers, services, and routes for scalability and clean maintainability. The backend powers recipe search, substitution logic, nutrition data, and user personalization.

For AI features, we integrated multiple LLMs through OpenRouter to handle recipe adaptation, substitution explanations, step rewriting, and multilingual translation. For vision tasks (dish recognition and ingredient scanning), we combined computer vision APIs with embedding-based similarity search.

We used Cloudinary for image storage and transformation and RevenueCat for subscription management. CI/CD is handled through GitHub Actions and Docker, deploying to Render with automated builds.

Finally, we engineered the system with security and performance in mind: Apple/Google social login with JWT verification, rate limiting, caching for ingredient data, and precise unit-conversion logic to guarantee accurate grocery lists.

The result is a robust, AI-driven cooking companion, designed not just as a demo, but as a production-ready app already live on the App Store (and in 7 days in Play Store).

Challenges we ran into

As a full-time graduate student and solo founder, I cannot even remember how many nights I stayed up with no sleep, just me, my laptop, and endless bugs. Some nights I laughed at the chaos, other nights I cried, but I kept going because I believed in Laddaty.

The toughest moment was subscriptions. After all the work, I found out my country is not even supported for payouts. I broke down crying; it felt like game over. But then I got back up, found an alternative, and kept moving. What made it easier was RevenueCat. Once I added it, subscriptions finally felt possible. It handled the hardest parts and saved me from months of extra pain.

Then came App Store rejections. Twice. First because I forgot to add Terms of Use, second because my paywall wording was unclear. With the hackathon deadline so close, I thought everything might collapse. On the third try, it finally got approved and I cannot explain how much joy and relief that gave me.

Outside of coding, marketing was another mountain. Every day I had to think of a new trend, make the video, post it, and track results, all while doing school and building the app. It was tiring, but it also showed me something: if I can survive this, I can handle what’s next.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Early national recognition: Even before launch, the idea behind Laddaty was celebrated and recognized at the national level.
  • App Store milestone: Within just 12 hours of going live, Laddaty welcomed its first two premium users (organically and not family members); proof of real demand.
  • App Store ranking: In the very first day on the App Store, Laddaty entered the Top 50 in the Food & Drink category in Morocco and quickly rose to #27, showing early traction in our home market (screenshot).
  • Product Hunt debut: Ranked #13 Product of the Day on our very first launch; a strong validation from the global maker community check here.
  • Community building: Organically, with no sponsoring, and through 5 consistent days of posting, we have started to build momentum (7.3k accounts reached on TikTok and 3.5k on Instagram).

What we learned

While I am known in my environment for my perseverance, this hackathon forged something deeper. Being the all-in-one woman behind everything, the developer, the designer, the strategist, and shipping a full application in such a short time taught me a new level of resilience.

Beyond that, the most profound lessons came from the gap between theory and reality. Even as a Master's student in Software Engineering, the practical, hands-on experience in reliability, performance, and security that comes from launching a real-world product is something university simply cannot teach.

On a personal note, I also confirmed a critical hypothesis: great apps are not exclusively built by men in hoodies. This challenge was not just technical; it was personal growth. I learned that determination, when paired with curiosity, can push you far beyond the boundaries of any classroom.

What's next for Laddaty

This launch is just the beginning; the journey for Laddaty is accelerating rapidly. The Android version is already in a closed test track, preparing to bring the experience to a whole new ecosystem of users.

The initial App Store launch has generated significant buzz, leading to two exciting partnership offers from grocery delivery services to integrate with our smart grocery list feature. This validates our mission to create a seamless 'plan-to-plate' experience. Laddaty is the all-inclusive cooking app and will continue to thrive as so. Our next steps are clear: winning the Shipathon prize and being featured on NT Square are next on the roadmap!

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