Recipes or delivery, rank on the dishes people search for.
ASO for food and drink apps starts by separating recipes, restaurants and delivery: on the App Store, Food & Drink covers recipes, cooking guides and restaurant reviews, while services consumed outside the app, such as food delivery, are sold with your own payment method rather than the store's in-app purchase on both stores.
What makes ASO different in this category?
- 01
What Food & Drink covers
On the App Store, Food & Drink is for apps that offer recommendations, instruction or critique about preparing, consuming or reviewing food and beverages: recipe collections, cooking guides, restaurant reviews, dietary and food allergy, alcohol reviews. On Google Play, Food and Drink covers recipes, restaurants, food guides and beverage recipes. Weight loss is a Health & Fitness example on the App Store.[1][2]
- 02
Orders and groceries skip store billing
Under Guideline 3.1.3(e), physical goods and services consumed outside the app use a purchase method other than in-app purchase, such as Apple Pay or card entry. Google Play's Payments policy also says its billing system must not be used for groceries or food delivery.[3][4]
- 03
A line on alcohol
Guideline 1.4.3 does not permit apps that encourage consumption of excessive amounts of alcohol, and apps that encourage minors to drink are rejected. Write drink and cocktail listings with that line in mind.[3]
- 04
Nutrition tracking falls under the health declaration
In Google Play's Health apps declaration, Nutrition and Weight Management covers tools for tracking dietary intake, planning meals and managing weight. A food app with meal plans or calorie tracking fills in that declaration in Play Console accordingly.[5]
- 05
Review summaries on the product page
In some App Store storefronts, the product page shows a review summary generated with large language models from user reviews and refreshed on an ongoing basis. The summary rating is also specific to each storefront, so delivery or recipe reviews become part of the page's first impression.[6]
Features that matter most
Reviews and insights
Reads reviews every 6 hours, splits them into complaints, bugs, requests and praise, and drafts replies.
MoreKeyword hunt
Finds recipe, cuisine and diet searches from store autocomplete and your rivals' top 10 terms, measured for popularity and difficulty.
MoreCopy workshop
Drafts your title, subtitle, keyword field and short description with live character limits and keyword coverage.
MoreLocalization
Shows the languages each App Store storefront indexes and the ones you are missing, since food searches change from country to country.
MoreThis category's charts
The free Chart Movers tool shows this category's top 10 today, the climbers, new entrants and launches of the last 90 days.
App Store · Food & Drink
US · Chart Movers
Daily: a category's top 10 in a country, the climbers, new entrants and apps launched in the last 90 days.
Open toolGoogle Play · Food & Drink
US · Chart Movers
Daily: a category's top 10 in a country, the climbers, new entrants and apps launched in the last 90 days.
Open toolOne-Star Reasons
Sorts an app's recent 1-2★ reviews by reason: crashes, ads, price, login, speed, with the version gap.
Open toolQuestions
Should my food delivery app use Google Play's billing system?
No. Google Play's Payments policy says its billing system must not be used for physical services such as food delivery or for groceries.
Which category fits a recipe app with calorie tracking?
Apple says the primary category should describe the main function: Food & Drink if it is mainly recipes, Health & Fitness if it is mainly about weight loss. Use the secondary category for the other.
Read more
Choosing an app category and reading top charts on both stores
How to choose a primary and secondary category on the App Store and a category plus 5 tags on Google Play, and how to read category top charts.
Read the guideHow to fill in Google Play’s Data safety form
Fill in the Play Console Data safety form step by step: collect vs share, exemptions, SDK-by-SDK table, privacy policy and deletion URLs, common mistakes.
Read the guideReplying to app reviews: 25 templates for the App Store and Google Play
How to reply to App Store and Google Play reviews: where, the platform rules (Play's 350 characters, Apple's 24 hours), a triage routine and 25 templates.
Read the guideIn-app events on the App Store: limits, badges, examples and a calendar
App Store in-app events: every limit (10 live, 15 approved, 31 days, 14 days early), media specs, which badge to pick, 10 example events and a 12-month plan.
Read the guideSources
- Categories and discoverability (Apple Developer)
- Choose a category and tags for your app or game (Play Console Help)
- App Review Guidelines 1.4.3, 3.1.3 (Apple Developer)
- Payments policy (Play Console Help)
- Provide information for the Health apps declaration form (Play Console Help)
- Ratings, reviews, and responses (Apple Developer)