From Wine Aisle to App Store: The Pour Recall Story

Elizabeth Scillian was standing in front of the wine shelf at Trader Joe's holding a bottle she was fairly sure she had bought before. She could not remember whether she had liked it.

That is the entire origin story. No startup thesis, no market research.

"That's the moment I thought, why is there not an app for that? Just a simple app for logging the wines that you liked or you didn't like, so that you don't have to make that bad decision again."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

She went home, told her husband there needed to be an app for this, went looking, and found nothing with the simplicity she wanted. So she built it. Pour Recall is now live on both the Apple App Store and Google Play, and she built every screen of it herself with no technical background.

We wanted to understand the part most people never reach: not the building, but everything between a finished app and a published one. Here is what she learned.

The Question in the Wine Aisle

Plenty of wine apps already exist, and Elizabeth is quick to say they are good at what they do. They were just not what she wanted.

"Most of us are not wine snobs. It's supposed to be for the everyday wine drinker, not somebody who wants to talk about notes and pairings and where it is in my cellar. It's like, I just bought it at CVS and I'm going to drink it tonight. And did I like it? That's my wine app. It's just that simple."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

Holding that line turned out to be the hardest design discipline in the project, because the temptation to add is constant.

"Sometimes it's harder to make less, because when you start to make something you're like, well, maybe I could do this, and maybe I could do this. It's like, hold on. This is just a simple journal for people."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

She also made a deliberate pricing choice against the grain: no subscription. Log five wines and you get full access free, permanently. It came from her own frustration as a user, and she is candid that she does not yet know whether it was the right call commercially.

Starting on Paper, and Never Hiring Anyone

Before opening any builder, Elizabeth got out a stack of paper and drew her screens by hand, thinking through them as a user rather than a designer. She researched how many screens an app like hers should reasonably have. She looked at apps she admired for being clean and quick. Only then did she research platforms, land on Adalo, and start on the free plan.

The recurring theme of the months that followed is a conversation she kept having with her husband.

"All along, I kept saying, we're going to have to hire somebody, I can't do this. And then the next day I was like, well, I did it, so we don't have to hire him for that. And then a couple of weeks later, oh, I went ahead and did that. We don't have to hire anybody."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

Strangers messaged offering to build it for her. She turned them all down.

"I just kept thinking, I can do this. Whatever problem I was having where I thought, gosh, I probably should get help, I just thought, I can do this. Step away for a day or two, come back to it fresh."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

She leaned on AI throughout, mostly Claude, screenshotting what she was trying to achieve and working through Adalo's filtering logic one condition at a time until a search could filter by red, by California, by disliked. She also used Ada, Adalo's AI builder, for ideas on forms. But she is clear-eyed about what carried her through the hard parts.

"AI helped me a lot too, but honestly, you need a human. Sometimes you just have to go, I've got to have human support on this."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

The Whitespace That Broke the Paywall

Her app was finished. Submission is where it stalled.

Apple kept rejecting it because full access would not work. She had attached multiple builds, which was complicated in itself, and once that was sorted the paywall still failed. She checked her IDs against her configuration over and over, for days.

"I can't tell you how many times I went over the numbers. Everything was correct. I just couldn't figure it out."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

She took it to Adalo support, where Dilon found it on a Saturday: two trailing spaces after the last character of a link.

"He emailed and said, I cleaned up the white space on the full access, and I think you're good to go. And I was like, huh? That's all it was? Two spaces?"

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

It went through on the next submission. That evening, she says, they toasted Dilon by name at dinner.

"I thought about just making a t-shirt that says, make sure you check whitespace. Everybody should know that. I didn't."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

It is a small thing that cost weeks, and it is exactly the class of problem that makes first-time founders quit. All told she submitted to Apple around five times, almost all of it human error rather than anything wrong with the app.

The Keyword Mistake That Buried the App

The app passed review. Then came the lesson she now gives everyone first.

Pour Recall is a pun, and she loved it. The App Store algorithm did not understand it as one. Despite being filed under Food and Drink, searching the name surfaced something else entirely.

"Everything that came up with it was a memory game. Memory games and ADHD. I was just like, no, Apple, no!"

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

"Recall" also pulled her toward car recalls and food recalls. None of it had anything to do with wine. She had to go back, rewrite her keywords, change her title, and resubmit, then mirror all of it over on Google Play so the two listings matched.

"Even if it's the best title and you love it so much, you might have to put some things next to it that make the computers see it and read it better."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

Asked what single thing she would tell someone about to submit, this is what she picked. Not the build. The keywords, the title, and the subtitle, checked before you hit submit rather than after.

Screenshots, TestFlight, and the Paperwork Nobody Warns You About

The other surprise was how much work sits between a working app and a store listing.

Screenshots were the big one, and she is blunt about why they matter: they are the advertisement for your app, Apple and Google both have rules about them, and sloppy ones cost you downloads. Her husband is a graphic designer, which helped, though it meant asking him to fit her screenshots in after dinner around a full-time job. He also produced a demo video, one frame of which Apple rejected.

She built her privacy policy herself by studying existing ones and working back and forth between Claude and ChatGPT until it held up, then hosted it on her own site, Ifio Girl, which serves as the parent brand for Pour Recall. IFIO stands for "I'll figure it out," which is on the nose.

Much of that has since been folded into Publishing Studio, which now handles store screenshots, listings, and a hosted privacy policy inside Adalo. Her reaction on discovering it after the fact was, understandably, where was this when I was trying to make screenshots.

She also found the two stores behave very differently. Apple took around seven days per review and made the approval feel like an occasion, complete with a shareable graphic. Google published in hours, with far less ceremony but its own testing requirements. Setting yourself up as a developer with Apple in the first place, she notes, is complicated enough that she can see people abandoning the whole project right there.

The Rebuilt Update, and the Feature She Let Go

Two moments stand out as genuinely painful.

The first: she duplicated her live app and spent months building her big update in the copy, assuming she could simply submit the copy when it was ready. The community forum told her that is not how it works. She had to rebuild months of work inside the live app.

It turned out better. The live version had none of the small glitches she had been unable to solve in the duplicate, and every connection worked cleanly.

The second was knowing when to stop. She wanted an image cropper, could not get it working, and kept getting corrupted images.

"I finally just said, I'm going back to an image picker, simple, and just keep moving through, because that one wasn't working for me and it was taking too long. I'll get back to it."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

It is still on her list. It did not block the launch, and that distinction is the whole skill.

Pour Intentions, and Using Her Own App

Her most recent update added a wish list she calls Pour Intentions: wines you have heard about and want to try. Tap an icon once you have bought and poured one, and it leaves the wish list, drops into your tried list, and updates your stats. She had assumed it would be beyond her.

"Honestly, it was one of the easiest things I built, and I love it. I was just so surprised at how the data moved through that so well. And that I did that."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

The real validation came back where the idea started. Standing in Trader Joe's, looking at a bottle, wondering if she had tried it, she searched her own list and found it, with a thumbs up next to it.

"I've had it, and I liked it. Yeah, okay, this is working. Exactly what I thought in my mind before is working exactly how I wanted it to work."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

Next on her list is photographing a wine label and having AI fill in the details automatically, routed through an automation tool and a vision model.

Her Advice for First-Time Builders

Her advice is not about tooling. It is about tolerance for being wrong.

"Keep making mistakes, and then learn. Although it's painful and frustrating, the mistakes push you through. And you've got to ask questions. Boy, I ask a lot of questions."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

One unexpected side effect: she cannot look at software the same way now.

"I look at apps so differently now. No judgment ever when something in an app doesn't work. Even a no-code platform, it still is complicated."

Elizabeth Scillian, founder of Pour Recall

She still has the very first version of her app and refuses to delete it, because the gap between that and what she ships now is the clearest measure of what she learned.

If you have an idea and no technical background, you can start building on Adalo for free, look at what other makers have shipped, or hire an Adalo Expert if you would rather not do it alone. Elizabeth, for the record, decided she would.

FAQ

What is Pour Recall?

Pour Recall is a deliberately simple wine journal for everyday wine drinkers, built on Adalo by founder Elizabeth Scillian. Rather than tracking tasting notes, pairings, or cellar locations, it answers one question: have I had this bottle before, and did I like it? It also includes a wish list feature called Pour Intentions. It is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Can a non-technical person build and publish an app to the App Store?

Yes. Elizabeth had no technical background and had never built an app before. She sketched her screens on paper, built the entire app herself on Adalo starting with the free plan, and published to both the Apple App Store and Google Play. She used AI assistants for help with logic and her privacy policy, and Adalo support for the problems she could not solve alone.

Why does my app submission keep getting rejected?

Often for small configuration errors rather than anything wrong with the app. Pour Recall was rejected repeatedly because its full access purchase would not validate, and the cause turned out to be two trailing spaces after a link in the configuration. Other common causes include attaching the wrong builds and content in a demo video that breaches store guidelines. Check for stray whitespace in any URL or ID you paste.

How much do App Store keywords and your title matter?

Enormously, and they are easy to get wrong with a clever name. Pour Recall initially surfaced alongside memory games and product recalls because the algorithm read "recall" literally, despite the app being listed under Food and Drink. The fix required rewriting the keywords, changing the title, and resubmitting. Review your title, subtitle, and keywords before you submit, not after, and mirror them across both stores.

Is publishing to Google Play easier than the Apple App Store?

In Elizabeth's experience, Google Play was faster, publishing within hours compared with roughly seven days per Apple review, though Google has its own testing requirements. She notes she went through Apple first and solved most of her problems there, which likely made the Google submission smoother. Setting up as an Apple developer in the first place was, in her view, complicated enough to stop people on its own.

What is Adalo?

Adalo is a no-code app builder with a visual, multi-screen canvas and an AI builder called Ada. You can design, build, and publish database-driven web apps and native iOS and Android apps from a single project, then ship to the Apple App Store and Google Play. Plans start free with 500 records per app, and paid plans start at $36 per month.