@small_h, Many I think. Just please keep reading:)
@bbqboy, Thanks for your time! The walking distance search (good for metro areas) is free though the city search (designed mainly for the wide rural areas) is very slightly tipped. At the beginning I don’t think there will be many recs (by knowledgeable locals, the key point!) to show within a walking distance of half a mile. But it certainly can be designed sorting by closer distances if situation changes. Thanks in advance for every input here to make it less puzzling.
@Babette, Thanks for your good points! The demo is to keep things simple, but in the full version
breakfasts, brunches are also searchable and there is an “any cuisine” choice in the cuisine list.
@naf, very good idea! I’ll work on allowing members to input an address to search around it within still walking distance.
I’m not against the idea. I’ve downloaded 2 food apps hoping they’d have useful stuff, but both fail, albeit in different ways.
Check out eatOkra, a soul food locator, and tap for tacos , for Mexican food and I’d be interested in what you think.
eatOkra locates nothing and Tap for Tacos just googles and links to yelp. Not any use to me.
I didn’t find Tap for Tacos online. EatOkra looks beautiful and has media coverage, only time can tell how far it can go following Yelp’s model (website personnel and business owners list the entries). Best wishes to both apps anyway as they are trying to help customers find food quick too!
I live in a very small town. I know that there’s nothing within walking distance.
But I go into any of several cities (of varying sizes) with friends very regularly. When we are going the city for dinner, we aren’t going to find a parking place and then find a place to eat…we’re going to choose a restaurant and park accordingly, or we’re attending a performance and need to choose something reasonably close to the venue.
We usually use Open Table because we can do all of this, AND make a reservation, in one app that allows us to set a different location.
I use more and more online reservation too, even for cheaper places, if they allow that. (Really dislike queuing) In Europe there is The Fork. Open Table is coming around too.
When will I be able to see the review? Since the prototype is too simple and looks like something from the early www (need to be realistic enough even for prototype, I think), the search result should showing the name of restaurant with the name of the critic. Just the name of the critic is not convincing.
I think you’re too far behind the curve on this one. With Yelp, Google, The Fork, Open Table, Trip advisor (which I hate but it has to be included), and even Waze, there are so many other restaurant finding apps out there that yours will have to be truly amazing (functionality, etc) to scratch out a foothold.
Maybe start small. Find ONE metro and make it work. Then expand from there
I forgot to point out earlier that the proposed app is total different to other food sites: while all others are business-centered (restaurant reps list the places first then customers like us follow with reviews; and restaurants benefit with more sales while reviewers are paid nothing), this app is customers-centered: you as a customer list your favorite restaurants (your listings are your reviews, you don’t actually write a review) and you are paid by all the users who select your recs. It’s a kind like airbnb but renting your food experience instead of rooms.
< all others are business-centered (restaurant reps list the places… >
That’s not true. A lot of Yelp listings are posted by the first person to review a place. You can tell because Yelp offers the option for owners or representatives to “claim” a business. An unclaimed listing indicates that the owner/rep hasn’t had any input (yet).
Thank you very much for keeping reading:) and making my lines more complete/accurate!
The idea in the proposed app is to “blaze trails” to get food enthusiasts paid for their sharing efforts. Truly thank you all for contributing on this!
Thanks for the criticizing! There’s definitely room to improve. But at the beginning the app is mainly designed for smartphone users while not forcing out pc users.
Very good suggestion! Thanks for encouraging! Maybe in the Sunshine state?
The other thing is to find some way to value someone’s opinion.
I know people whose restaurant recommendations I would follow in a heartbeat, and others who think Applebees is fine dining. You need a way to separate those.
At the software level, there are algorithms like a voting machine and feedback system already incorporated in so off-target inputs won’t affect or hold position for long. At the management level, there will be “Area Coordinators” who are responsible for valuing the regional inputs.
I guess the fundamental is, like each of CH, FTC and HO did at their beginning, how to get high-quality reviewers (guides in my case). Please feel free to chip in on this, everyone!
If the app gives greater weight to recommenders who please the most people, how is that any different than Yelp?
One of the things that distinguishes sites like hungry onion from Yelp is that we talk about places that are quirky in the sense that they may only have one amazing item and otherwise be mediocre, may have terrible service but amazing food, or have a location remote to where tourists travel. To get the most out of such websites, the user needs to invest time to get the good info
If recommenders on your site wants to please the most people, and make the most money, all they would need to do is post the top yelp rankings or other big lists.And in doing so They would be the middleman charging people for already free information.
Hey, hyperbowler, thanks for participating in this general discussion topic (not specific on any eatery) too!
Your incisive worry is a very good one. Actually it brings out the basic structure/framework of the proposed app: the free metro area walking distance restaurant search is the bone and the slight tipped city search for rural area is the complement. Most of people are gonna use the walking distance search as it is free and handy, so almost every good restaurant has equal opportunities to get picked by searchers. Replicating any big site’s top ranking lists won’t work for any guide/recommender.
Cool. Please build in a feature to automatically detect closures (using Yelp api or google perhaps). Chefsfeed for example doesn’t do this and it’s frustrating to have to verify each of their picks to see if a Restaurant is still in business
It’s already partially built in! The phone number, which comes with the address after you click the “Show Address” button, is a real-time result from Google API. And I have highlighted the reminder “Please call before you go”. So, if there is no phone # shown for you to call, you know there is something wrong (a recent closure maybe). Of course, area coordinators/management should check for closures for often.
This is a temporary solution easily applicable for now. I’ll look into better hopefully permanent one, for sure. Thanks for all of your suggestions so far! All very thoughtful to customers!
