Beli Restaurant App

Culture, Media, General Food Media and News
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Has anybody used the Beli Restaurant app ?
Looks like Yelp competitor and just downloaded it amd starting to get a first idea

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Seems to want a lot of data for use

Popular with a young demographic apparently

There was an article on it recently

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/dining/beli-restaurant-app.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mE8.44Qx.rNEiNFgIGmbG&smid=url-share

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Not surprisingly they want a lot of “reviews” to open up new features but it seems to be reasonable accurate when suggesting some new restaurants based on those reviews (much better than Yelp for example)

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I was reading the comments on the article — apparently it requires increasing amounts of personal information and referrals to your friends, etc as you delve further into use — purportedly to improve recommendations.

As with everything, the user is the product, the data is the goal.

(The question of whether one wants ones food recs crowd-sourced from 18-25yos is a separate one.)

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I use Yelp primarily to see the photos of the food, the menu, and sometimes to see if there is seating. Not sure if this app will be good for that anytime soon.

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It looks like this app gives you many more photos (and also newer ones) than Yelp (and you can reserve tables through the app)

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Looks more like a 25-35 yo crowd and I am not sure if one can generalize that food recs from certain age groups are automatically useless

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I never said they’re useless

I said I’m not sure food recs are something I want to crowd-source

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I find crowd sourcing to be pretty useful at a very high level, as a blunt filter when going to a city I’m not familiar with. If there are at least a few hundred reviews I think that’s a decent sample size, and if the average is less than something in the 3.5 - 4.0 range (Yelp tends to score things lower than Google, and some cities seem to average higher or lower) I generally take it right off the list. Fewer reviews/newer place that I’m interested in for a specific reason, don’t get the same treatment. It’s far from scientific but if I have two days to eat and there are 50 places of interest, I like having something to help me cut deep without much initial thought.

How do you like to approach that kind of situation?

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That’s what we are more or less doing (on a very low tech way) on this board (or any food related discussion board where restaurants are discussed). And in general, I think crowd sourcing, including restaurants recommendations can be quite powerful

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The Beli demographic is not one I want to get my restaurant reviews from.

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I gave no problems with it and so far the restaurants notes/reviews I see on that app are quite good, e.g. better than what I read on Yelp (I know a relatively low bar but I believe that many data points help to make better decisions (not only for restaurants)

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This is, and chowhound was, a far cry from “crowd” sourcing.

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The fundamental are quite the same (especially around restaurants) - many data point from different customers to define (personal) favorites/rankings

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I don’t use HO for restaurant recommendations. At least not on an aggregate, crowd-sourced level.

I will take recommendations from select users, but not from an accretive basis.

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I am such a Luddite . . .
when going somewhere, first I search “fine dining in xxxxx”
then I throw out all the pizza joints and burger joints . . .
then I check the menus.

when someplace looks interesting, I’ll check the Yelps for real-looking reviews.
just like eBay/Amazon ratings/reviews, I first look at the one star stuff.
it is usually not a big problem to spot ‘areas of complaint’ that are indicative of ‘nope, not gonna’ try it’

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After reading that same NYT article, I came here to see what HOs had said about Beli a few days ago, and imagine my surprise that there was no hit on a search! Well, glad to see we’ve rectified that!

I then had some downtime a few nights ago, since there was nothing to read on HO, and went all in by inputting all my local past dining experiences and rating them. It’s actually an interesting undertaking the way the app gives you comparisons between two restaurants, and by asking which you prefer narrows in on a rating. It led me to some interesting thought experiments about what I value when trying to compare a high end restaurant I love, with a counter service lunch place I also love. I rated about 120 restaurants, and then looking at my list did have to rearrange some, which you can do. I did not do any reaching out to friends or contacts in order to unlock features- for me, the utility of this would be purely to track my own dining and to have something more robust than my current simple list of places I want to try (which just lives as a list in the “To Do” app in my phone), and my own recollections of what I liked or when I dined somewhere. But I am not interested in friending anyone so that part does not work for me.

It will be interesting to see if this fills a niche, because Yelp certainly does not impress me with its usability and foodie cred.

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I’ve not used Yelp in eons. I much prefer Google reviews (and trusted friends’ recs, of course, of everything else).

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Did pretty much the same - I like that there are so many more photos of dishes from many restaurant than on Yelp or Google which is quite helpful

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Yep.

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