IDEA #76 – The Greatest Menu Meals (fb app initially)

By Steve Poland   •   September 18, 2007

Submitting this to Startup Weekend NYC this weekend.

The Idea: The Greatest Menu Meals (fb app initially)

The Concept: Users rate specific meals on the menu of restaurants. We’d have menu’s for restaurants and users could specify what they thought of various meals — it would also be a reminder to them (personally) to know in the future what they’ve had and like.

I always find myself at a restaurant asking someone I’m with what they’re getting or recommend; or what the waitress recommends. This would be a way for us to all know what our friends recommend and the public at large. Imagine holding a menu at a restaurant that had Amazon-style user ratings of all the meals, how cool would that be?!

The Money: Ads on the pages — future would be very targeted ads by restaurants and other local advertisers. If someone is just looking for a good mexican restaurant in San Fran, we could show them a list of the top-rated ones by their friends and everyone, with some sponsored ads at the top of particular restaurants.

The Marketing: Viral via Facebook newsfeeds and such.

Questions: How do we initially populate restaurants across the USA? And then specific meals on their menu’s? Maybe initially people can specify menu items themselves — “Burger” — “the burger is amazing at Founding Father’s; you’ll never have a better one! Get it done medium!”. We could start out with generic food items and the user could specify a genre of the restaurant, thus if they said it was Mexican, we’d populate with generic Mexican dishes that the user could add/subtract from (bean burrito, chicken fajitas, beef fajitas, etc).

Future: Full menu integration for restaurants. Ability for restaurants to manage their menu, daily hours, and daily specials. Daily specials might be updated by voice (a VXML app that dials-out to the restaurant every morning; pincode protected to ensure the owner/manager can only update the daily specials).

A ‘dating’ function that allows you to browse photos of other users that go to the bars/restaurants you go to regularly. Suggested other restaurants/meals that you may like based on people that recommend similar restaurants/meals as you have. SMS to retrieve recommendations from a restaurant or recommended restaurants based on your location.

Competition: There’s restaurant listing competitors like Yelp, but is anyone focused on specific meal ratings by users?

Why It Would Work: In the user’s profile page, the profile box for this app will show recent meals the user has rated. People eat 3 meals a day — I think a ton of people eat 2 meals out per day.




Related posts:

  1. IDEA #27 – Lunch/Dinner/Bar Specials – Updated Daily A new site launched called Snag Lunch — quite honestly, I think it’ll be short-lived. This isn’t really done well/automated — but I think the idea has potential. If I were launching something similar, I’d...
  2. IDEA #75 – Where I Hang Out (facebook app) I’m submitting this in the pool of ideas for Startup Weekend NYC this coming weekend. The Idea: Where I Hang Out (fb app) The Concept: Users specify the bars/restaurants/coffee joints that they frequent. Thus I...
  3. IDEA #77 – Social Search Engine (take on Google) Another idea for NYC Startup Weekend this weekend… The Idea: Social Search Engine [take on Google!] (fb app / browser plugin / toolbar) The Concept: Take-on Google with a social search application. Users do a...
  4. IDEA #10 – In-Person Social Networking – Event/Bar Mingling via Cell Result/Solution proposed by this business idea: People will begin interacting with new people, making new friends in person. Some people will find dates or meet others that will end up being very good friends —...
  5. FourSquare API Ideas I haven’t looked at the API, but I see crazy potential of apps being built on-top of FourSquare. The one thing I REALLY WANT [and have for years], is, when I go to a restaurant.....

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Comments

2 Responses to “IDEA #76 – The Greatest Menu Meals (fb app initially)”

  1. MyAvatars 0.2 jonathan on September 26th, 2007 5:41 pm (perm link)

    so, what are your thoughts on the weekend? when will the app be available?

  2. MyAvatars 0.2 » FourSquare API Ideas - By Steve Poland - web startup ideas and brainstorms, straight up! (formerly Techquila Shots) on October 28th, 2009 12:19 pm (perm link)

    [...] I detailed this idea out awhile ago — I think someone could make it happen with FourSquare: http://blog.stevepoland.com/idea-76-the-greatest-menu-meals-fb-app-initially/ I’m in Buffalo, so I haven’t used FourSquare really at all, but I’d also love to [...]

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