We've been hard at work over the past six months, and finally we'd like to introduce TasteBuddy. TasteBuddy, a free iPhone app (Android coming this summer!), provides dish-level ratings, reviews, and pictures to help users find the best food throughout Chicago. Over the next few months, we will seed over 1000 menus for the Chicago area, providing increasingly personalized ratings to aid users in discovery of new dishes wherever they go.
TasteBuddy conducted an alpha launch in Hyde Park with a party on June 3 attended by over 100 students, faculty, and community members of the University of Chicago. We partnered with various restaurants from around the city to bring the group selections of dishes from Ben Pao; The Sit Down; The Medici, Lao Beijing, Lao You Ju, Lao Shanghai, Siam Thai, and Mysore Woodlands. The event was a success, and we acquired over 2800 dish ratings, reviews, and survey answers.
After another month of development to build on our learnings during the alpha launch party, we just launched city-wide at the Taste of Chicago. TasteBuddy is the unofficial guide to the festival, providing users the opportunity to check out pictures, reviews, and ratings for dishes at the taste before they have to spend any tickets. Since our app launched at Taste of Chicago, over 300 dish pictures have been uploaded and over 1000 ratings and reviews submitted!
Here’s an example on how to use it at Taste: Search for sausage and you can quickly compare the over 20 sausage dishes to find which is the best. Click on the ‘Festivals’ Tab to check it out.
Once we have acquired enough user ratings and reviews, we will be rolling out our personalized recommendation engine. We have assembled a team of statisticians from the University of Chicago and the Computation Institute to develop it, and we are extremely excited to jump into the data.
We’d like to say thanks to those who have offered invaluable advice over the past months, in particular Griffin Caprio and Seth Kravtiz.
TasteBuddy conducted an alpha launch in Hyde Park with a party on June 3 attended by over 100 students, faculty, and community members of the University of Chicago. We partnered with various restaurants from around the city to bring the group selections of dishes from Ben Pao; The Sit Down; The Medici, Lao Beijing, Lao You Ju, Lao Shanghai, Siam Thai, and Mysore Woodlands. The event was a success, and we acquired over 2800 dish ratings, reviews, and survey answers.
After another month of development to build on our learnings during the alpha launch party, we just launched city-wide at the Taste of Chicago. TasteBuddy is the unofficial guide to the festival, providing users the opportunity to check out pictures, reviews, and ratings for dishes at the taste before they have to spend any tickets. Since our app launched at Taste of Chicago, over 300 dish pictures have been uploaded and over 1000 ratings and reviews submitted!
Here’s an example on how to use it at Taste: Search for sausage and you can quickly compare the over 20 sausage dishes to find which is the best. Click on the ‘Festivals’ Tab to check it out.
Once we have acquired enough user ratings and reviews, we will be rolling out our personalized recommendation engine. We have assembled a team of statisticians from the University of Chicago and the Computation Institute to develop it, and we are extremely excited to jump into the data.
We’d like to say thanks to those who have offered invaluable advice over the past months, in particular Griffin Caprio and Seth Kravtiz.
Come out and see us at Taste (we’re in the green t-shirts). Otherwise, we’ll see you all at the next Bootstrappers’ Breakfast.
Follow us on Twitter: @TasteBuddyApp
