About Foodspotting
Foodspotting makes finding and sharing food recommendations easier: Instead of reading and writing reviews of restaurants, you can share photos of specific foods you recommend and see what’s good wherever you go.
Finding recommendations is as easy as looking in a bakery window and seeing what looks good. You can discover foods around you, find whatever you’re craving and see what’s good at a particular restaurant.
Sharing a recommendation is as easy as taking a picture of your food, saying what it was and where you found it. You can earn virtual tips and real rewards for sharing things others love.
Founding Principles
Foodspotting was founded in 2009 by Alexa Andrzejewski (Adaptive Path) and Ted Grubb (Get Satisfaction) with help from advisor Soraya Darabi (Epicurious, New York Times, Drop.io) who joined Foodspotting full time as a cofounder in 2010.
- It's just about the food: It's not about the place, the price, the surroundings, the crowd or the nutritional value — it's just about good food and where to find it.
- Good food can be found anywhere: We built Foodspotting to work in any city, small town or country from the start. It encourages exploration — trying new things vs. following the crowd.
- Meaningful ratings: The blue ribbon (the "nom") means more because it's hard to get. Foodspotters earn the right to nom foods by demonstrating expertise and building up reputation points.
- Not every food, just the good food: Foodseekers aren't interested in the foods that you hate, they want to know what you love. We believe people will tend to spot the foods that they like and to nom the foods that are amazing.
- Celebrates and integrates with what you're already doing: Whether you take photos of every meal or are a self-proclaimed expert in a certain dish, we want to reward what you're already doing and make it useful to a broader community.
What's what?
Sightings are specific foods @ specific places.
Wants are sightings that you'd like to try. Find foods you Want under Collect.
Noms are for foods you've tried and loved best. But there's a catch: You only get 5 noms to start with and must earn the right to nom more foods after that! The more reputation points you earn, the more noms you're allowed to give out.
Tips can be earned by making valuable contributions to Foodspotting. You earn 20 tips for every sighting, 20 tips whenever someone Wants a dish that you spotted, 25 tips whenever someone Noms a dish that you spotted first, and 10 tips when someone compliments your sighting. You can give out one more Nom for every 100 tips earned.
Champions are people who've spotted a food at more places than anyone else. Details coming soon!
Following places, dishes and Foodspotters you trust enables you to stay on top of the latest sightings. You'll soon see sightings from your followees on the homepage.
Our Team
Alexa Andrzejewski
Co-Founder, CEO
Alexa came up with the idea for Foodspotting when she returned from her first trip to Japan and Korea craving newly-discovered dishes like Okonomiyaki and Tteokbokki. Realizing there was no easy way to find and discover dishes, she set out to create a "foodie-powered field guide." As the Adaptive Path User Experience Designer behind mobile and web projects like the 2009 MySpace redesign, Alexa looks forward to following in the footsteps of colleagues who've started their own UX-driven ventures. Alexa's first food-related venture was making and selling miniature food for American Girl dolls when she was 8.
Ted Grubb
Co-Founder, CTO
Ted believed in Foodspotting from the start. While sketching ideas over Mission Pie, he envisioned the day when Foodspotting could be the picture menu for any restaurant or neighborhood and decided to invest his Rails skills into making this experience real. As the first Frontend Engineer for Get Satisfaction, Ted built its friendly face and high quality user experience from the ground up. He built and deployed an ingredient management app called It’s Ripe before turning his attention to Foodspotting.
@sorayadarabi
Soraya Darabi
Co-Founder, Head of Business
Soraya Darabi loves food, photography and emerging tech so naturally she became one of the earliest foodspotters and is now an advisor to the company. She worked for Epicurious.com and The New York Times where she successfully led the drive to market nytimes.com across multiple social-media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. In 2010 she shared a spot on The Daily Beast's "Women Who Rule the Web" list alongside Alexa. Follow at foodspotting.com/soraya.
Special Thanks
Peter Merholz is a Founder and President of Adaptive Path and self-proclaimed food expert. He has helped to shape and evolve the Foodspotting concept from day one.
Dan Martell is an award-winning entrepreneur, investor and startup incubator. His initial seed investment in Foodspotting was a great vote of confidence.
Ryan Freitas is a User Experience Designer and Strategist, an advisor to startups and a former line cook at Aqua. He provides strategic guidance to the Foodspotting team.
We are also thankful to the following people who have taken the time to advise us and without many of whom Foodspotting might never have happened:
Our iPhone app developer Dan Harrelson; our illustrator Cat Oshiro; Christian Palino for visual design help; Brandon Schauer for business strategy help; Jesse James Garrett and Rebecca Garrett for encouraging this to happen; Adaptive Path Emeritus including Lane Becker, Bryan Mason, Ryan Freitas, Jeff Veen, Janice Fraser and Indi Young for advice, connections and support; Russ Moench, Kirk McMurray and Kim Ahlstrom from Smart.fm for making us believe this was possible; Sana Choudary and the FounderShack team for inspiring us to start a startup; Naeem Zafar, Megan Casey and everyone from Jumpstart Your Startup; Peter Lee, Aaron Bannert, and Warren Stringer from iPhoneDevCamp; Michael Margolis and the Sugarcube team; Michael Goff, Marc Nager, Shaherose Charania and everyone from Startup Weekend 2009; Dylan Rosario from sfCube; Peter Werner from Cooley; Tom Fuller for market research help; David Lee and Kevin Rose for advice and wisdom; Scott Fleckenstein for your beautiful juicy brain and Ruby wisdom; Joyce Kim for legal help and for being the awesomest Kim; Seth Andrzejewski for moral support and chauffeuring Alexa everywhere; and last but not least, our incredibly supportive parents and siblings.
Contact Us
We'd love to hear your feedback! Share feedback via our Get Satisfaction page or send us an email at
Join Us
We're on the lookout for talented Rails and iPhone app developers who love food and care about creating high quality user experiences. Please contact us if interested at and share examples of your work and passion for food.
We're looking for UX-driven, food-loving, multi-talented people to help us take location-based food to the next level! Be one of the first to join our team -- you'll play a significant role in defining what Foodspotting could become.
About Foodspotting
Foodspotting is a seed-funded startup that enables people to stumble upon good things in the world around them. The Foodspotting website and mobile apps make it easy to find and share food recommendations: Instead of reading and writing restaurant reviews, you can share photos of specific foods you recommend and see what’s good around you wherever you go.
Foodspotting has received attention from The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Techcrunch and been named a “Top Travel Application” by Travel + Leisure magazine. Since launching in January 2010, over 90,000 foods have been spotted around the world by over 120,000 website and app users.
Foodspotting is backed by Felicis Ventures and a syndicate of angels and early stage funds, including High Line Ventures and 500 Startups (Dave McClure’s new fund).
We are based in San Francisco, CA and are ideally looking for people to work side by side with us in our office in beautiful South Park, but if you're amazing and live elsewhere, we'd still love to talk. We will pay competitive salaries and offer equity options to all full-time employees.
Opportunities
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Rails Developer
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iPhone, Android and Blackberry Contractors (potential full-time)
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Interns who can help in any of these areas!
Email jobs@foodspotting.com if you're interested or know someone who might be. If we hire someone that you refer to us, we'll send you a $500 Amazon card or a FREE iPad!
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