About Foodspotting

Foodspotters earn recognition for sharing foods they love enabling foodseekers to find whatever they're craving and see what's good wherever they go.

Foodspotting is a visual local guide that lets you find dishes instead of just restaurants. It's powered by Foodspotters, who can share their food photos and expertise while building a rich collection of foods and where to find them.

Become a Foodspotter by sharing a food that you love! You can post sightings on the website or email them to food@foodspotting.com! The iPhone app is slated for February 2010.

Founding Principles

Foodspotting was founded in 2009 by Alexa Andrzejewski, a User Experience Designer from Adaptive Path, and Ted Grubb, a Rails Engineer behind Get Satisfaction. While we look forward to seeing how the Foodspotting community evolves, we founded it on the following principles:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

Reputation Points can be earned by making valuable contributions to Foodspotting. You earn 5 points for every sighting, 10 points whenever someone Wants a dish that you spotted, and 25 points whenever someone Noms a dish that you spotted. You can give out one more Nom for every 25 points.

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

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

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.

Advisors

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.

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