The new Yelp Competitor?
Hey Indie hackers👋,
I'm a 19 year old trying to lunch my first side project, and would need some feedback on an app/website idea.
As the title says this would be a website/app competing against Yelp or more of a social media version of Yelp. What I don't like about yelp is that it helps you find "good" establishments but it does not help you find good food.
I would want a way to find the best food Item in the area I'm in. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I usually don't really care where I eat. All restaurants are basically the same after all (except of the interior design). All I want is something that tastes good and something that I will remember. My app would be a social media version of yelp directed/focused towards food items instead of establishments which I feel is too general. In this app you would be able to:
👉Find the best food item in your area - Imagine going to a new city and just wanting to eat something local that everybody local knows about but you don't. This app would tell you the best dish around you that everybody recommends. For example: The tater tots at the hot dog stand on 94th street in New York.(very specific)
👉Find the best dish from a restaurant you know you want to go to This app would allow you to compare every menu item with the ranking of the most recommended dish or most unusual but great discovery dish, reviews of every menu item, pictures, nutrition facts, food attributes (Spicy?, Gluten Free?, Vegan?), etc.. Example: the buffalo ranch sauce has a 5 star rating, is vegan, and is the best sauce you'll ever try (very specific)
👉Find the things you don't like on a menu - I wish I had this app last night when I went to the restaurant. I ordered a burger and "Israeli Couscous topped with pistachios''. The burger ended up being ok, my sister's burger was better tasting, and the couscous was something cold with not great tasting vegetables. I was not expecting this, and the app would have helped me get a better dinner.
👉Share your reviews - This would become a social media for food. This app could be used by food bloggers or anybody that likes to take pictures of their food. You would have a place to post it where people want to see your review (not your snap story). Everybody would create a top 5 of their favorite foods. This could become a place to communicate with your friends and favorite food bloggers. Everybody could share insights and recommendations (ex: secret menu item).
Don't hesitate to give me recommendations/feedback, or let me know if you would like to collaborate and make this idea come to life.
Why do you think Yelp fails to point you towards the best food, and what would you do differently?
How will this project make money?
Yelp only helps you find big establishments. Searching for a specific dish or item is pretty difficult on Yelp. Reviews based on establishments are too general. Someone could give a 1 star rating to a whole pizza shop because they didn't like the salad or drink they ordered. I don't care how the salads or drinks are when I'm looking for the best pizza. Reviews are usually given towards the service or interior atmosphere, but I, along with the younger generation now only care about how good it is, and not the dozens other factors that yelp takes into account. Establishments ratings can also be bad for the establishments themselves. One bad review can hurt a whole establishment because this one bad review has the power to lower the whole small shop down or out of the recommendation list, and the business might never be seen again by regular yelp users.
Rating individual items can become much more useful to your specific research, and giving a bad review to a singular item will not hurt businesses as much.
Making money is not the main priority, but a solution could be to make a discovery page where establishments could pay to get into, or subtle ads the way Facebook and Instagram do.
Why do you think this is? Is it too hard for Yelp to add, not valuable enough, or they never thought about it? Maybe it adds negative value, in that it would take away from other parts of their business?
I'm not trying to say this is a bad idea just because Yelp hasn't done it. I'm just saying they're not dumb and they have a lot of resources, so it's worth trying to figure out why they haven't done this, if it really is something one person could build as a side project.
If you actually want to compete with Yelp, I don't think making money is optional. You will need a staff to operate a site that large. What you're proposing may even be substantially harder to scale. Instead of millions of business listings, you'd be managing hundreds of millions of menu item listings.
I think it's a pretty cool idea! Now find me the best mexican grilled chicken in San Diego (real example for me)! :)
More seriously:
Most Importantly:
Don't believe the "if you build it, they will come" line. You're in a tough space where you have a chicken and egg: you need content to get users, and you need users to get content.
That means you have to do things that don't scale. That means a lot of manual entries by you (or your friends), getting people to install your app, etc.
I'd recommend a solid website, and maybe some local SEO. Don't hide your data inside of the app - create great pages for each post/category/restaurant/etc and make it easily indexable.
I think you can learn a ton from this, and it'll require a lot of hustle to make it a success. And I don't mean dev hustle, I mean people interaction hustle. So keep those priorities straight!
Thanks for all the feedback! I'll definitely start with small steps and see where it can lead me
Side notes:
I, personally, wouldn't want to start with this project as an Indie Hacker. It's got a lot of challenges. I also tend to take on projects that are too big to have a fighting chance.
You could start with something simpler - like a blog, or a mini version of your app with a simple database of structured data that you'd like to have in your app, and then grow it slowly.
But I want to be encouraging - your first app, whether you're 19 or 32 (like I was when I started IHing), isn't likely to succeed. It's the experience you gain from it that is likely to be the key to success.
So don't spend all your time developing. Build small. Release. Promote. Get feedback. Learn what works and why. And have some fun with it!
Who is your initial target audience? There is no way your side-project can compete with the likes of Yelp, Google Maps or bazillion other food-delivery apps. Typical "cynical majority" customers won't switch to a new startup. At the end of the day, they're hungry and have no time to play :)
In this super-competitive space, you need to be smart about who your "super-connectors" will be. Someone who will advocate for you, somebody "cool" that others want to follow. Talking to those people and finding the right angle/features for them will help you build an MVP. Look for some local area foodie resources, forums, snatch them from reviews on bigger platforms like Yelp or Google Maps. I would also consider building an audience of those people before building a product. (I'm coming from an angle of customers, but there might be food bloggers, restaurant owners, etc.)
That being said, I think there is a lot of room for improvement here. All these food apps are just terrible in so many ways.
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.
It is true that I cannot compete with those big companies, but there might be a way to become unique in a way they couldn't recreate such as becoming more of an app for small and tight communities (such as one's mom's food forum but on an app). There exists a lot of food blogs/forums, but there isn't really any app for this sector that feels more like a social media to share your recommendations with your friends. I do agree that the next step would be to create an audience/community, and a "super connector" could greatly help in starting one. I could probably start with food forums and try to find a food blogger on Instagram that would like the idea and collaborate.
I will implement your feedback and continue to improve the idea.
Thanks again 😉
Here is an idea that popped into my head while reading your reply: a website with recipes that replicate great restaurants in an area. Many people cook fancy from time to time, and this can be a real community, with some kind of leaderboard.
Love the idea! 🔥 Do you already have a landing page or anything to understand the product better?
Yeah you can check it out here -> Website
Love it, I have few other ideas to improve your landing page, let's talk in DM.
A lot of interesting ideas... There's definitely a market for something like this. The biggest challenges will be the design of a winning product and the execution of a winning strategy. There's a small chance that everything is aligned: a good idea, a good product, enough money, enough time, all the skills required for implementation and the right strategy. Good luck!
It's an interesting idea. If you're familiar with Kevin Rose, he had an app at one point in time called Oink, which was similar to what you're describing. It was an awesome app, but shut down after only a short while. It's kind of hard to find screenshots, but it would be worth investigating.
https://www.fastcompany.com/1789065/kevin-roses-oink-app-will-allow-you-rate-anything-anywhere?itm_source=parsely-api
https://www.cultofmac.com/127958/kevin-roses-oink-iphone-app-launches-in-the-app-store/
That's really interesting. I'll definitely do some research on that
foood. always a good product category!
cool idea, I think staying focused is huge, like the 3 things you should eat in every city, that makes it a simple question it is answering...
True, I think staying simple would be easier and better
Great ! Keep going !
Love the idea.
This problem may be way down the road but I can see a lot of restaurant would down vote other competitor so it would be interesting to know how you are going to solve it.
Also, I tend to notice a new habit where I would browse GrabFood(A food ordering and delivery service in Malaysia) just to see what food is available to try. I then would just go to the restaurant and buy it instead of ordering it from the app.
That is what's happening on Yelp a lot, but I believe that giving bad reviews to individual items will not hurt a business as much as giving a bad review to the whole establishment. You also would be able to spot fake reviews more easily. if one person just gives bad reviews to all the menu items at a restaurant you can understand that it is probably is a competitor.