Chicago Tech Startup: Restaurant Bucket List
Restaurant Bucket List is a Facebook Timeline app that lets users keep track of and share all of the restaurants that are “on their list” to try, and those they’ve already dined at, with their Facebook friends. Founder and CEO Ben Reid recently answered TINC Magazine’s questions about Restaurant Bucket List.
TINC: Are there any costs associated with Restaurant Bucket List for users?
BR: Nope, not now or ever.
TINC: Who developed this app?
BR: Two developers who work closely with me named Kris Murata and Brandon Weiss. The designer is Paul Russo.
TINC: How does Restaurant Bucket List relate to Ben Reid’s other business venture, Foodie Registry?
BR: Foodie Registry is a wedding registry for restaurant gift certificates. At a basic level though, it’s a website (application) that helps people share the restaurants they want to try with friends, and that information has both social value (“lets go together!”) and commercial value (“I’ll get them a gift certificate for this place for their wedding gift!”). We started seeing a lot of non-wedding couples with interest in the social aspects of Foodie Registry, but when you call something a “registry,” the implication is that it’s all about giving gifts, so people were hesitant to use it for non-wedding reasons for fear of sending the wrong message. Restaurant Bucket List is the solution we developed to try to capture some of the cool social exchange we see going on with Foodie Registry, but to make it easy and accessible for everyone.
TINC: How can the restaurant seat Restaurant Bucket List users if they don’t have a final guest tally?
BR: At this time Restaurant Bucket List cannot be used to make reservations or for restaurants to seat or interact with guests. In this version 1.0 the only focus is to see if a simple structured experience for people to interact with friends around the restaurants they all want to try has value for the user.
TINC: What’s your revenue model?
BR: At this time Restaurant Bucket List is focused on user experience and not monetization, but if it gets enough traction we believe a monetization strategy around the “interest graph,” or in our case “intention graph” that emerges makes sense. In plain terms, users could potentially see personalized, highly targeted marketing messages from the restaurants they have on their bucket list in an effort to get the user to come in and “check it off” their list.
TINC: How does Restaurant Bucket List reach out to potential users?
BR: As an Open Graph (Timeline) app, Facebook automatically shares when a user “Bucket Lists” or “Visits” a restaurant with that users friends, through ticker stories, newsfeed stories, and timeline stories. Currently Restaurant Bucket List simply grows organically as people see their friends’ bucket listing restaurants and click on the story to try the app themselves.
TINC: What’s next for Restaurant Bucket List? What are you working on?
BR: The app itself is very basic at this point…perhaps too simple. We’re working on developing features that result in more stickiness and give people a reason to keep coming back to the app after they initially make their Bucket List and Visited list. We’re working on a Newsfeed feature that summarizes all the recent activity from your friends on Restaurant Bucket List, and in the near future envision giving users unique statistics about the restaurant choices of their specific network of friends. For example, the #1 most bucket list restaurant of your friends, the top 5 places that most of your friends have already visited, etc. We think that sort of personalized info about the dining habits and intentions of your friends is pretty cool since it will be different for each user.
The following information about Restaurant Bucket List comes from the Chicago Startup Catalog:
Funding Level: Pre-A Series
Industry Type: Food, Bars, & Restaurants; Social Media
Employment Size: 2
Founders: Ben Reid is founder and CEO
Founding Date: November 2011
