{"id":5568,"date":"2021-11-16T07:56:38","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T07:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chef.shangeryou.com\/what-happened-to-foodspotting\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T09:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T09:49:17","slug":"what-happened-to-foodspotting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chef.shangeryou.com\/fr\/what-happened-to-foodspotting\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened to Foodspotting.com?"},"content":{"rendered":"\nFoodspotting.com was a website that preceded the introduction of the app known as Foodspotting. The site allowed its users to take pictures of food that they loved. Its developers indicated<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that their \u201cgoal [was] to cover the earth with amazing food sightings.\u201d Users couldn\u2019t leave negative reviews.\n\nFoodspotting received an enormous amount of media attention. Crunchbase.com reports<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that Foodspotting was named the Hot Trend of 2010 by iTunes and one of the 50 Best Websites of 2010 by Time Magazine.\n\nHowever, Foodspotting.com and the app are no longer available. What could have happened to the website and app that once promised users they would help them decide \u201cwhat to eat, not just where\u201d? We took some time to find out by tracking the history of Foodspotting, its founders, how it was funded, and its purchase by OpenTable.\n\n\n

The History of Foodspotting.com <\/span><\/h3>\n\n\nAlexa Andrzejewski launched<\/u><\/a>\u00a0Foodspotting.com in 2009. An archived Foodspotting.com page reports<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that Andrzejewski had previously worked as a UX designer at the San Francisco consulting company Adaptive Path, where she helped create great user experiences for other companies and startups.\n\nAndrzejewski set out to create her own UX-driven startup by building a crowd-sourced, location-based food guide. Her profile<\/u><\/a>\u00a0on Crunchbase.com shows that she created the app after realizing that there were virtually no easy ways to find and rate specific dishes. Most of the apps at the time focused on reviewing restaurants.\n\n\n

Enter Soraya Darabi<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\nAndrzejewski knew that for a more impactful liftoff, her venture would need some publicity. She brought in Soraya Darabi<\/u><\/a>, a tech-savvy marketer with a solid personal brand, as a partner. Darabi, who was retroactively named as a cofounder, had little input in the product and day-to-day operations.\n\nDarabi got down to work immediately, turning her social media cannons (including more than 429,000<\/u><\/a>\u00a0Twitter followers at the time) on Foodspotting and evangelizing it through media interviews<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and word of mouth.\n\n\n

How Foodspotting Worked<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\nIn January 2010, Foodspotting.com launched the first version of what would become a popular mobile app among food lovers. Central to the app were Foodspotters<\/u><\/a>, who would search their neighborhoods or places they visited for particular dishes or types of dishes they craved or wanted to try out.\n\nFoodspotters would then rate the dishes and share their experiences with the rest of the community by uploading a photo and simply saying, \u201cI loved it!\u201d The app was geared towards positive<\/u><\/a>\u00a0reviews, and no negative comments or ratings were allowed; \u201cAfter all, even a \u2018one-star restaurant\u2019 can have one amazing dish.\u201d\n\nTo increase engagement and make the experience more fun, users could become dish experts<\/u><\/a>\u00a0when they successfully spot five or more foods in one category. Posting good quality contributions to the Foodspotting community also earned users reputation points.\n\nEven though the food spotting app was established before Instagram, subsequent versions of the app would allow<\/u><\/a>\u00a0users to \u201cShare great dishes \u2026 by tagging food photos #foodspotting on Instagram.\u201d\n\n\n

Raising Capital<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\nYour Content Goes HereIn August 2010, seven months after the app launched on the App Store, Techcrunch.com reported<\/a>\u00a0that Foodspotting users from all over the world had spotted and uploaded around 100,000 different dishes. The app had been downloaded more than 120,000 times.\n\nTechcrunch.com reported<\/a>\u00a0that Foodspotting had also secured a $750,000 seed round of funding from the group of investors, led by Aydin Senkut\u2019s Felicis Ventures, Dave McClure\u2019s 500 Startups, and Shana Fisher\u2019s High Line Venture Partners. Individual angel investors included Steve Lee, the product manager of Google Latitude at the time, and Derek Dukes of Dipity.\n\nIn an interview published in May 2011, Darabi said that the Foodspotting app had been downloaded more than 600,000<\/a>\u00a0times on the Apple App Store.\n\nBy November 2011, Foodspotting had raised a further $3 million<\/a>\u00a0in Series A funding. According to Fastcompany.com, the site had grown to nearly 300,000<\/a>\u00a0monthly visitors, and more than 275,000 food recommendations had been made.\n\n\n

Acquisition by OpenTable<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\nOne thing you can be sure of is that a successful application will always attract the attention of those with deep pockets. At the end of January 2013, OpenTable, an online restaurant reservation platform, announced<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that it had set out to acquire Foodspotting for a cash price of $10 million.\n\nOpenTable indicated<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that it would be leveraging Foodspotting\u2019s unique expertise to \u201cenrich the OpenTable experience for diners and restaurants in new and exciting ways.\u201d\n\nIn an official statement<\/u><\/a>\u00a0announcing the acquisition, Matt Roberts, CEO of OpenTable, indicated that Foodspotting would become part of the company\u2019s family of products and that Andrzejewski and her team would help \u201cdevelop more enhancements to OpenTable.\u201d\n\nhttps:\/\/www.chefstemp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/creativecommons.jpg\n

Behind the Success<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\nAndrzejewski\u2019s Foodspotting idea could not have come at a better time. When it was launched, content such as food photos quickly became popular on social media due to the universal relevance and how easy it was to produce.\n\nThe attractiveness of food photos and sharing gave rise to such terms as ‘Foodstagramming,’<\/u><\/a>\u00a0which became popular ritualistic behaviors where users shared aesthetic snapshots of their meals with their friends and other online communities.\n\nBy January 2013, Andrzejewski confirmed on Twitter that the Foodspotting app had been downloaded 4 million<\/u><\/a>\u00a0times.\n\nSpeaking to Fast Company in late 2013, Andrzejewski outlined<\/u><\/a>\u00a0the secret sauce in Foodspotting\u2019s success. She indicated that the app\u2019s success was predicated on its ability to \u201cextend beyond the screen.\u201d\n\nAndrzejewski added<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that Foodspotting helped improve real-world experiences for millions of users, which she believed would not be achievable without mobile tools.\n\nResearch studies<\/u><\/a>\u00a0had already validated the fact that taking pictures positively affected the enjoyment of experiences. Andrzejewski said that Foodspotting was essentially reimagining an improved dining experience through mobile tools.\n\nhttps:\/\/www.chefstemp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Depositphotos.jpg\n

What Then Happened to Foodspotting.com?<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\nIn April 2018, OpenTable announced through Foodspotting\u2019s Facebook page<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that it would \u201cdiscontinue the Foodspotting app and website\u201d in early May of the same year.\n\nAndrzejewski herself once indicated in a New York Times article back in 2011 that she was still uncertain how the company would make profits. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she said<\/u><\/a>\u00a0when asked how the app would make a profit, indicating that the app was still growing at that point in time.\n\nCould it be that the new owners of the app discovered that it wasn\u2019t making a profit? This would be strange because the app seemed successful enough that you would expect it to make money for whoever owned it.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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