It used to be that if you wanted to pick a place for eating out, a fair amount of planning had to be factored in. You had to find a connection, check Yelp or Zagat, sift through the results and try to find the right inspiration among hundreds of reviews. Let’s even pretend that all this excruciating research payed back and it helped make all your dinners-out a fantastic, or rather a predictably fantastic experience.

Still there are 4 main issues:
1) The serendipity of dining out is totally lost.
2) Bias. Reviews condition our perception of a place. If we read complaints about bad service, we already get to that place with maximum adrenaline in our veins ready to fight against the incompetent waiter.
3) Reviews suck, let’s confess it. Who cares if your anniversary dinner was ruined by an imperfect ragu’…or a noisy ambience…Verbose is the best adjective that comes to mind for 90% of them.
4) Reliability-Enough said.

So here comes Foodspotting. What it does is as simple as disruptive: it enables users to snap pictures of a dish they’re enjoying, and broadcast it to the food-lovers community. And that’s it!

Why is it disruptive?
-It is all and only about food.
-It restricts your review to that single dish,the rest of the menu, the service, the decor might be horrible or fantastic: the serendipity is totally preserved.
-It is as truthful as a picture can be, very little room for fabrication and/or personal biases.
-Also, as with all new mobile service poised for success, FoodSpotting will come with a social reward system. Foodspotting users can become the “Champion” of their favorite dishes,compete to collect dishes through scavenger hunts and a food passport system. Trust will be gained through your participation inside the FoodSpotting eco-system.

Founded by designer Alexa Andrzejewski and Ted Grubb, FoodSpotting is an early stage startup with the Iphone app still under development.
Regardless of its success, FoodSpotting is surely paving the way for a new wave of user-generated reviews that are driven by image-discovery and vetted within communities of like-minded users.

Not yet convinced? Put your Goggles on and preview the future.