Foodspotting is a mobile-first food discovery service built around user-submitted photos of dishes and a simple recommendation algorithm. The app lets people snap pictures of dishes at restaurants and vote up items, creating a positive community-driven catalogue of eats. It monetizes through advertising, sponsored content, and sponsored competitions, and has existing brand partnerships with Zagat, The Travel Channel, Thrillist and Tasting Table. Operating metrics reported around the fundraise include over 550K iPhone downloads, more than 300K unique website visits, and over 275K foods foodspotted. The company recently released an Android app and plans to broaden its audience beyond foodies while shifting product development from pure photo sharing toward “a smart way to get food recommendation, wherever.” With the new funding it plans to expand the team from 7 to 14 to support product and business development and to push toward being a distribution channel for brands and small businesses. Foodspotting operates a photo‑centric discovery service and iPhone app that asks users to take pictures of dishes and geotag them for others to find; the site had about 100,000 distinct food items spotted and the iPhone app had over 120,000 downloads. The company launched in January 2010 and recently released a more robust Foodspotting 2.0 web and iPhone experience, with website and app usage roughly equal. Foodspotting has secured partnerships with Zagat and The Travel Channel to expand visibility and functionality. The team is hiring for business development, marketing, app development, and content roles and is opening an office in San Francisco’s SoMa district. Product plans include building beyond food—company bought sightspotting.com and goodspotting.com—and starting work on an Android app as their first platform beyond iPhone.

Total raised

$4M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Jan 2011