food flock

mission statement

Our mission is to help couples discover great dining experiences at local restaurants without “where do you want to go?” ever being a question. In eliminating this classic argument over where to eat, we set out to bring novelty to relationships through food and the dining experience, and ultimately bring people together.

product

The Food Flock app combines an engaging, intuitive card deck user interface with local restaurant information to help couples make better decisions on where to eat. Using Grubhub’s low latency API, Food Flock is able to pull robust information about nearby restaurants, including cuisine, menus, photos, reviews and ratings. This data is used to construct a “card” featuring all of the relevant data. Couples (2+ people) can swipe through a collection of these cards, until all individuals swipe right, or “match”, on the same restaurant.

the restaurant market opportunity

Food is an essential, social and enjoyable aspect of everyday life. However, many people do not have the time to cook at home and often get bored with their unvaried selection of meals. Restaurants offer both a fast and convenient dining experience and an exciting reprieve to the tedium of home cooking. With the anticipated re-opening of the United States economy, combined with the rapid increase in vaccine distribution, market research shows a large increase in couples looking to discover and try new foods.

market research

In a survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Panera Bread consisting of over 2,000 Americans showed that “the most contentious subject between partners is actually what to have for dinner”. Furthermore, the fight about food is what 37% of couples said they experienced the most compared to any other fight. This suggests that couples would be interested in using an app that mitigates fighting.

In addition to the frequency at which fights occur over food, the OnePoll study also found that when they do occur they are long and onerous. The study found that discussions over where to eat typically last about 17 minutes. This decision time is significantly longer than the average 2 minutes and 46 seconds determined in early alpha testing of Food Flock. Thus, using our app saves consumers a tremendous amount of time.

As the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end, market research suggests dining out and food ordering services are going to be in high demand. One study performed by researchers at Oracle found that 65% of Generation Z consumers and 66% of Millennial consumers plan to dine out immediately or soon after America relaxes their covid restrictions. This shows that our app will be entering the market at an excellent time; many young consumers will be interested in dining out at exactly the same time our app plans to be released. Another finding from the same study also found that “40% of all consumers prefer the option to view menus and place orders from their devices.” This indicates that there will be a large amount of consumer interest in apps similar to ours which centralize and streamline the menu data viewing process.

swot analysis

strengths

• Our app will aggregate in depth restaurant data like price range, stars, hours, cuisine, and restaurant data items in our gamified swiping app.
• Our app will feature significantly more data in a more intuitive, well-designed format than our competitors
• Swiping is a well-known app interface for our target market and will expose users to a large range of restaurants in an effective manner.

weakness

• “Tinder” is copyrighted and we could potentially run into branding issues using that name. However, starting out with the name “Chicken Tinder” is part of our branding plan to grab the attention of the demographic of 18 - 26 year olds. We are prepared to change the name if requested.
• Currently there is little awareness about our app because we have not started advertising efforts yet

opportunities

• With the current vaccine distribution rate and the economy reopening in the coming months, market research predicts a large increase in people going out to restaurants. We plan on leveraging this by timing our app release when the United States officially reopens.

threats

• Similar apps exist on the Apple App Store, but they suffer from a lack of valuable restaurant information (i.e. menu data), effective UI design, and distinctive branding.