The foodies of this world have been pondering pairings, perusing prix fixe menus (Wood-grilled surgeon? Morimoto cheesecake?) and handpicking the spots for sampling Chicago Restaurant Week since December. With the event finally in full swing until Feb. 12th (read: a long, swanky Valentine’s Day warm up), we here at ChicagoInno give our take on the best bytes of the scene, after all the wine’s been sampled and the frosting licked off the plate. Yes, we’re talking 10 deep dished, Chicago-style foodtech startups. Noms away.
Procrastination has never tasted sweeter with reservation app TableSavvy, built for the spontaneous foodie’s night-of dinner plans. For a $5 surcharge, diners can browse top-rated restaurants’ table availabilities, make a reservation through the app, and automatically secure a 30 percent discount off the final bill. Restaurants hoping to fill last-minute empty tables also have the carrot of being listed in Chicago Magazine’s dining section, by way of their marketing partnership.
Tock is a new restaurant reservation system combatting no-shows with prepaid ticketing, which is deducted from the final bill. Brainchild of Alinea co-founder Nick Kokonas, Tock hopes to change the economics of the restaurant world by challenging OpenTable’s platform and equating fine dining to any other ticketed event, such as a theatre show. Kokonas already has quite a star-studded list of Michelin chefs on board, including Thomas Keller of The French Laundry and Per Se.
Anyone claiming to be a hardcore foodie must follow Samantha Roby’s blog and Instagram account. With over 68.1K followers, the social space has the 411 on the hottest spots, trending dishes, and features the elegant, the greasy, and the overall tasty food adventures of users all over the Windy City. Skim at own risk—they call it “food porn” for a reason.
Within the saturated delivery market, designed for speed and convenience, Foxtrot differentiates as a delivery app for the simple things in life. Quality trumps quantity—everything is housed in a humble brick-and-mortar store in Lincoln Park—so this app is convenience store-free. Flaunting “curated collections” like Made in Chicago and Winter Favorites that include Jeni’s Black Cat Espresso ice cream, Foxtrot also provides the miscellaneous staples of Cards Against Humanity, Haribo, and Koval Bourbon Whiskey.
Food Genius is on a mission “to help everyone love what they eat.” A market research firm born out of IDEO, the real-time data service predicts food trends by using a complex algorithm that tracks more than 16 million restaurant menus. Each menu is disassembled and compared to Food Genius’ encyclopedia of 23,000 ingredients, flavors, and preparation techniques that make up the culinary taxonomy. It helps that the data is presented beautifully for cutting-edge restaurateurs identifying industry trends.
Zero Percent is Chicago’s modern day Robin Hood of sorts. Driven by the USDA statistic that up to 50 percent of all food produced is wasted, Zero Percent is working on a donation platform for businesses to redirect their food into the hands of the one in six Americans with empty stomachs.
Dining out can be an ordeal for the allergy conscious, in which meals become menu dissections and frequently end in frustration, even for the most indefatigable. MyMenu is a comprehensive app that streamlines menus tailored to an individual’s allergies, searchable by all kinds of dietary restrictions including allergies to gluten, dairy, peanut, tree nut, egg, soy, shellfish, fish, and for the vegan or vegetarian.
A one-stop snapshot of local Chicago fare, Dash is a mobile app that makes it easy to view restaurant menus, call an Uber, and split the bill with friends directly from the app. The real-time app, freshly planted at 1871 from New York City, updates the bill as items are ordered and displays the current “vibe” of the restaurant, a gauge of the atmosphere depending on the ebb and flow of guests.
WeDeliver is a friendly middleman that provides on-demand, same-day delivery for small businesses trying to grow and connect with the community. Recent graduates of the TechStars program with backing from AOL founder Steve Case, the online platform allows customers to fill one shopping cart from multiple local establishments and try to “recreate Main Street online.”
Home-cooked meals can be a rarity on late work nights when expediency matters most, but not if you know where to get it. Although it’s based in Chicago, Meal Sharing is creating a global network of gracious dinner hosts in over 450 cities, like an Airbnb for meal sharing. Menus are listed online with a small chip-in fee set by the host, so all you have to do is show up hungry and ready to make some friends.
(Image via Zero Percent, Dash, and We Deliver)
