When looking for new trendy restaurants and bars to try, it’s easy (though not always helpful) to look up Yelp and Google reviews. But a Chicago-built mobile app is working to help narrow down the options by providing influencer and expert-approved establishments that are popular right now.
Skorch provides recommendations on restaurants, bars and cafes to visit based on how popular they are at a given time. Instead of using a star-rating system to help users identify which places people frequent and like, Skorch’s platform works like a heat map. The warmer the color, the buzzier or “hotter” the place is. Establishments become warmer as more users post photos and content about it on the app.
“Whether it’s combing through pages and pages of year’s old, text-heavy reviews on review sites, or skimming lengthy blog articles, or even combing the geo-tags of friends and influencers on social media, it was just too much work to find great places to go,” said Lane Petrauskas, Skorch’s founder and CEO. “But Skorch makes it easy because it doesn’t feature every place under the sun.”
Petrauskas, 32, launched Skorch in May 2017. Since then it’s spread to 12 other cities, including San Francisco, Miami and New York.
To access the app, users create an account and can follow people they know or well-known influencers to see what spots they’ve been to lately.
Petrauskas said Skorch is designed to be selective, meaning that places listed on the app have to be “all-around awesome.” That means offering quality food and drink in an interesting and unique atmosphere. Once on the app, restaurants and bars get categorized as #SkorchWorthy.
Petrauskas would not disclose how many users Skorch has total, but said that the city of Chicago has more than 200 locations on the app, making it one of the most active Skorch markets. The most popular ones inlcude the The Allis at Soho House and Little Goat, both in the West Loop, and Hampton Social in River North. They are typically trendy, Instagram-friendly places with pricier menus.
If an establishment is not on Skorch, users can submit it to the startup for review. If it’s accepted onto the platform, the user that recommended it will be featured for "discovering" it. To help decide which places should be added, Petrauskas said she works with a panel of experts in each city, like food bloggers and other influencers.
“You don’t have to think when you’re trying to find a place to go,” Petrauskas said. “You just pick a place and you know it’s going to be great."
Skorch, which has a team of five, has some seed funding, but Petrauskas wouldn’t disclose how much or who the backers are.
