So Yelp told you to have dinner at Girl & the Goat because it’s one of the top 10 best restaurants in Chicago. But now that you’ve landed a table at the highly-coveted eatery, you’re not sure what exactly to order.
You could scour more online reviews for any information on which dishes are the best, or you could download Simmer, a new Chicago startup focused on reviewing individual dishes and menu items, not just restaurants.
Simmer currently operates in Chicago and New York, but is launching in Washington, D.C. this month. The startup was founded in 2018 by Vaibhav Verma and Richard Wu, both of which were honorees on Chicago Inno’s 2019 25 Under 25 list.
Simmer has thousands of users and about 5,000 restaurants on its platform, with 1,500 of them being in Chicago, the founders said. Popular Chicago restaurants that have dishes listed on Simmer include Girl & the Goat, Au Cheval, Maple & Ash and even Taco Bell.
Unlike other review sites, like Yelp or Google Reviews, Simmer doesn’t rely on individuals to specifically review dishes on its app. Using machine-learning and sentiment analysis, Simmer can search the web for review-like feedback on menu items. Simmer pulls “sentiments” from social media posts, traditional review sites and food publications like Eater.
“Ten years ago, we would have needed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to use the app and review it,” Wu said. “But in this day and age, even on Instagram, there’s just so much dish-level insight that people are leaving.”
Based on the kind of online feedback and data Simmer collects, it can provide comprehensive ratings on dishes to users using a five-star scale. Simmer also lists the location of the dish’s restaurant home and how much it costs.
Simmer’s approach to food reviews could change how people choose restaurants, especially when they’re craving something specific. Instead of someone wanting a California sushi roll and searching for the best sushi restaurants nearby, they could search for simply the best California roll nearby on Simmer.
“Some hole-in-the walls that have really poor reviews on Yelp have a 4.5 or 4.7 star rating on Simmer because we’re just talking about the food,” Wu said.
To build a clear revenue stream, the founders said they are tapping into affiliate revenue by working with food delivery companies, like Grubhub or Uber Eats. For example, the feature allows users to see the top-reviewed dishes across all delivery apps, and once they’ve chosen a dish they want, Simmer will link them directly to the delivery service that offers it.
Over the summer, Simmer was in the Y Combinator seed accelerator program in Mountain View, Calif., that invests $150,000 into each company in its bi-annual cohorts. Launched in March 2005, YC’s alums include tech giants like Dropbox, Airbnb and Reddit.
Looking ahead, Simmer's founders said they are working to add a feature that allows the app to stay up-to-date with changing and seasonal menu items. The founders are also looking for investors to participate in its $1 million seed round.
“Whether it’s for delivery or whether it’s for an in-restaurant experience, [Simmer] is putting the food first,” Wu said. “And when you put food first, you put what matters first.”
