A startup has chosen Raleigh, London and New York City to launch a customer review app intended as an alternative to platforms like Yelp (NYSE: YELP).
Named Besti, the brand is active in Raleigh with dozens of local restaurants now available for diners to weigh in on. But unlike other rating platforms, users will only be allowed to leave positive comments.
The app is free to download and allows users to leave comments and post pictures and videos of restaurants. Users can also look for new spots by searching a map of local restaurants and reading reviews.
“Negative reviews cost restaurants money. My dream would be for them to just leave Yelp in the dust and close their profiles,” co-founder and Raleigh-based CEO James Lowen said. “You're not going to please everybody, so our view is if you don't like something, don't say anything.”
To bring in initial revenue, the company is offering subscriptions to restaurants for $100 per month. Included in the subscription will be prime space in the app’s search listings, the ability to promote themselves via geofencing and access to tech and new developments from Besti.
Along with Lowen, Besti was founded by Vlad Slavskii and Andreas Jaeger. Slavskii serves as the company’s CTO and Jaeger as COO. The company officially incorporated last year but has been in the works for several years, Lowen said.
The startup has one internal investor and is now looking for outside funding. Besti has six employees. The company will be hiring for a sales position in each of the app’s cities.
So far, about 160 people have downloaded the app, with many of them located in Raleigh. Lowen is shooting to reach 100,000 users in the next 12 months.
The company is also launching an ordering service using technology known as near field communication (NFC). Besti is creating personalized-to-restaurants stickers that establishments can give to customers to take home. When customers want to place an order, they tap their phones to the sticker and an ordering platform pops up.
The service is designed to make an easy and seamless process for regular customers to order from their favorite spots, Lowen said. Third party delivery and ordering services like Uber Eats and Grubhub take up to 30 percent of the revenue from sales place on their platforms. The NFC sticker system will only take 3 percent, Lowen said.
“We're very confident, but if we can get into enough windows with QR codes, that will get enough traffic with people downloading the app and getting excited about what we're doing,” Lowen said.
Lowen wants to eventually add retail shops and service businesses to the app as well.
