Thats Interesting

The review team at odinjobs.com showcases up and coming companies and their products. Who knows one of them may be the next Google.

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Mygrub - Make Sure It’s On Your Menu!

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Be it a family dinner with fussy in-laws or that pop-the-question romantic evening, log on to Mygrub for first hand information. A unique and a fantastic site, founded as recently as April 2007 by CEO, Edward Kim. Located in Sunnyvale, CA, it not only helps you track the best restaurants in town but also share your ideas, experiences, and your favorite restaurants. The site is private, though investors are now welcome to grab a bite.

The word from killer is

“At MyGrub you can keep track of all the great restaurants you’ve been to. Think: yelp.com, but more blog-centric. Think: blogger.com, but more restaurant-centric.�

This chic networking site provides you with a choice of restaurants and gives you an in-depth first hand analysis by people who have already visited them. By registering for free, you can blog about a restaurant, map all the restaurants you have been to, see the restaurants that your friends have visited, rate your experiences, and get recommendations for your next time out. You can even put up photos!

Hey critics, Mygrub with the help of Google Maps, shows you all the restaurants you’ve reviewed and with tabs you can filter your views, for example – a list of only those restaurants that made a four star rating.

Mygrub is akin to Yelp.com. And, personally, the preference goes to Mygrub as it makes navigation fun by allowing socializing at the same time.

A comment on Digg says it all:

“MyGrub.net is a website that allows you to keep track of all the restaurants you've been to. It's akin to Yelp.com, but more blog-centric. It's perfect for all those gastronomes who want to diary all their adventures.�

Food For Thought – A Chat With MyGrub

1. What type of programming is MyGrub build on?

MyGrub is built mostly in PHP and uses MySQL for its database. There’s a bit of JavaScript sprinkled around as well to make the site free more AJAX.

2. Where did the inspiration for MyGrub come from?

I used to keep a blog with a few of my friends. Anytime they would go out to eat somewhere nice, they would take pictures of their entrees and post them up on their blog, along with some text talking about how their night was. I soon realized that eating out was such a big part of their lives that they were using their blog to share and keep track of all the great restaurants they’ve been to. As a result, I thought it would be cool and useful to build a website that specialized in allowing people to share their culinary adventures with each other.

3. How can restaurant owners & managers use blogs to generate brick & mortar traffic to their establishments?

I think that eating out at restaurants is as much about the experience as it is the food itself. When I read food blogs, I notice it’s always about the ambiance, the service, the cleanliness of the bathroom, and the presentation of the food. These are the things that entice people to try out a new restaurant. Therefore, it’s important to have great things said about not just the food, but about the overall experience of eating at your restaurant.

4. What are some types of sites that would make good partners for MyGrub?

Individuals with their own food blog would make great partners for MyGrub. These sites already have subscribers who are interested in reading about restaurants, and could help grow the MyGrub community. At the same time, MyGrub could be a great source of new readers for these food blogs.

Other restaurants would also make great partners for MyGrub. I would love to feature some restaurants on MyGrub on a weekly basis.

5. How can restaurant critics benefit from using MyGrub?

Restaurant critics can benefit from using MyGrub because it provides a great way to organize all your information. In your personal MyGrub homepage, you’ll have a Google Map with markers placed on each restaurant you wrote about. You can filter out the restaurants based on your ratings. For example, you can choose to display on your map only those restaurants that you gave 4 stars or above.

Critics can also benefit from the MyGrub community, which is a great place to easily share your thoughts and opinions about a restaurant to like-minded individuals. Your friends can see all of the restaurants you wrote about and filter them accordingly. Of course, if you have an entry you want to keep private, no one will be able to see those.

6. What types of restaurants do you anticipate being reviewed most often?

Since blogging about restaurants is a relatively new concept, people tend to do it only occasionally for that “special� restaurant that they ate at. As a result, I anticipate fancier, upscale restaurants to be reviewed most often. But as food blogging grows in popularity, I expect that people will start blogging about the everyday, neighborhood eateries in the near future.

7. Demographically, who are the ideal users of MyGrub?

The ideal users of MyGrub are young professionals who frequently experiment with new restaurants. This group of people tends to have more free time to spend after work and the income to support frequently eating out. At the same time, they’ve grown up with the internet, so the concept of blogging about restaurants isn’t foreign to them. The process of reading food blogs, then trying out a new restaurant, and finally writing about it is a great cycle that benefits both restaurants and food bloggers.

Mygrub – Delicious Or Not?

We give Mygrub a thumbs up. Feedback from actual customers is probably more helpful than a critics’ review. However, the only word of advice to the site is to make sure that there is always a differentiating factor, given the number of blogs on food, restaurants and what not, springing up by the minute.

Posted by Sally Richardsson       Posted at 05:42AM Jul 06, 2007 by Sally Richardsson   


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