BUILDING THE BEST
FOOD PLATFORM
Best Dish — 2014
PRODUCT DEFINITION, PRODUCT STRATEGY, CONTENT PRODUCTION, COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
A regular office lunchtime debate spilled into our team chat one day, and a new product was formed. What if there was a way to democratically decide the best dishes in each town? Ranking a great slice or specialty pizza is easy enough, but how would you know about the French restaurant that consistently had the best burger in town?
Rob and I got to work; the look had to be bold and the platform had to be simple. I fought hard to make something I'd never seen before, a mobile web experience with large buttons and bold graphics that felt more like a game than a website. It attempted to recapture the fun of Foursquare that competing with Yelp had long since drained away.
Mobelux was supportive of the idea and gave us budgets for MVP product, an early batch of promotional items (my DIY button-maker came in handy) and some on-the-ground marketing at SXSW and Taste Talks in Brooklyn. A supportive community in Richmond provided us a few dozen early "backers" who paid $20 a piece to support the idea and put their face on our site, and a few local businesses and restaurants who gave us a few hundred dollars to prove that people would pay for advertising space.
Best Dish launched with one dish (pizza, naturally) in Richmond, and expanded to a full 8 dishes. We then started adding cities (DC, NYC, Austin) and dishes as we went. What we had in design, a killer platform, and chutzpah, we lacked in marketing support. The idea failed to gain traction outside our regional hub, and sadly we had to shutter the site, but not before gaining the attention of one important group; The Infatuation. The termination of Best Dish led to a long-term partnership with Mobelux, the best marketing the company could have asked for.
Recognition
