ARKANSAS, USA — A new app is giving food connoisseurs a unique way to navigate the growing restaurant scene in Northwest Arkansas.
The OnlyPlates app allows users to rate individual plates of food rather than entire restaurants and browse through other users’ ratings to explore new dishes.
The app’s CEO and founder, Nathan Allen, said that approach brings something new to the table, providing more in-depth information about meals that reviews on other platforms don’t cover.
“It's about being able to get more information from the rating than just, ‘this is a place that has burgers and stuff, and it might be good,’” Allen said. “Very anecdotal information comes from a review like that. It's hard to really map it and rank it against other reviews out there.”
By organizing the data by plate, rather than by restaurant, Allen said the app can build an algorithm for future recommendations.
“We can know more about the user, like what they actually like,” Allen said. “So if you five-star rate a particular burger that has blue cheese on it, we know a whole bunch of things about you, suddenly, versus ‘I just like Hugo’s.’”
Allen said he hopes the app encourages people to branch out and enjoy the up-and-coming local food scene.
"I hope that this can show them a different angle to their area and help them find something new that they haven't really experienced before [and] help them dive deeper into a menu than they have before," Allen said.
Because the app is still in the beta stage, it can currently only be downloaded from OnlyPlates’ website. On August 5, it will launch in the App Store.
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