A new San Francisco restaurant review website, Oomea.com, launched yesterday and gives foodies and just about anyone who frequents the many restaurant offerings in San Francisco a chance to not only read about which ones are the best, but to also rate and write about them as well.
Restaurant heaven
If you’re a diner who loves to try regional foods, Oomea.com leads you to restaurants that serve subsets of popular cuisines that sometimes aren’t as well publicized or well known.
Benoit Spolidor, CEO of Oomea, said:
“We're focusing on helping users discover regional cuisines; for instance there's more to Chinese cuisine than Panda Express: there's Hakka, Hunan, Szechuan cuisines just to name a few.”
San Francisco is number one
It may come as no surprise to San Franciscans that The City was ranked as the number one spot for the most restaurants of any city in the nation, relative to its size, by Forbe’s magazine. San Francisco may be small, but it’s packed with eating establishments.
With so many restaurants to choose from, Oomea.com serves as a valuable rating resource for those who like to go out and eat. The more reviews that are written, the better it is for the Oomea community and San Francisco.
The review system
One of the major drawbacks regarding user reviews is the significant amount of “gamed” or faked pieces that are written by the owners or associates of businesses. Oomea.com addresses this issue by using a rating system to determine the reliability and validity of the reviewers.
According to an Oomea press release yesterday:
“Oomea has created a reputation ranking system to prevent reviews from being gamed. The higher your reputation, the higher the impact of your reviews on a restaurant's ratings. A reviewer’s reputation is impacted by how many restaurants they have reviewed and how many followers they have gained.”
The big idea
Oomea.com is essentially a foodie website for foodies. But its reach goes beyond the serious food crowd; it also caters, so to speak, to everyday citizens who want to find a quick and accurate reference guide for the best place to go and the worst places to avoid.
Benoit Spolidor, Joel dos Santos and Aurélien Amsellem are all co-founders of Oomea.com, and Spolidor reminisced about how it all started and said humorously:
“We bounced ideas back and forth and came up with the initial concept. We had a big dinner with close friends to showcase our ideas and we got a lot of constructive feedback. People can be pretty creative after a few glasses of wine!”
Expanding
The co-founders have big plans in growing Oomea.com by developing a downloadable mobile app and expanding their review sites to other cities. Those who want to participate on Oomea can sign up with their Facebook account or email account at Oomea.com.
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