Why NYU students love the Beli app and why you should too.
This app for ranking restaurants has become very popular in the New York City food scene, and NYU students are excitedly using it.
Beli has become very popular in New York City’s foodie scene and among NYU students since it was launched in July 2021. This app lets users log and rate restaurants they have visited and provides personalized recommendations based on their preferences. It also functions as a social media platform, allowing users to follow friends and read public reviews.
Judy Thelen and Eliot Frost, the co-founders of Beli, started working on the project in 2019. However, due to the pandemic, they had to delay the launch by two years. In an interview with WSN, Thelen and Frost shared the story behind the creation of Beli.
Users can personalize their restaurant entries by adding written notes, selecting favorite dishes, attaching pictures, and choosing category tags. Instead of a single rating from all Beli users, the app offers two scores for each restaurant: a “Rec Score” which predicts how much you will like the restaurant, and a “Friend Score” which shows what your friends on the app think of the restaurant.
Beli has features for individuals and for community engagement. One of these features is the Dining Hall of Fame competition, which aims to find the “foodiest university” among 187 American universities. Students can earn points for their school by ranking restaurants and referring new members. NYU is now in third place, having lost its second-place standing to Rice University. The University of Chicago is currently in first place.
