Show HN: ForkJoy - Making online menus not suck

A team of 4 (now 5) of us have been working on this project for just over a year now. We were able to acquire seed money back in May so that we could work on it full time. We launched in September with a website and iPhone app. We were accepted into an accelerator in Victoria, BC (http://www.acceleratetectoria.com) and since then we have launched in Vancouver, BC, hired a co-op student to develop our Android app and today we just launched our first revenue stream.

The premise behind our site is to help people find the best food in their city, not just the best restaurants. We know there have been different variations of this already, but we are making it more comprehensive. Every item on every menu is searchable. You can find exactly what you are craving and then take a look at photos, ratings and comments. From there you can go and check out what else the restaurant that serves that dish has to offer.

Our first revenue stream is “Time Sensitive Deals”. We are aiming to help restaurants fill their empty seats during off-peak hours (for example, 2-4PM on a Tuesday). Verified restaurant accounts can post a deal instantly to our site and mobile apps. They can set the times it’s valid between, their discount and any rules they might have (not valid on alcohol, 1 per table, etc). This is completely free for them. We make our money by charging our users to buy this deal. For example, a $5 savings would cost our user $0.99. A $10 savings would cost our user $1.99.

We developed ForkJoy in node.js with mongoDB. For search, we use elasticsearch. We will be launching in San Francisco in April with Portland and Seattle following soon after. We also hope to have our Android app in the marketplace close to our SF launch.

We would love to hear your comments, complaints and criticisms.