Zest Maps is the AI-powered “spiritual successor to Foursquare.”

As Mario Gomez-Hall walked me through his new restaurant discovery app, Zest Maps, the founder paused at his user leaderboard and highlighted a profile that was topping the charts with over 1,000 visits. He is one of the founders of Foursquare Dennis Crowleywhich helps in beta testing.

“He gave us really helpful feedback,” Gomez-Hall says. “It’s kind of a spiritual successor to Foursquare.” (For those who may not remember, Foursquare was interesting Check location in social app Around 2010 when GPS-enabled apps were first popular.)

The essence of the essence Zest Mapslaunched today for iOS users (No Android support yet), is to automatically record every restaurant and café you visit by tracking your account Credit card swipes And use your data to highlight other food places you might enjoy. Application Artificial intelligence tools Analyze your dining history and design a map of nearby recommendations with photos and descriptions of each place.

Courtesy of enthusiasm

Zest also collects this user data to identify emerging restaurants in your area, as well as new places your friends are visiting. “We only offer the first visit to a place,” he says. “So, if you keep coming back to the same pizzeria, we won’t spam your friends with the same pizzeria.” Visits to chain restaurants are also not highlighted in Zest. The app is more interested in your date night at a Brazilian steakhouse than it is in some McDouble after work.

Gomez-Hall knows that some users will hesitate to link their cards, stressing that the feature is optional and facilitates it ManoushehIt is a popular platform that connects fintech applications to your bank; Services like Google Wallet and Wealthfront use Plaid. “We don’t see your only fans,” he says. “We’re just looking at food and drink.” In addition to analyzing just dining transactions, Zest allows users to control who can see their visits as friends and delete any restaurant visits.

The founder’s profile breaks down his 966 recorded visits into the top five categories: café, bakery, Thai, pizza, and Japanese. His profile shows Delicious Thai Kitchen and Ike’s Love & Sandwiches in Oakland as his go-to places, as well as saved lists of restaurants he’d like to visit, either nearby or while on vacation. When a friend goes to a place you’ve saved, they’ll likely be marked on your Zest Map.

His aspirations with Zest were focused on complementing the apps people are currently using rather than trying to displace established players. “A niche network is probably more valuable, in many ways, because you have a concentrated user base,” he says. “We don’t really want to try to be this app that beats Google and Yelp. We want to be that The thing “On Food Detection and Tracking.”