We are so excited to launch Picdish today in the App Store. The past few months have been an adventure as we worked non-stop to bring our idea to life. We wanted to take a breather and share with you why we built Picdish and how we went about designing it.
Let’s first think about the food sites and apps that are available in the market. They help us with what to eat, where to eat and even provide a way to get it. And they do so quite well because that’s what they were designed for.
We built Picdish for a completely different purpose. One of the things we remember from our childhood is how we all sat around the dinner table and enjoyed a meal together. Distance and time doesn’t always allow us to do that. And we realize that even the world’s best technology is not going to totally recreate those memories. But it inspired us to build something truly natural that mimics real life as closely as possible.
And we know we have come close because as we were testing with our beta users, ever so often someone would start preparing dinner and share it on Picdish and friends instantly chimed in with curious questions and cooking tips. For July 4th, our friends at the BBQ joined in to capture the whole experience without having to upload, organize and send anything. We followed along as our friends in Boston did the same and Picdish let us share our laughters thousand miles away.
We were fortunate to have a few budding gourmet chefs use the app. As they cooked everything from bouillabaisse to lobsters, Picdish created a visual story that we watched with our mouth watering. And knowing our followers are watching brings out the chef in all of us. One of our users called us to let us know that she is cooking more than ever before as she feels inspired watching her friends do the same. We had a good laugh when we had to tell her that part of the reason why we were cooking so much was because of her. And it wasn’t just cooking that we got to enjoy. One of our users is sharing pictures of her backyard garden and we are waiting anxiously to see her vegetables grow over time. And one of our founders took our breath away when he shared pictures of his anniversary dinner overlooking the Big Sur.
It was very important for us that Picdish is centered around people and an avenue for them to express their passion for food. Our inspiration was to build Picdish as if it’s a your own food channel and you are the star. In this channel, you can share your adventures and discoveries taking users through a journey. So we built user profile to be a place where you showcase your own experiences, social activity and other experiences that you have found and enjoyed. If you are looking for dinner ideas, you can simply share a note and don’t be surprised if you have followers chiming in with ideas.
When you have passionate people in one place, you know there will be a lot of excitement. To make it fun and easy to stay updated, we needed a way to summarize good food and good emotions from all the people you follow. So we created an addictive news feed and a useful way to browse experiences by topic and called it fooding, because it’s about food and feeling :)
As curious foodies ourselves who love ethnic cuisine, we wanted an exciting way to discover great food. And here again we looked at real life and realized that the best way to experience the world is to travel. So we thought to ourselves, if we could peek into Paris and watch someone make a créme brûlée, wouldn’t that be awesome. So we built a way to discover people and gourmet experiences around the world as they happen. We always want to know what’s happening in a restaurant behind the scenes. Our wish is that Picdish will encourage restaurant chefs and restauranteurs to share and give us a peek. It’s nice to know what inspired the chef to make a specific item on the menu. We know it will definitely get us to visit a restaurant.
There are so many people involved around food. We have the farmers, chefs, foodies, bloggers, activists, restauranteurs, brands, vendors and Picdish is really meant to be a level place for everyone. This is where we all get to participate and share what’s important to us as people, as professionals and as the causes and brands we represent. We also recognize food is a basic human need. We strive to build Picdish into an effective platform to raise awareness and bring together people willing to help.
We really built Picdish for you. If you love it, we kindly ask you to spread the word. We are very open to feedback and ideas on how we can make it more enriching for you. We look forward to discovering your experiences on Picdish.
