Vittles: An iOS App for Recommending Places to Eat

An iOS App for Finding Great Places to Dine

Client

Ryan Wagamman

Industry

Food

Location

USA

Core Technologies

Swift MagicalRecord Foursquare API

Vittles

An iOS App for Finding Great Places to Dine

Vittles provides a list of quality eateries for any occasion and mood, available in one swipe. Search filters along with geolocation technology ensure that users can narrow things down based on distance, price, and hours of operation so they can spend more time dining and less time browsing. Vittles also helps restaurants to fill more tables, broaden their customer base, and generate more revenue.

Challenges

The founder of Vittles, Ryan Wagamman, aimed to change the way people search for eateries by making it easy to find solid recommendations. His goal was to make the app restaurant-oriented to meet the expectations of the target audience.

Ryan also wanted the app to be location-based with no geographical limitations to have a wide market reach.

We had a limited timeframe to develop an app that was as simple as possible to use. Our development team needed to come up with a stable and scalable architecture so the app could be equipped with new functionality in future with no impact on its operability.

In a short time, we needed to:

Build a fully functional location-based app
Apply a robust app architecture, making the app scalable for future updates
Devise an efficient search tool to simplify the user journey and enhance the overall user experience

A Tinder-like interface with card swipes

Eatery cards contain the essential information including working hours and eatery rating

Search and filtering options

We picked the most important criteria for searching eateries, such as proximity, working hours, and price.

Geolocation

Users are able to map their routes and set filters to find the best match

Solutions

Our team provided full-cycle product development from scratch. We took a look at the competitive landscape and examined existing solutions to come up with a forward-looking technology stack, making the app reliable and extendable.

We took the best of the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) design pattern and the Clean Architecture approach to make development efficient and deliver the mobile app with minimum time and expenditure.

To distinguish Vittles from other place searching apps and make this solution unique, we offered swipe functionality. A swipe feature is a great way for users to process information quickly. It also brings a piece of entertainment. Users can leaf through restaurant images and decline places they don’t like.

We took the following steps:

Implemented: fast and easy search including a swipe feature; proximity, price, and availability filters; and a GPS navigator to provide customers with the most accurate results
Used: a combination of MVVM and Clean Architecture patterns to speed up and simplify the development process and ensure faster testing
Set up: geolocation technology to map routes and guide users to restaurants
Incorporated: calling functionality to let users contact an establishment and get additional details right from the app
Integrated: the Vittles app with Foursquare to provide users with the most relevant images and information about places

Technology Stack

Swift
Alamofire
SDWebImage
Core Data
MagicalRecord
Fabric
Crashlytics
Foursquare API
more

Results

Our RubyGarage team helped Ryan Wagamman create his first location-aware mobile app that’s both functional and technologically advanced. Vittles is designed to save time. The app’s map responds to GPS location to provide accurate search results. Large images paired with descriptions help people make better decisions.

The solutions we’ve implemented saved our client from unnecessary expenses and contributed to the overall success of the app.