The app gives tourists an opportunity to taste, experience and explore a city through local food, each bite tastier and more informative than the last.
By SHTERNY ISSEROFFThe BiteMojo app(photo credit: PR)
Foodies in Jerusalem and Berlin can now rejoice. Jerusalem-based start-up BiteMojo launched its much-anticipated application in the capital in November as the first app to provide self-guided culinary tours.The app gives tourists an opportunity to taste, experience and explore a city through local food, each bite tastier and more informative than the last.“The problem with following a tour guide is that it is choosing the places and navigating and communicating for you, forcing you into tourist mode. Essentially, you are having a very passive experience with a group of strangers,” explains Yael Weiss Gadish, who together with her husband, Michael Weiss, co-founded the start-up in February 2016.The couple hand picks local restaurants, cafés and eateries for the app’s various routes, curating a splendidly crafted journey for newcomers to experience a destination using their palate. The app ushers users to six bite stops, ranging from cheese platters to bottles of locally crafted beer, with each taste lending a chapter to the narrative of a city’s history and culture.After its initial launch in Berlin in August, the app now boasts more than 10,000 downloads within a few months, with more than 2,000 Bite Tours already purchased.BiteMojo’s competitive pricing is also part of its appeal, offering tours as low as €25 while creating the opportunity to support small local businesses.Working together with more than 120 vendors in Jerusalem and Berlin, the app provides a steady stream of customers to venues, creating traffic and upsells for local establishments.Weiss is a serial Internet entrepreneur with more than 10 years’ experience in the field of tourism and travel, as well as founder of GoJerusalem.com, a Jerusalem tourism portal he began in 2008.“Mahaneh Yehuda was one of the most popular attractions on the site, and we began to realize that there’s a real need for people to experience destinations with food as the focal point,” he explains.BiteMojo attracts locals as well as tourists, allowing residents to explore and experience their own surrounding neighborhoods. In Jerusalem, the app offers routes through the Old City, the city center and the Mahaneh Yehuda market, with options for vegetarians and children to choose from.The app plans to launch in Tel Aviv by the spring and is working on the development of its new international destinations, such as Rome, London and Barcelona. The founders say their vision for the startup is to change the way people travel. They plan to do this by providing tourists with more local experiences with food at the center, while supporting true-food small businesses.“What we hope to become is one of the top five things people do when they arrive in a city,” says Weiss Gadish.The BiteMojo app is available for download for iOS and Android users on the Apple and Google Play stores.
if(catID != 151){
var cont = `Take Israel home with the new Jerusalem Post Store