2026 · Double-a11y
Bun-Bun: eat what your friends actually trust
A food discovery app that shows only what your real friends have eaten and approved, right where you are standing. Designed, built and shipped to both app stores.
My Role
Designer and builder
Defined the trust-first idea, who it is for, and the pay-once business model with a generous free tier.
Designed every flow, from stamping a dish and the Near Me feed to the parser, buddies and profile screens.
Created the Bun-Bun mascot, the warm golden palette, the Manrope type choice and a tone that sounds like a friend, not a system.
Built and shipped the product myself with Claude Code: a PWA wrapped in Capacitor, live on the App Store and Google Play.
Designed three AI features: the Reel Parser, which turns food videos into dishes and places on a map; food photo validation; and objectionable content flagging.
Took the app from a browser prototype to real users, and then to both app stores.
Problem Statement
Has someone I know eaten here?
"Eat what your friends actually trust, not what a stranger was paid to say."
— Bun-Bun's core promise
You're in a new city. You open a maps app and see 4.2 stars, but you don't know if those reviewers are like you, whether the restaurant paid for them, or whether the food blogger was sponsored. All you really want to know is whether someone you know has eaten there and loved it.
Food discovery today has three problems. Reviews can be faked by strangers, bots and paid opinions. Influencers recommend for money, not because the food is good. And generic suggestions don't know your taste, only your clicks.
The best recommendations already exist in WhatsApp groups, "you have to try this" texts and Instagram DMs. They are just scattered, and impossible to find when you are standing outside the restaurant.
Outcome
What shipped
Live on the App Store and Google Play, built from a single web codebase
A Reel Parser that turns any shared food video into dishes and places on a map
No recommended or sponsored public profiles. No likes, no ratings. Public profiles appear only when users add them themselves
Proximity nudges that surface a friend's dish or a wishlist item when you are nearby
Bun-Bun Picks, a curated fallback so a new city never opens to an empty feed
Pay once, keep forever pricing with a generous free tier and no subscriptions
Execution
How it came together
Who it is for
People aged roughly 22 to 40 who love eating out, travel within their country or abroad, and are tired of wading through 500 reviews to find one honest take.
They have a tight group of friends who share food photos on WhatsApp, and they have had the experience of asking a friend "what should I eat there?" and getting the perfect answer. They trust that friend over any review platform on the internet.
The core loop: stamp, see, go
The whole product rests on three simple actions. No posting, no sharing, no algorithm.
Stamp it
Eat something amazing, take a photo, drop a pin on the restaurant, add an optional note and hit Stamp it ✓
A photo is required: no photo, no stamp
Friends see the stamp automatically, the next time they are near that restaurant
Near Me feed
A feed of dish cards for everything your friends have stamped near where you are standing
Badges show whose list a dish is on: golden for yours, green for a friend's, grey for your wishlist
Live signals such as Closes in 40 min, Closed and Accessible, with Meals, Snacks and Desserts filters
Dish detail
A full-screen photo, the restaurant and its distance, and the note the stamper left
A big Take me there button that opens directions in one tap
How many of your buddies also stamped it, shown as a number rather than names
The Reel Parser
People bookmark food reels and never find them again, because bookmarks can't be searched by location. The Reel Parser fixes that.
How it works
See a food reel or video, tap Share and send it to Bun-Bun
The AI reads the video, captions and transcript, and extracts dish names, restaurants and locations
Everything is pinned on the map; you review the results, confirm what is right, and it lands in your Wishlist
While the AI works, a countdown shows fun food facts to keep the 15–30 second wait light
Every food video you watch becomes a location-aware wishlist item, and Bun-Bun tells you when you are near it.
A private trust circle, not a social network
Bun-Bun deliberately leaves out everything that makes social apps noisy. There are no recommended or sponsored public profiles, no likes and no ratings. Public profiles are being introduced, but they only show up when you choose to add them yourself.
Buddies
Connections are mutual: both people have to agree
Invite a friend by email; when they sign up you are connected automatically, with no extra steps
Remove a buddy and their recommendations disappear from your feed instantly, both ways
Muffins
When a friend eats a dish you stamped and stamps it too, you earn a Muffin
It is a reputation for genuine food influence in your real circle, not points for doing chores
Muffins can be spent as discounts on anything in the app
Visual identity and voice
The brief for the look was a café you'd actually want to sit in: warm, like receiving a handwritten note. Not sterile tech, not startup blue, not aggressive dark mode. Bun-Bun the bread bun is the mascot, and Manrope sets a friendly, rounded tone.
The design follows the product philosophy: no star ratings, no leaderboards and no rankings. Trust comes from who, not from how many.
Tone of voice
Like a text from a close friend who happens to have great taste in food
Stamp it ✓, not "Add Review"; your buddies, not "your network"
Friends always have first names: "Priya's list", never "User#3847"
Notifications read like messages: "You're 300m from that ramen place Arjun saved — time to try it?"
Solving the empty city
A friends-only feed has an obvious weak spot: open the app in a city none of your friends have visited and you would see nothing. Two features bridge that gap without breaking the trust model.
Bun-Bun Picks
A founder-curated list of verified dishes in major cities
Shown only when friend coverage in your radius is zero
Always labelled Trusted by Bun-Bun, never disguised as a friend's recommendation
Friends of friends
Dish details quietly show how many second-degree connections also love a dish
Add them as buddies to unlock their recommendations, or open up friends-of-friends for 30 days when planning a trip
Closing Thoughts
Not a new way to discover food.
Bun-Bun is a way to finally use the discovery that was already happening between you and your friends. It collects those scattered recommendations, pins them to a map, and brings them up exactly when you are standing near them.
Bun-Bun is live. Try it, or read how it was built in a five-part series.