DUhatch connects enterprising students with mentors from faculty and industry, giving them office space, and facilitating business development to help solve the myriad problems a fledgling venture faces.

Fooala

fooala

Business Contact:

http://www.fooala.com
Moses Lee (moses@fooala.com)

Team Members:  

  • Moses Lee (Pratt '09),
  • Zachary Cancio (Pratt '09),
  • Jack Li (Pratt '10),
  • David E. Chen (Carnegie Mellon '10), 
  • Todd Eichel (Carnegie Mellon '08),
  • Josh Chang (Carnegie Mellon '09), 
  • Zhe Chen (University of New South Wales '09)

Competition in the crowded restaurant market is evolving as the Internet enables restaurant patrons to explore more options and share recommendations with peers. Despite the large number of potential customers actively seeking to patronize restaurants online, very few restaurants are web-enabled.

Fooala's vision is to see the restaurant industry transformed through innovative e-commerce solutions in the context of a unified information and social networking portal. Fooala makes its services available to restaurants of all sizes, empowering them to stay competitive by leveraging social media, analytics, and e-commerce services to build customer loyalty and increase the bottom line.

At the heart of Fooala is a robust transaction network that provides convergence of consumer-facing e-commerce interfaces and restaurant point-of-sale systems. Fooala's own portals and third-party applications access the transaction network through a common interface.

As an example, Fooala's search portal will utilize the common interface to  create a rich social experience built on user-generated content and semantic analysis of syndicated and spidered content. The portal will be a revolutionary step forward from today's business listings-based directories.