During a recent family vacation in Boston and New York City, my mother was perplexed by my obsession with photographing every plate of food I had during the trip. I did this not just to remember the delicious meals I enjoyed (clam chowder was the best of all), but also to participate in the location-based food-porn fun that is Foodspotting. The service, which collects photos of food its users take while eating out, has announced today its very first brand partnership with Zagat Survey to share photos and restaurant guides across both sites.
Zagat is no stranger to location-based marketing. In February of this year, the popular restaurant rating site teamed up with Foursquare to provide special “Foodie” badges as well as on-the-fly reviews to users of the mobile location-based service. Earlier this week, we noted that Zagat has the largest brand presence on Foursquare with over 51,000 friends.
With this new partnership, Zagat’s restaurant guides will be enhanced by syndicating images taken by Foodspotting’s community, and the latter will benefit from specially curated Zagat guides. The guides, like the others on the service, provide a list of dishes to try in a certain area or under a certain genre. Foodspotting users can unlock a unique Zagat badge by spotting all of the various items in the sponsored guides.
“In our most recent New York City survey, 85% of respondents said that they look at a restaurant’s menu before going,” says Nina Zagat, co-founder of Zagat Survey. “By providing users with Foodspotting photos on their mobile devices, we’ll be giving them a chance to actually see the food as well. “
Significant partnerships like these are further evidence of the growing popularity of location-based marketing. Zagat is a clear leader in this space now with a large Foursquare following and a new partnership that lets them leverage Foodspotting’s growing collection of images. No terms were released, but it seems that this partnership should go a long way for both brands.
