Beli: The Dream App for Every Food Lover

Nowadays, it seems like there’s an app for everything. Want to join a video call? Download an app. Want to buy movie tickets? Download an app. Want to look at a restaurant’s menu? Download an app. I am not a fan of this never-ending need for niche content on my phone, so when I recommend an app, know that it’s worth it, especially if you’re a food lover like me. 

Getting to Know Beli

Beli is a restaurant-focused social media app originally launched in 2021 in NYC. From there, it expanded to over 30,000 cities around the world and has become especially popular among Gen Z. 

The app offers multiple functions: logging and ranking restaurants, befriending other users, and scrolling your feed to see which places they’ve been visiting, creating food guides for specific neighborhoods or countries, searching for and bookmarking recommendations in whichever place tickles your fancy — the options are endless.

When you visit a restaurant, you can add comments, tag any friends who accompanied you, add photos, and then the app will ask you to compare it to other places you’ve been to, eventually awarding it a personal Beli score based on your choices. 

As you log more and more restaurants, they’ll automatically be added to your master list of visited locations and ordered by score. There are even options within the label of visited places: restaurant, coffee and tea, dessert, bar, or bakery so that you don’t have to compare your local ice cream joint to a multi-course meal you had on a reading week trip to Italy. 

What Makes Beli Special

The app will automatically generate guides for the places you visit. For example, I recently unlocked “Top 10 in Madrid” and “American Food in Los Angeles, CA.” As a bonus, one of the more recent updates allows users to register with their school and access a leaderboard with everyone ranked by the number of restaurants they’ve logged. Through this feature, you can join the University of St. Andrews chapter and engage in a little friendly competition with fellow students (bonus points if you can find my account on the leaderboard). 

As someone who lives to eat, this app is an absolute dream, and very few things bring me as much joy as logging my visit at the end of a 10/10 meal. I never forget a restaurant I’ve visited and have a catalogue of recommendations for any place I’ve travelled to, ready for when anyone asks (and my friends know to ask). 

Beli serves as a catalogue not only of food but also of memories, as I’m able to look back on all my trips and remember where I went, what I tried, and what I loved. It also encourages me to explore new neighborhoods, foods, and cultures that I wouldn’t have known about or made an effort to try beforehand, and to support local businesses (many of which are still feeling the echoes of the pandemic). 

Amid a wave of media that seems to foster disconnection, disassociation, and division, Beli emphasizes the communal aspect of food by fostering a wholesome online community among all users. Now more than ever, there is incredible value in an app that focuses on the joy of the simple pleasure of eating and breaking bread with those you love in places all around the world. So if you’re going to download any app this year, make sure it’s Beli. 

• food
• health
• restaurant
• social media
• travel