App happy

When sisters Karen Filler and Cindy Vann visited California earlier this year, they fed their appetites with apps. For every meal in the Golden State, they defaulted to Filler’s iPad to choose their next place to eat.

“I used apps every day, multiple times a day, to find good restaurants,” Filler said. “We were often in relatively small towns, and it would have been hard to find good restaurants without it.”

Yelp, Filler’s app of choice, is one of hundreds of food-related apps available to users of iPods, iPads and android-specific phones. Urban Spoon, All Recipes Dinner Spinner and Zagat are others that offer food-related advice, whether you’re eating in or dining out.

Want a reservation? There’s an app for that. Need directions to a restaurant, or want to know how many calories remain on your diet for the day? The answer’s at your fingertips.

“I think it’s the way everything’s going. Apps can do pretty much everything,” said Zach Turner, mobile manager at the Hamilton Place Best Buy. “You can find local restaurants and reviews, too. And most can help you navigate yourself to the restaurants. It’s really cool. There are so many different options using android-specific iPhones and iPads.”

Floral designer Jeffrey Dendy of Chattanooga said he uses Urban Spoon to find restaurant ratings and make reservations.

“I also love their Talk of the Town section that tells about which restaurants people are talking about,” he said.

Filler said Yelp gave directions to the restaurant of choice, as well as ratings and reviews — a big help in an unfamiliar town, she said.

“The ratings were pretty accurate,” Filler added. “Particularly if a lot of people have reviewed the restaurant. If there’s only one review, it won’t be as accurate.”

Filler also uses restaurant-related apps at home, too. One of her favorites is Local Eats.

“I like to go out to eat, and even though I know the restaurants in town, it’s still fun to see the ratings,” said the Harrison resident.

Turner said he thinks we’ll see many more apps in the future, especially food-related ones.

“There are so many opinions when it comes to food, and everyone has to eat and likes good food, so there will probably be many more food apps,” he said. “It’s huge for the future of the restaurant industry, particularly the smaller mom-and-pop restaurants that are just living off word-of-mouth reputations.”