Back in 2009, Chris Stang and Andrew Steinthal were working as music industry executives when they launched The Infatuation as a side project. After a decade of working in the music industry, the two were pretty familiar with the New York restaurant scene and the arcane language behind most restaurant reviews.
In attempts to shake things up, Stang and Steinthal launched The Infatuation as a blog for a new generation of food reviews. The blog has since morphed into the now mega-popular site and app for curated restaurant reviews and guides, and is now dipping its toes into SMS.
Behind The Infatuation’s success is the company’s authentic voice, which comes across more as a conversational human than a brand. Back in May of 2015, the company started toying with the idea of a SMS restaurant recommendation service to complement its website and app. Stang bought an iPhone, connected it to a few computers via iCloud, set up a splash page and published the phone’s number. That day, the company received 3,000 requests to add the service.
Now, the company has turned that early idea into Text Rex, an on-demand SMS service for users looking for a specific type of restaurant within a number of parameters. Though still in beta, Text Rex currently hosts 300 conversations per day, using a stable of 30 representatives to provide restaurant recommendations in real time.
“In comparison to other services, we provide recommendations for specific purposes, which goes beyond good food recommendations in different locations,” said Jesse Rose, Head of Product. “In that sense, we’re building another layer of intelligence to provide this other criteria.”
I decided to test out the service myself.
Within minutes of texting “Rex” I received three recommendations in return. I had planned on sending a follow up question to request places with outdoor seating, but Rex was one step ahead of me.
The service was personal and candid, and operates as an efficient "perfect for" system in the realm of restaurant recommendations. Whether users are in the mood for a place "perfect for" casual Italian dining in Brooklyn, or a corporate lunch in Midtown, or a bar for a birthday party, the service takes away the pain point of spending excessive amounts of time looking for the perfect restaurant.
While Rose said there are talks of the service scaling with artificial intelligence, the company plans to leverage the value of a human network behind Text Rex in the meantime.
Last week, The Infatuation released its new app, which now includes features that allow users to natively make restaurant reservations, order an Uber, and view restaurant guides at a glance.
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