Frequently asked questions

What is FoodFavs?

FoodFavs is a personal food diary. You log dishes at restaurants with a rating, a sentiment (loved it / okay / never again), and your own notes. Next time you visit that restaurant, every dish you've ever ordered is right there — so you know what to reorder and what to skip.

How is FoodFavs different from Yelp or Google Reviews?

Yelp and Google rate the whole restaurant. FoodFavs rates the dishes. "This place is 4 stars" doesn't help you decide what to order. "I had the bacon burger here three months ago and loved it" does.

Plus FoodFavs is private by default — your dish history is for you, not a public review feed.

Is FoodFavs free?

Yes — the core food diary (logging dishes, ratings, restaurant notes, randomizer) is free to use, supported by lightweight banner ads.

FoodFavs Pro unlocks advanced features like AI menu import and family member tracking. The free tier will always be free.

What does Pro unlock?

Pro features include:

• AI menu import — snap a photo of a physical menu and FoodFavs reads every dish into a tappable list
• Pick from the menu in Add Dish — log dishes from real menu items, no typing
• Family member tracking — add the kids and partner, log dishes on their behalf
• Ad-free experience

$2.99/month or $19.99/year (save 44%). Includes a 7-day free trial. The first 100 annual subscribers get an introductory 50% off.

Is FoodFavs on iPhone and Android?

Yes — both. We build for iOS and Android from a single codebase, so feature parity is the default.

Available now — free on the App Store for iPhone and Google Play for Android.

Why are there ads in FoodFavs?

Banner ads on the free tier help cover the cost of running the AI menu parsing for paid users. They're small, non-intrusive, and you can remove them by upgrading to Pro.

We don't run interstitial ads (the full-screen kind that interrupt you). Just banners at the bottom.

How does menu import work?

Tap "Import Menu" on a restaurant page, then either take a photo of the physical menu, upload a PDF, or paste a URL.

We use AI (Anthropic's Claude) to read the menu image and extract every dish, with its category and price. You review the list and tap Save — the menu is now ready for one-tap dish logging.

Menu import is a paid (Pro) feature, because each AI parse has a real cost (a few cents per menu).

My favorite restaurant isn't in FoodFavs

FoodFavs uses Google Places to find restaurants. If a restaurant exists on Google Maps, you can search for it by name.

If you can't find it: it might be too new (Google takes time to index new places), might use a different name on Google, or might be temporarily closed. Try searching by address or street intersection.

Can I track family members' favorites?

Yes — Pro users can add family members (kids, partner) with emoji avatars and nicknames. When you log a dish, you can mark it as logged on behalf of a family member instead of yourself.

Family members live on your account — they don't have their own logins. This makes it easy to track everyone's favorites without managing multiple accounts.

Is my dish history private?

Yes. Your dish logs, restaurant notes, and family members are visible to you only. We don't share, sell, or analyze them beyond what's needed to make the app work.

You can now opt in to add friends and let them see your dish history — but it's strictly off by default, and your history stays private until you choose to connect.

Read the full Privacy Policy for specifics.

How do I delete my account and data?

Two ways:

1. In the app: Profile → Danger zone → Delete account. Confirm twice. Done immediately.
2. By email (if you've uninstalled): send a request from your account email to [email protected]. We confirm receipt within 2 business days and delete within 30 days.

See the account deletion page for full details.

Why does FoodFavs ask for location?

Only for "Near Me" search and the Randomizer — to find restaurants near you. Location is used only while the app is open and the feature is active.

You can deny the location permission and FoodFavs still works for everything except those two features. Search by name still works fine.

Can I add friends and see what they're eating?

Yes. Open the Friends tab, tap Add Friends, and invite by email or a share link. Once they accept, you'll get a live activity feed of the dishes they're loving, and you can open any friend's profile to see their all-time favorites, the restaurants you've both tried, and the cuisines they favor.

It's strictly opt-in — your dish history stays private until you connect, you choose whether friends can see your logs, and you can mute or remove a friend anytime. Likes and comments on the feed are coming next.

What's the friends activity feed?

The Feed is the home of the Friends tab. As the friends you've connected with log dishes, their activity shows up here — what they ordered, where, and how they felt about it — newest first. Tap an entry to see the dish, or tap a friend to open their profile.

You'll only ever see activity from friends who've accepted your request and chosen to share their logs. Nothing here is public.

How do I share a dish to Instagram, TikTok, or X?

Open the dish you want to show off (tap it from a restaurant's list), then tap ↗ Share this dish near the bottom. FoodFavs builds a branded card from that dish — the photo, its name, your star rating and verdict — and opens a share sheet.

Pick where it goes: Instagram, X, TikTok, Facebook, Copy link, or More… (which hands off to iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger, and anything else on your phone). Level up a badge and the same share card pops up from the level-up screen too.

What does the shared post actually look like?

Two things travel together: a card image — your dish photo with its name, your rating, and your note — and a caption with a link back to the dish plus a few hashtags (#FoodFavs and food/your-city tags).

Add a photo to the dish first — the card is built around it. Without one you still get a clean branded card, just no food shot.

That link unfurls into a rich preview — dish photo and title — anywhere that previews links (iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook, X). Tapping it opens the restaurant right inside FoodFavs, or sends people to the App Store / Google Play if they don't have the app yet.

Instagram or TikTok asked me to paste the caption — why?

Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook don't let other apps pre-fill your caption, so FoodFavs copies it to your clipboard and reminds you: when the app opens, long-press the post and tap Paste. (You can turn that reminder off.) X is the exception — it opens with the tweet already written, nothing to paste.

Instagram shares as a Story — your card becomes the background — rather than a feed post; that's the reliable way to attach the right image, and you can add your own text or stickers over it.

One heads-up: Instagram and TikTok don't make links in captions or comments tappable — that's their rule, not ours. Use your bio link or an Instagram Story link sticker for a clickable path. In Messages, WhatsApp, and X, the link is tappable and previews on its own.

Who's behind FoodFavs?

FoodFavs is built by a small indie team. No VC money, no Silicon Valley parachute — just a few people who eat out a lot, hate forgetting what was great, and decided to build the food diary they wanted.

I found a bug / something's not working

Sorry about that. Email [email protected] with:

• Your device model (iPhone 14, Pixel 8, etc.)
• FoodFavs version (Profile screen, scroll to bottom)
• What you were trying to do
• What happened instead
• A screenshot if possible

We read every email personally and reply within 2 business days.