Restaurant discovery built from where you and your friends actually eat
Zest is a restaurant discovery startup founded in November 2024 by Mario Gomez-Hall (CEO). Its free iPhone app links to a user's cards via Plaid and uses food and drink transactions to automatically map the restaurants they've visited, show where friends keep going back, and suggest new places at home or while travelling. In October 2026 Zest launched Text Zest, an AI restaurant concierge that works over text message and in group chats, recommending places and booking tables through services like OpenTable, Resy and SevenRooms. Zest has pre-seed backing from Alexis Ohanian's 776 and Steve Jang's Kindred Ventures.