Hi all, We are proud to announce that our iPhone application 42 Restaurants is now available in the App Store. 42 restaurants was created for home gourmets, professional chefs, fine diners and lovers of amazing food. We have collected some of the most delicious recipes from a collection of the most incredible restaurants in the world, all beautifully laid out in a simple and intuitive iPhone application. A literal visual feast on your iPhone. Click here to open the 42 Restaurants application page in iTunes to view screenshots and features of the application. Feel free to give us your impressions. -Mike. UPDATE: You can view a video of the app in action on the home page of our website. UPDATE: The app is also now iPod Touch compatible.
Wow. This looks good. Do you have the list of recipes? I mean, I love the idea of the restaurants and all, but it's the recipes that I'm really interested in. Do you have a list if names of the 42 dishes? I can't seem to find it on your site either.
Hey Prab, That's a great idea. Our team has been working so hard on getting the release out there we completely forgot about it. Will let you know as soon as it's up. -Mike
Thanks Mike. Oh and another thing. I hope Im not asking too much, but if there is a lite version with 1 recipe (or could just be a mock recipe like how to poach an egg lol) then that would be cool too. Because I read that the user interface is wonderful, but it would be even better if I can try the UI. I'm really really interested in your app. hehehe... Thanks again
We are currently working on the Lite version of our app. One thing we are unsure about is how many recipes we need to include to give people a taste of the application. I was thinking between 5 and 7, but my partner reckons less. Probably 4. The difficult thing, is that we don't want to give too many away as people may not buy the full version but at the same time we don't want the lite version to be completely useless.
Hi Michael, I guess the answer depends on what you think people expect out of the lite version. For me, I just want to have a feel of the user interface. So a set of mock recipes is enough for me. But I suppose a lite version should also show case the kinds of recipes that your app would provide. For me, I think its enough to just list the names and show pictures of them (no recipes) on your website. I think of it like a menu. I see delicious looking dishes and fantastic names (and/or descriptions), so it will coax and convince me to have them Alternatively, show all 42 dishes in the lite version, but dont show the recipes -- just the names (and/or descriptions). This would however, involve more development time. I hope my suggestions help somewhat
i disagree with dont show the recipes in the lite version because that way you cannot judge really at all how the finished product is - if you like the writing style etc but i agree you want to encorage people to buy the full version so would agree with your partner that 4 recipes is enough, that way people get a good idea of how it is and if they are interested without being overwhelmed or having enough already. In fact you could probably get away with 2 recipes ! BTW for anyone who wants to know - its costs 6.99 Are you planning on adding new recipes in the future ? (this would make the name invalid i know) I must say looking at the pics on the app store it does look nice
Thanks for the comments and compliments. They are exactly what I was thinking. There is also a danger in that if we provide too little stuff for the free version, it will get a low review and therefore a negative affect on selling the full version. I am going to do more research on this. The app does cost 6.99 (8.99 from 7th July) - the price is a bit higher than many other apps in the app store, but what people don't realise is the amount of work that has gone into this application. 6 months and literally thousands of restaurants were researched, reviewed and contacted. Once we had chosen our initial group of restaurants, we had to make sure they had supplied all the required information. e.g. photos, logos, legible recipes. Some recipes had to even be translated into English from French, Italian and German. Our designers then got to work on designing each restaurant's pages and formatting it for the phone. Since each design in the application is different this became quite a long process. Once the designs were completed, the restaurants were then contacted for their approval of their designs. Programming the application was probably the smallest amount of work, but even that took 2 programmers 2 months to complete. We are planning on adding more recipes and improving some of the performance aspects of the application. We are also tweaking the UI a lot to make it more robust. All of this will get released in the next or subsequent update. The free version should be available late next week, provided it passes Apple's review process.
Thanks for the reply Michael I'm already at the fence. Just need the lite version to push me over Also, please don't change the full version pricing until after the lite is released Edit: do you have any plans of allowing users input their own recipes into the app and have it presented just like the given 42? I'm actually looking for such an app but most of the current recipe / shopping list apps on the App Store are either bloatedly disfunctional or feebly attempted (no offense to developers who are reading this -- maybe I just haven't seen your app).
I will let you know as soon as it has been released. I would offer you a promo code but we've used almost all of them and they are precious for our marketing and review team. Full pricing won't change before the free version has been released. Unfortunately, we don't have plans to do this just yet. We are however, researching creating a sister app for 42 Restaurants that does exactly what you mention. The only issue is what the market need is for such an application since there are already many apps in this vein. Oh and BTW, 42 Restaurants is just the name of the application, it has no reference to the number of recipes it contains. Currently, there are 47 recipes available. We have another 7 ready to go into the update. Check out our blog for info on why we named it the way we did.
Sure. No problem I've already read your blog and I understand the mountain of work spent on the app and I'm more than happy to part with my money to get the app, especially if it's exactly as I imagined it As for the sister app, I'd be happy to answer any survey that you might have. In summary, I just think that most of the apps focus too much on either the shopping (the shops, etc) or the data (like a database) instead of the food and recipe itself. I think many of these devs have never seen what a personal recipe book actually looks like: it's actually like a scrapbook (with pictures, sidenotes, article clippings, etc). The challenge is how to help make this organized and managable.
I agree with you. The most annoying thing in a lot of the recipe apps in the App Store is that they are all about selling their off-the-shelf products. That is why 42 Restaurants is more about the recipes and the restaurants than anything else. When we do get time to start specc'ing out our next application I will definitely contact you. User feedback is always very useful. We learnt a lot about our application while it was in the testing phase and we continue to learn more about it. Just a quick question: How do you feel about alerts in a free application to remind you about the full version? We are thinking about showing the user an alert every 5 times they open it.
yep that won't bother people. i suspect though that if people do like the 4 recipes in the lite version they will just get the full version and so never open it 5 times
We hope you're right! Just posted one of my comments from this thread as a blog post on our website. So please don't think I am cutting and pasting responses into here. More like the other way round. Hehe.
Agreed. I think the alert is fine. I'll probably buy the full version shortly after using the lite. Hmmm.. Actually, Ive pretty much decided on getting the app. Just waiting for my budget to catch up with me. Spent quite a lot on games the past two weeks. Lol
As requested we've updated our website to display the list of recipes. To view the recipes visit this link: http://www.42restaurants.com/recipes.html Enjoy, -Mike.
All over the world. Check their website for details. Schwarzwaldstube Baiersbron, Germany Le Gavroche London, UK Michael Mina San Francisco, USA Picholine New York, USA Toms Kitchen London, UK Tom Aikens London, UK Chocolate Pink Atlanta, USA Zuma Hong Kong The River Café London, UK La Colombe Cape Town, South Africa Nobu New York, USA Convivio New York, USA Tantris Munich, Germany Oaxen Krog Mörkö, Sweden Dressler New York, USA Sketch: The Gallery London, UK Rockpool Sydney, Australia Incanto San Francisco, USA Le Café Anglais London, UK Saul New York, USA Public New York, USA 21 Oceanfront Newport Beach, USA Joël Atlanta, USA Arbutus London, UK Aqua Wolfsburg Wolfsburg, Germany Aqua San Francisco San Francisco, USA BLT Steak New York, USA Coi San Francisco, USA Sepia Chicago, USA Vue de Monde Melbourne, Australia Wild Honey London, UK SPQR San Francisco, USA Royal Mail Hotel Dunkeld, Australia Sushisamba New York, USA Umu London, UK The Spotted Pig New York, USA Hibiscus London, UK Biko Mexico City, Mexico The Greenhouse London, UK Lark Seattle, USA St. John Bar and Restaurant London, UK Residenz Heinz Winkler Chiemgau, Germany Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester London, UK La Rosetta Restaurant Rome, Italy Michel Guerard: Les Prés dEugénie Eugénie Les Bains, France Le Quartier Francais South Africa Flour Bakery and Café Boston, USA Sketch: Lecture Room & Library London, UK
