If you’re hungry and in need of some quality food, then Bing has you covered with the new Food Cart Finder. The Bing Food Cart Finder helps hungry foodies locate and learn about places to eat. The app initially covers only the Portland area and tracks over 250 food carts in the area. Bing is testing the appetites of Portland foodies before expanding the app’s service nationally.
For those that live in Portland, you now have an easy way to plan your lunch. For those near Portland, you now have over 250 mouthwatering reasons to visit the City of Roses. Everyone else – it’s still a great app to experience.
When you first load up the app you will see the food carts plotted out, represented by sporks. You can filter food vendors by recommended picks from Portland Monthly Magazine (represented by the red sporks) , neighborhood, features, cuisine, and price. Let’s say you’re in the mood for some Mexican and pull up La Jarochita. The Food Cart Finder has each vendor's address, phone number, links to the website/direction/menu, price range, a rating, a description of the food as well as the ability to receive user ratings. And since pictures always help with identifying a place, the food carts have pictures their cart and menu.
Want to know what people in the area are tweeting about the local food? The Food Cart Finder has that covered too. All the food carts have their own “twitterbox” which shows tweets related to the vendor and there is a live Twitterfeed with tweets about the local food. Choosing where to go lunch is a hard decision, so thankfully Food Cart Finder helps the crowd weigh in on the decision. And once you visit a food cart, make sure to share it with your friends – you can share the vendor through Facebook Twitter, and email. And for the foursquare users out there, don’t forget to use the Food Cart Finder to check-in.
The Food Cart Finder is launching simultaneously with the announcement of the Bing Lounge - a state of the art entertainment facility in downtown music, sports, and culture. More information can be found here. In September, Bing will host some fun food activities in Portland, OR. Keep an eye out for more info. Bing Maps – helping solve your epicurean decisions. Enjoy!
Brian Hendricks Bing Maps
Follow me @BingMaps, ^BH
"Bing is testing the appetites of Portland foodies before expanding the app’s service nationally."
But, as usual, not INTERnationally!
Why do you hate none-US people so much? You must do given that you do absolutely sweet FA for us.
Hi Jamiet,
I understand the frustration. While the Bing Maps team and Bing overall don't hate our international users, it is true that some of our services skew towards US audiences. This is not entirely by design as limitations such as data coverage, resources, data access, and other operating factors affect our ability to provide content internationally.
As for map apps specifically, there are some apps that can be used by global/international audiences. However, even US-centric apps are only available to large-market cities as data availability is our biggest limitation. It is challenging to find and acquire the necessary data for the most compelling map apps. I'm not suggesting that international audiences are a lower priority, the data is just more difficult to obtain.
To go back to this post specifically - there has been nothing so far to suggest that expanding internationally is not an option. So, the use of the word "nationally" was unnecessary.
How about the ability to zoom into the photos. Some of the menus aren't very visible and it'll be helpful if one could zoom in. Overall great map app and keep up the good work. Bing goes the internet like always!
Well, It's Very very interesting information, i like it. thanks Brian for this.
Hi Ryan!
We own a food cart - EuroTrash on SE 43rd and Belmont, in the Good Food Here cart pod. We were wondering how to get our business listed on the food cart map. Please have someone contact us regarding the listings.
Thanks!!!
Charles & Ali