Let me start with a bit of background. Beli was founded in 2021 by Judy Thelen and Eliot Frost, two friends who were passionate about restaurants and had built a personal system to rank every meal they ate. What began as a quirky, almost obsessive project quickly turned into an app that resonated with thousands, and soon millions, of young urban diners.
Within just three years, Beli grew from 2.5 million reviews in 2022 to more than 75 million by 2025. And what’s remarkable is that this growth came almost entirely through word of mouth, not big marketing spends. Compare that with big review giant Yelp. Yelp adds roughly 20 million reviews a year today. Beli, on the other hand, added more than 30 million reviews in 2024 alone.
Now, why did it click? Unlike Yelp or Google Reviews, Beli doesn’t rely on star ratings. A star rating is absolute, and in a world of millions of restaurants, “4.3 stars” doesn’t tell you much. Is that 4.3 better than the 4.5 ramen spot next door? Is it good for you or for someone else with completely different taste? Beli solved that by using comparative rankings.
Each time you log a restaurant, you’re not just assigning a number; you’re ranking it against your own past experiences or with another restaurant. Over time, this builds a living taste profile that is uniquely yours. The app isn’t asking, “Is this good?” It’s asking, “Is this better than the last one you tried?”
That’s a subtle shift, but it’s a powerful one. It turns reviews into something personal, expressive, and far more reliable. Think of it this way: Yelp gives you the crowd’s average opinion, while Beli gives you your own curated hierarchy of taste.
And when you overlay that with the social layer, the ability to see your friends’ rankings and discoveries, the app becomes not just a utility, but a culture. It’s like Spotify for dining: not just information, but identity and community woven together.
From where I sit, as someone leading marketing at a Fortune 500 company, I see Beli as more than a food app. It’s a case study in how consumer behavior is shifting. People don’t just want data; they want context. They don’t just want ratings; they want personalization. And they don’t just want recommendations; they want identity and community to come with it. Beli tapped into that.
So how do I see this app doing? I think Beli has the potential to do what Strava did for fitness or what Goodreads did for reading: create a habit so strong that logging becomes part of the experience itself. If it stays true to its core values, comparative, personalized, and social, it will not just grow. It will define how the next generation thinks about taste, discovery, and even lifestyle itself.
For a marketer, that’s gold. For culture, that’s impact.
