It’s hard to find a place to research food—the kind that you buy at the grocery store and put into your body every day. As people become more aware, and concerned, about what thy eat, a site like Zeer makes more and more sense. Zeer, which launched earlier today, is a product review site for food. It contains nutritional information for 114,000 food products, and each one can be rated and reviewed.
Founder and CEO Michael Putnam used to work at the Markem Corporation, which makes the machines that print nutritional labels on food packages. He thought, “Wouldn’t it be better if all of that information was online in one easy-to-search place?” He raised $1 million in angel funding last August, and started to put the site together.
On Zeer you can find out the nutritional content of any packaged food, write little product reviews like on Amazon, and vote the reviews up or down. You can search by calories, nutrients, vitamins, or ratings. You can also join or search specific food communities—ones for people allergic to milk, peanuts, or gluten; ones for people with diabetes or heart problems; ones for parents, vegetarians, or the organic-obsessed. This categorization allows you to talk about food within the context of your specific gastronomic needs and interests.
The site is organized by products, people, and communities and is targeted at women between 20 and 32. The most-discussed or highly-rated products pop up to the top of each relevant page each week. And each member’s profile page shows what products she loves and hates the most.
There is definitely a need for a neutral food review site. And when Zeer turns on advertising, there are obvious targeting opportunities in both search results and on specific product and community pages. But Zeer also definitely is missing some major ingredients. The site is screaming for a mobile version members can check on their cell phones while in a grocery store. Vocal members also have no way to spread their expertise or ratings across the Web with widgets. (Fortunately, both mobile and widgets are on the product roadmap).
A harder problem to solve is that Zeer only has information on packaged foods, not on less processed foods like meat, fish, fruits or vegetables. So it does not cover everything in your fridge. And while it does a great job on nutritional data, it doesn’t have other relevant data, such as how much energy went into making each product. People are hungry for this sort of information, and the site that can give it to them all will keep them coming back for more.
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Unique idea… we’ll see how it does.
I wish Yelp would partner with these guys. I really need one place for all my reviews.
Nice idea. Bookmarked …
Bad logo. Looks like Qzeer.
I’m in Australia, we have nutritional value tables on wholefoods and some packaged foods. Nutritional analysis undertaken by a national government body and released as data and book that can be purchased for reference. Wondering if such a thing exists in the US? That could solve the lack of nutritional info for foods like fruit and veg. This site is very much geared to only presenting value-added, packaged products.
I’ll be bookmarking this one. Looks interesting from a food scientist perspective.
As for finding out how much energy was required to make foods. That would mean a hell of a lot of energy audits across manufacturers. Not sure all would be doing environmental/energy audits in their processing plants already.
so it just launches or you just discover it Eric? the heading confuses me. If it just launch, who are the people commenting on the site already? fake coments?
sd, all of the reviews on the site are real, from our alpha testers.
You’ll be glad to hear that we have never paid anyone to write a review on our site — it is organic and natural growth, the way we want it.
@SD — Replying to clear up the confusion
I’m the community manager of Zeer, Shannon B.
We’ve been in Alpha for about 2 months now — all of the people are organic — The content belongs to real volunteer Alpha testers with real advice. Every profile is real and authentic and every comment is too
We moved to Beta today hence the Techcrunch coverage.
Ah ha, I see Mike got to this before I did, blast!
Michael, Shannon. Thanks for the reply~ makes sense to me.
I think Zeer could open up a huge category of things to review. I love reviewing restaurants and stores that I frequent on sites like Yelp, and Erick is definitely right in saying that a mobile version that you could use while at the store would be fantastic!
Very Innovative…bookmarked.
Ya that logo totally sucks….I wonder what jamoke came up with that…Oh no, wait. I meant to say it’s wicked freakin awesome!
“The site is screaming for a mobile version members can check on their cell phones while in a grocery store.”
Umm, when you’re at the store can’t you just look at the product’s label?
I agree with Amanda. It would be cool to be able to review everything in one place
I’m an Alpha tester and I love the site. As an organic food only, gluten free, peanut free, omega three consuming, busy bachelorette in a big city (yep, there’s even a community for all the single professional women out there), I have found a way “slice and dice” my needs on Zeer to find products, reviews, recipes, and suggestions from others regarding my needs.
The site allows you to join communities and chat with others about what’s good, good for you and what’s not so good. A comprehensive search database helps you narrow down the options even more.
For those of you wondering if it’s practical, when I started my gluten free diet, finding foods that were tasty and in my dietary parameters was tough. I would walk around the grocery store searching for the two little words, gluten free, on everything. Though it may seem obsessive, for some, this is absolutely necessary. I can now zeer for five minutes before heading out to the store and come up with a number of new foods to try without spending hours in the grocery store doing the same thing. Further, the ratings and reviews help me decide what to bring home and what to leave on the shelf. So, from the practicality standpoint, I’d say it’s well designed to help you build a grocery list in mintes. And, as to the mobile version… I can’t wait! Why scour a lable for two little words, when you can zeer for the answers? Why take a chance on trying a product you might think is questionable, when all of your community members hate it? I’d love to look up unbiased product information and reviews while I’m standing in front of it in the grocery store.
Finally, think about all of that free consumer data! It’s like the gallup poll on steroids. If I were a product manufacturer, a merchandising manager, a food tv executive looking for the next best show, a dietician, a fitness magazine editor or any other person who wants to know why their product is flying off the shelf or collecting dust, I’d be right there zeering along with the rest of them.
So, not to be redundant, but this site is fantastic. I can’t wait for more people to join so I can benefit from their ideas too!
Join today and start zeering!
SC
Thanks SC — You were a great Alpha tester, I’m glad that Zeer helped you out.
Lawrence, I agree it would be convenient to be able to display and review everything in one place. I’m a really active elite Yelp member myself. Hopefully in the future we will be able to provide shopping data on Zeer where users can find out where to buy certain products in their area.
Though local restaurant reviews probably won’t be displayed, maybe eventually local reviews of shopping places can come into play so that users can access even more useful information about the best prices and shopping places in their area. This will be especially helpful with our green and organics communities who are more concerned about finding out where local produce and organics can be purchased. There are many possibilities. And we’re pumped to provide them.
Is this product nutritional data freely available? It would be cool to see this info in FreeBase so that people can built custom apps on it.
“A harder problem to solve is that Zeer only has information on packaged foods, not on less processed foods like meat, fish, fruits or vegetables.”
NutritionData.com has this info.
For example, here’s the entry for cooked broccoli:
http://www.nutritiondata.com/f.....c20c1.html
Plus you can add any of their listed foods to your “pantry” and combine them in customizable amounts to make nutritional info for recipes.
A quick response to curdnerd above (go cheese lovers!) — a good example of something not printed on a package would be reviews of the product.
Consumers love to hear what other people think, especially if they have experience with that food before.
Thanks for the great input and ideas everyone - we’ll definitely take this into account as we continue to improve the site and build new features.
Michael Putnam
President and Founder
Zeer
“A harder problem to solve is that Zeer only has information on packaged foods, not on less processed foods like meat, fish, fruits or vegetables.”
There is an apple in the screen shot you used.
Hey Michael and Shannon
Thanks for answering the questions above.
Sorry to ask the obvious but where do you get the full product details, nutritional information and images for each and every product, do you get it from the manufacturers or from the food labels and if so how will you keep it up to date?
Great site, Toni
Agree they should put this info straight into freebase
That would be the right thing to do
very cool idea. we need to know more about what is on offer to eat.
Hey,
Check out Select Cheeses, it has an awesome selection of various cheeses from all around the world, and some pretty helpful evaluation tools as well!