Yelp Help is a lightweight mobile application that hopes to simplify the frustrating experience of trying to find a restaurant to eat at. In the modern world, the task of making a decision on where to grab a bite to eat can become overwhelming. There are so many options, and an abundance of information on all of these options is readily available at our fingertips through our smartphones. Sometimes, we want the work done for us. With the Yelp Help application, the user is provided with a single randomized restaurant (per request) from a list of the 50 best eating establishments in the area. Once that user gets a restaurant result, that user can look at its Yelp rating, see its pricing, get directions there, or call the business directly. The user can then favorite a restaurant they liked and see previously favorited restaurants in an organized and easily accessible list.
The application works using Yelp’s public Fusion API, where the back-end will pull a JSON list of 50 restaurants using a REST API call. The code then runs a randomization algorithm where the program will choose a singular random business to display to the user. Whenever the user favorites a restaurant, the application will save that business’ data locally onto the phone’s storage device. This way when the user leaves the app and comes back they will still see their favorite restaurants. Finally, since the app is built with React Native, it is compatible across platforms on both iOS and Android.

Due to Yelp's Very specific, unforgiving brand guidelines, we're not going to publish this to YouTube or any app store.  We are all ok with erring on the side of caution when it comes to helping Yelp protect its brand.


Dustin Lambright, Noel Drotor, Justin Gonzalez, Jesse Morgan, Nick Anthony, Dongyu Wang, Pranesh Kamalakanthan