How My Friends and I Turned Myself Into a Chat Bot — Introducing Clemo 😋
Hi, my name is Clemo!
Well, my real name is Clemens but my friends have called me Clemo since I was little. Speaking of which, ever since I can remember I have had an obsession with food — much to my chagrin in my earlier days as I wasn’t able to control that obsession very well… Fortunately, I managed to establish a healthier relationship with food over the years so that I can enjoy what the world has to offer in all its culinary glory.
As far as I can think back, I always liked everything — yes, even spinach olives and all that stuff. There are only very few items and dishes that I hate, but I’ll leave that for later… Given that I pretty much like everything, and that I am a rather curious person in general, I’ve always loved digging deeper into cuisines and food in general.
How I became obsessed
I have to admit that in my early twenties my focus was a bit more on booze and parties but even then I liked trying out new things and places in my then hometown of Berlin. If I have to pinpoint one moment that got my passion (obsession?) turbo-charged, then it was one cold winter day in Montreal, when I was spending a year as an exchange student at McGill University. I became friends with a guy named José. José wasn’t from Lima or Mexico City, but from Shanghai (his real name is pretty hard to pronounce, José stuck at some point in his earlier life when he was studying Spanish).
Despite the fact that José is a very special guy with many talents, José certainly likes to eat and knows a lot about the food from his home country. Being from Germany, my exposure to Chinese food was as limited as it is to most westerners, which pretty much means sweet and sour and slimy sauces with some meat and broccoli (that’s Europe, you lucky Americans have General Tsao’s Chicken as insult to injury). Being curious, I asked him what he eats and what I thought I knew was Chinese food. He just started to laugh…
After receiving the 101 I felt embarrassed that I didn’t know more. I realized that saying “I like/don’t like Chinese food” pretty much equates to saying “I like/don’t like European food”. So I had to find out more. After José took me to one of the very few authentic Chinese restaurants in Montreal (with a focus on Sichuan food), I realized that there is a whole universe to discover.
China was my gateway to food heaven
That lead me to cooking. I started reading many books about Chinese food — especially about the Sichuan province. From there I ventured into Cantonese, then Northern food. I soon realized that all of the other countries surrounding China have equally fascinating layers and depth to explore, so I experimented in Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Malay, … Soon I landed in the Middle East. When I traveled to Mexico, I realized that there is yet another undiscovered gem on the other side of the world that I had to dive into. It’s been 12 years since my epiphany and I feel as if I still have only touched the surface. I haven’t really dug deep into Indian yet. Has someone mentioned Morocco? Peru? Have you ever had Georgian (you should try by the way…)? All these countries are loaded with great food, food history and food culture in general. There is so much to explore.
Even though I love cooking, I equally love going out and sampling other people’s food. I’m glad I live in New York as I can’t think of any other city in the world with such a plethora of not only high quality food, but also diverse food. This city is packed to the brim with outstanding restaurants and eateries from every corner of the world. Some are odd exaggerations and distortions of the original, but I find that many places manage to keep things to the original (or sometimes even better than the original…).
NYC is the best city in the world to eat out
New York has everything. Throughout Manhattan you have fancy versions of every cuisine in the world (there is an intense density of Michelin-starred restaurants) but you can still find cheap eats of tremendous quality. Queens is one of the most diverse and mixed neighborhoods with great Middle Eastern and Greek food in Astoria, Indian in Jackson Heights, and all sorts of Chinese in Flushing.
Speaking about Chinese food, there isn’t just one Chinatown in New York. Even the one in Manhattan you’re thinking of isn’t technically one area. It’s two — one is Cantonese with great dim sum and char siu, the other one is Fujian with awesome dumplings and hand-pulled noodles. In Brooklyn you can find yet another one (great dim sum btw.), but by far the biggest one is in Flushing with lots of central Chinese food and Taiwanese delicacies.
Don’t get me started about Brooklyn and all those innovative chefs who are pushing all types of foods to the next level, including everything that is considered “American”. I can go on and on and on…
Time to get organized
The New York food scene moves at mind-blowing speed and it’s very hard to keep track of what’s happening. I’m a producer by profession (and for those who believe in star signs, I’m also a virgo), so I love to organize and make lists. I also like to research and dig through forums so all of this combined led me to start food lists in various forms (Foursquare has been very helpful).
My friends started talking about my obsession, but also my organization of NYC restaurants. With that I started receiving more and more calls and texts requesting recommendations. It got to a point that I got at least one message every other day, even from friends-of-friends. My friend Damjan Pita then came up with the genius idea to turn me into a chatbot. Not sure if this was really related to finding a way to ease the burden on me, but, obviously, I fully embraced this idea and started working with him, as well as Filip and Derek.
Clemo.nyc was born
We had lots of discussions around the bot — what functionality, what platform, what pricing model, … We knew we had to start somewhere so we condensed our assumptions into a minimum viable product, that would bring Clemo off the ground.
You can reach Clemo at anytime just by texting 😋 to 929–242–5366
We decided to go with good old SMS as platform, also because we were hoping of iMessage to open up further to outside parties (which seems to be the case now). Obviously, we will expand to other messaging platforms in the future but we have to take one step at a time.
We then started thinking of the character of the bot. We realized that bots trying to be too smart end up being more stupid than the simple ones (other very smart people seem to think the same thing). We also highly doubt that people want to have elaborate conversations with a restaurant recommendation bot to begin with…
Keeping it simple
For us it’s clear: You want a good recommendation as fast as possible. The key variable that comes into play is location — that’s a must. So that’s all we are asking people for in order to get something back. Our restaurant database (even though far from complete) differentiates between quick in-and-outs, casual sit-downs, and fancy meals. We are only giving you two options back and are trying to give you a good mix of options that are close to your location (or whatever location you specified). It’s partially randomized as well so you can ask for more if you’re not happy with the first picks.
We have already planned for more variables such as time of day, the type of food, and price. We are also planning to offer recommendations for dishes at some point. There is a lot to implement but we need to make sure we’re addressing the initial feedback first to optimize the core experience. We also have to keep things simple, which, as you know, is much tougher than it sounds.
Keeping it curated
The key thing about our bot is that all recommendations are curated. Yelp and Co are great, but there is a lot of noise. Chipotle, for example, tends to get fantastic ratings across all platforms — rightfully so as it’s a pretty good chain restaurant. Would you be happy if you got this as answer back from a restaurant recommendation bot? We certainly don’t think so.
A funny coincidence is that we launched Clemo.nyc just one day before Foursquare came out with their Marsbot. It seems like a great service but the Marsbot depends on user input as it’s using Foursquare as a data source. Foursquare is great (I am an avid user). I also think it works very well in NYC as good places tend to end up with high ratings and are standing out in front of the rest. Hence, it’s pretty easy to find the stuff you like. However, you still have noise so when we asked the Marsbot for a restaurant recommendation we got, well, Chipotle…
Bot forward
We will certainly continue with our curation efforts and we are already thinking of inviting some of my friends in other cities, such as LA and San Francisco. Our network covers many other big cities, from London to Paris to Berlin, Bangkok to Singapore to Tokyo. Key to us though is that our curators have to have a passion and taste. Even if their taste doesn’t match mine 100% (my friend in SF is a dedicated vegan for example) — care and attention is the most important consideration.
We think that we are onto something as we are receiving positive feedback throughout. We are currently fixing the most pressing concerns, such as people not wanting to share their location but prefer typing in areas and streets (we just launched zip code support). We are putting a lot of work into the copy and interactions and are constantly working on our algorithm, which is still fairly simple at this point.
But this is just the start. Our goal is to help people around the world enjoy unique and exquisite food experiences. The world is full of great cooks and restaurant owners who want to deliver something special. Let’s celebrate those places and make it easy for people to find them.
Bon appetite,
Clemens “Clemo” Brandt 😋
PS: I hate chicken fricassee and any kind of liver dishes. Yuk. I’m also not a big risotto fan.
#DSG
