Mobile App · iOS & Android
MenuPro
App Design
Tunisia’s #1 restaurant discovery companion. 150,000+ food lovers connected through a rewarding, community-driven database.
Laying the table
As the founding product designer, I took MenuPro from a blank canvas to Tunisia’s undisputed #1 restaurant discovery platform. The challenge was multifaceted: build an app that makes finding the perfect dining spot seamless, while engineering a gamified user-generated content (UGC) loop to build the database from scratch.
The result is an ultimate food companion app that connects people with the best dining spots, eases search and discoverability, offers personalized recommendations, and provides a rewarding review experience that keeps users engaged and exploring.
Kitchen nightmares
Restaurant discovery in Tunisia was broken in three specific ways.
Information was scattered across Facebook pages, Instagram stories, Google Stores, or not at all existent. Hours, locations, and pricing were inconsistent across sources. A user looking for a specific cuisine in a specific neighborhood had to cross-reference multiple platforms often finding outdated or incomplete data.
Furthermore, contribution was invisible. Users who did take the time to add a menu or write a review received no recognition and no sense of impact. The loop was broken at the reward stage which meant the database stayed static and leaned heavily on the founding team for updates.
Friction
4.2
Avg apps checked before picking a restaurant.Abandonment
-62%
User drop-off when menu is missing or outdated.Time Cost
5.3m
Avg time to find basic info (hours, location, price).Trust Deficit
78%
Users who abandon search due to unreliable reviews.Incentivized delight
There was no single source of truth for dining in Tunisia. So we built one.
MenuPro is the centralized mobile app where users find accurate details, share honest experiences, and collectively maintain the database through contribution and reward. The ecosystem is supported by four core pillars:
Local Discovery
Users search for "Italian in Tunis" not "Italian". The system surfaces nearby options with distance, live hours, and actual photos.
Reviews with Context
The guided flow asks for specifics: service, cuisine, ambiance. The result is scannable, comparable, and useful.
Gamified Contribution
Every menu addition, review, and photo earns points. First-time contributions carry the highest value. Points feed a leaderboard and unlock tangible rewards.
The Community
The database of 6000+ restaurants stays current because the users have a stake in its accuracy.
Designing the Ecosystem
The Discovery Feed
The homepage curates personalized recommendations using AI, displaying top-rated spots, current trends, and quick access to major categories. The UI prioritizes visual hierarchy—food photos take center stage while metadata sits cleanly below.
Scroll to view more →
Advanced Search Architecture
To avoid burying users in 5 separate screens, I designed a unified search experience. From empty state suggestions to deep filter logic, everything happens within a frictionless context.
The Source of Truth: Details
Restaurant details were historically scattered across social media. MenuPro centralizes everything into an immersive, tabbed profile.
The Contribution Flow: Review
To ensure high-quality data, I broke the review process into bite-sized, low-cognitive-load steps. It feels less like a form and more like a conversation.
Success!
Points Credited
Expanding the Database
Users are empowered to expand the ecosystem via a prominent '+' FAB in the nav bar, triggering two distinct flows. Both are designed to feel fast while capturing necessary metadata.
"Add Restaurant"
Name & Hours
(24h)
Earned!
"Add Menu"
Restaurant
Menu Photos
Instantly!
Gamification & Leaderboard
Points translate to status. The Leaderboard page allows users to climb ranks, track their points, and compete for monthly prizes—driving continuous engagement.
The Check, please.
Measured at 12 months post-launch across 150,000+ downloads and 6,000+ restaurants in the database.
Contribution Rate
27%
Active users submitting at least one review (4.2x higher via guided flow).Loyalty
+34%
Month-one retention rate, well above category average for local apps.B2B Growth
500+
Active restaurant partnerships, majority joined through owner-initiated claims.Engagement
25k+
Monthly active users, driven largely by organic word-of-mouth.Efficiency
10s
Time to make a dining decision, down dramatically from 7.1 minutes.Gamification
12%
Weekly leaderboard engagement from users tracking their ranks.A side of data
Relying on assumptions is dangerous in consumer tech. We ran rigorous A/B tests to optimize the conversion paths for discovery.
Map View vs. List View Default
We assumed that local discovery relies heavily on geography, so defaulting the search results to a Map View would help users find nearby spots faster.
The Map default increased "time-to-click" by 30%. Users actually prefer scanning food photos, ratings, and price tags first, before checking the location. We permanently shifted the default to the scannable List view with a prominent Map toggle button.
The final course
Designing MenuPro from zero to a vibrant community of 150,000+ users was a masterclass in building for User-Generated Content.
The biggest takeaway from this journey is that people want to contribute, but they need the path to be effortless and the reward to be clear. Good UX in a community app isn't just about pretty buttons; it's about incentive design. By structuring reviews, weighting the points economy, and contextualizing the leaderboard, we turned a daunting empty database into a self-sustaining ecosystem.
MenuPro proved that when you give users the right tools and a stake in the platform's accuracy, they won't just use your product—they will build it with you.