A new app is on the market that will make ordering takeout a little bit easier in Westchester County. It’s called WestchesterEats. Here’s the kicker: the app was developed by a group of high school students from Armonk.
“We were all hanging out at the public library and wanted to order pizza while we were doing homework,” says Evan Miller, 16. “There are a lot of different options in our town, all with different menus to look up, so we came up with the idea.”
Miller handles the creative responsibilities for WestchesterEats – photography, marketing, social media, etc. Will Cohen, 17, handles the programming and coding, while Zachary Tuzzo and Robbie Waxman, both 16, handle all other aspects of the business including operations and sales.
The app compiles many of the top restaurants in Westchester and gives users the opportunity to order directly from those that offer it, like Moderne Barn, Amore, Fortina, and more. While the app is focused on making it easy for users to order food, in the same way as GrubHub and Seamless, the end goal is to advance the app so that it can suggest new restaurants based on users’ past ordering habits.
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WestchesterEats started as a solution to a problem. While the teens are self-proclaimed “foodies”, they developed the app for the sake of their entrepreneurial spirit and their desire to innovate. “We wanted to mend our love of food and entrepreneurial spirit and find a solution,” says Waxman.
While the app has been in development since the end of 2016, it’s been launched for about a month and is already gaining traction. The team just started promoting on social media, and the app already boasts 250 users and around 50 participating Westchester restaurants.
“In the beginning, we got tons of no’s from restaurants when asked to them participate because we were kids and they didn’t trust us and thought it would end in a week or two,” says Tuzzo. “But every time they had a concern, we’d fix it in the app and slowly we started to get more feedback that helped us improve and eventually get more yeses.”
Since launching, the team has been asked to present their story in front of middle school students to show them how entrepreneurship is something they can pursue as well. “They don’t need to look at Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos,” says Waxman. “Our plan as of now it to present to middle schools throughout the country so we can be role models for those kids and encourage them to pursue their dreams with the entrepreneurial spirit.”
WestchesterEats is currently available on the Apple app store.
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