
Launch HN: Dinesafe (YC S18) – Crowdsourcing Food Poisoning Reports - paddoq
My name is Patrick Quade, and I’m the founder of Dinesafe (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dinesafe.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dinesafe.org</a>) and Iwaspoisoned.com (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iwaspoisoned.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iwaspoisoned.com</a>). We crowdsource food poisoning reports, and help detect and prevent outbreaks.<p>I launched Iwaspoisoned.com after experiencing a brutal bout of food poisoning from a deli in my hometown of Tribeca, NY. Out of concern for other consumers I called the deli to try and explain what happened and they hung up the phone. That inspired me to create a crowdsourcing platform to allow people to report. The idea was that if it was easy to discover if others were also sick after eating there, that would be useful information not just for other consumers but also for the deli owner.<p>Foodborne illness sickens 48 million consumers, and kills 3,000 every year in the US, according to US Center for Disease Control estimates. The financial burden is also significant. The total national cost of foodborne illness is estimated at $55 to $92 billion per year. and the impact on companies can also be significant, Chipotle lost $10 billion in market cap from its peak to its lowest point after it’s series of food safety missteps, and the founder and CEO was forced to step down.<p>We built a mobile responsive website with a simple form that allows consumers to report when they believe they have food poisoning. We moderate every report, with both a back end review, and front end&#x2F;human review of each submission with the goal of eliminating malicious and inauthentic reports. We then geo analyze the data in real time, allowing us to pinpoint clusters of reporting associated with a single store, looking for multiple independent reports associated with the same store or location in the same time frame. We also store and analyze historial data. We developed an index and benchmarks that enable us to identify brands with negative and positive trends.<p>With our data, we predicted that Chipotle would have food safety issues ahead of their series of outbreaks, and we detected several of their outbreaks, and many others in real time.<p>Our business sells data intelligence to industry, focusing on enterprise clients in the restaurant industry. We offer daily alerts, intraday (outbreak) alerts, benchmarking, and secure messaging, plus an API service. We have also had interest in custom email branding&#x2F;messaging, and &quot;Dinesafe Certification&quot; for those brands that rank consistently well in our analytics.<p>We now provide daily alerts to over 25,000 consumers, sending over a quarter million emails a month. We partner with and provide daily surveillance services to public health agencies in 6 countries. Within the US we partner with over 350 public health agencies, covering 90% of the US by population. We also provide services to the food Industry, primarily restaurants, but also producers, the grocery and convenience sectors and more. We have over a third of the top 50 restaurant chains in the US on our platform.<p>We are delighted to be on Hacker News, and look forward to hearing insights from the community. Thanks for your time.
======
JaggerFoo
Just because someone gets ill after eating at a restaurant doesn't mean that
the restaurant food was the cause. There may be several causes including food
the sickee prepared for himself/herself earlier in the day.

What confidence indicators are you presenting to the public so that a report
can be flagged as possibly unreliable?

~~~
code_duck
I agree; I had a friend who would regularly drink cases of beer on the
weekends and though he said he never got hangovers, oddly he often reported
experiencing food poisoning and would attribute his malaise to wherever he ate
last.

~~~
cafard
In one of P.G. Wodehouse's stories, a man explains his hangover as charcoal
poisoning, from the powdered charcoal used to color inferior caviar. I had
never heard of such an explanation outside his fiction before.

------
tptacek
I guess I have two sets of concerns.

The first is regarding DineSafe.org: I don't understand how the model works. I
see that people can "report incidents", and I see that businesses can
subscribe to get analytics on reports. What I don't see is the link: what
incentive do people have to report incidents? What makes the particular types
of people who report perceived foodborne illness to your website a trustworthy
cohort to sample from?

Regarding "Iwaspoisoned.com" (which: I think get a better name?): it looks
like what you're doing is scraping public food inspection reports (Everyblock
used to do that too), and then allow people to submit their own reports that
run alongside them. If that's what you're doing, it's deeply misleading: food
inspections are (1) an authoritative source of information and (2) not usually
reports of actual foodborne illness! The net effect is to blur the lines in
both directions: to create the belief that restaurants in your area are
routinely shut down due to foodborne illness problems, and to present the
alimentary concerns of randos as equivalently authoritative.

For what it's worth: my concern wouldn't be that reports would be "malicious"
or "inauthentic" (I'm sure there are reports like that, but I also agree that
you'd probably be able to keep up with them). Rather: my assumption is that
you'll have an even worse version of the Yelp problem, where people write
simultaneously authentic and _bad, poorly informed_ reports. Short of "our
party of 4 ate at this restaurant and all 4 of us came down with severe GI
symptoms" \--- which is rare --- I don't understand how you could take any
report at face value. Meanwhile: your "iwaspoisoned.com" site runs firsthand
reports where people simply take photographs of their food and say in effect
"this looks poisonous".

~~~
overcast
What incentivizes people to report every possible detail of their lives on
Twitter and Facebook? You know how I confirm if Instagram is indeed down? You
go on Twitter, and everyone breaks out the "I go on Twitter to check if
Instagram is down" meme. DSL Reports, and various others have come before this
idea. People love yapping about things. ESPECIALLY when it's something
negative to say.

The real question is if anyone really cares enough to support a niche site
like this. The biggest problem is that food poisoning isn't something that
happens daily for anyone.

~~~
tptacek
Sorry, I wasn't clear: if you look at the DineSafe.org site, there's no
feedback loop for reporters. There's an enterprise analytics application
businesses can buy, and what looks like a blind report form for consumers, but
no link between the two.

By contrast: if I report a hotel on the Bedbug Registry, I am participating in
a resource that is open to everyone, not just people who pay for the
enterprise app.

~~~
paddoq
Iwaspoisoned.com is the site i think you meant to look at. It shows the
reports etc, this is the consumer facing site.

~~~
tptacek
Are "reports" on IWASPOISONED.COM part of the data set for DINESAFE.ORG?

~~~
paddoq
Yes. Dinesafe.org sells data and data intelligence from iwaspoisoned.com

~~~
solarkraft
Dinesafe sounds way more serious. I'd be happier to report there (but with
some of the characteristics of iwaspoisoned).

------
rcdmd
I had the pleasure to attend an epidemiology doc's lecture about how difficult
sourcing food poisoning actually is. Part of the problem according her-- most
cases require some amount of incubation time (2-3 days and several meals).
There are some exceptions, but most of the time it's not the last meal eaten,
even if the symptoms began within hours. Could I suggest you encourage users
to report their last few meals prior to illness? You could also try to codify
user import-- things like symptoms and ingredients. "Temperature > 101.5*?
Nightsweats? Abdominal pain? Diarrhea?"

~~~
paddoq
There are three main types of contaminants that can occur: physical, chemical,
and biological. Epidemiologists tend to focus on the last one. We are not
biased toward any of them, we welcome reports from anything that can harm
consumers. With chemical contamination the onset can be within minutes, and
even with the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus (commonly just called Staph)
onset can be as soon as 1 hour.

Further, in the spirit of our partnership with public health - attribution -
while beneficial - is not the only benefit from our site. Simply knowing that
you have a cluster of people in your county exhibiting norovirus like symptoms
is important, especially when you have their contact information.

It gives public health the opportunity to follow up and conduct surveys
including a food history, to try and determine attribution, but it also allows
education, and prevention. Many people don't realize that if you have
norovirus, you can be contagious for up to three days after recovery. So if
you are a food worker, or work in a hospital, or daycare this point is
critical to communicate to prevent further spreading, especially given how
virulent norovirus is.

Besides all that - we have detected outbreaks of cases with longer incubation
periods such as E. coli, so while some amount of misattribution is real it
doesn't preclude us from achieving positive outcomes.

Thanks

------
dsl
On the report box, each of the checkboxes on the "Send Report To" should have
a mouseover that explains exactly what each option is.

I also don't understand the star rating. I don't think I have ever had "5 star
food poisoning," but it sure does sound nice!

~~~
paddoq
Great point about the hover, and information popups for mobile, thanks for the
reminder. We had those in the past, they were not well used, but I still think
it's great to have them, especially for the 'Send Report To' \- that's a newer
feature. Star ratings is something new we are trying out, some people want to
rate, and as wonderfully suprising as some people are, some want to rate well.
I think its' an offset to them 'feeling bad' about reporting a place,
especially if it's a place they frequent, and usually like. Not sure.

------
anonytrary
> I launched Iwaspoisoned.com after experiencing a brutal bout of food
> poisoning from a deli in my hometown of Tribeca, NY. Out of concern for
> other consumers I called the deli to try and explain what happened and they
> hung up the phone.

Wow, sorry this happened to you. When I was at university, they served Thai
food with nuts and didn't have a "Contains nuts" sign even though it's
protocol to have one. I ended up puffing up and the manager took absolutely no
responsibility and said "tough luck", I don't think he even cared whether or
not I was sick. I had to run back to my dorm room and ruffle through my
roommate's medicine to find some Benadryl -- overall one of the worst
experiences I've ever had.

Crowdsourcing is very tough because of quality control, but this seems
possible and I really hope this works out for you guys. Best of luck!

~~~
code_duck
As someone with celiac, I have given up trying to eat at any restaurants other
than places that specialize in serving customers with
allergy/intolerance/gluten issues. I have had incidents and many have stories
of negotiating a safe gluten free burrito or whatever, and then they
accidentally served a normal one. Like you say, when they screw up we have no
recourse, but unlike an allergy, the effects may not be apparent for hours,
but lasts for days. The restaurant and the individuals responsible are
generally unaware of the severity and insulated from the effects on the
victim. I could be out of work for a week or more due to one slip up.

Now that we mention special needs, there are a couple websites that collect
celiac-oriented reviews for restaurants, such as
[https://www.findmeglutenfree.com/search](https://www.findmeglutenfree.com/search)

------
jbob2000
I'm skeptical that this will be effective.

There are obvious cases of food being unsafe for consumption (ie. A food truck
got 150+ people sick at a fair
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/contaminated-
cronut-b...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/contaminated-cronut-
burger-cause-of-150-illnesses-at-cne-1.1327286)). In these cases, your website
is kinda useless; everybody knows if a restaurant serves bad food, it will
make the news.

But one time I got sick after eating out at a restaurant. My colleagues eat
there all the time and have never gotten sick. But one day I did, much to the
surprise of my coworkers who joined me for lunch and were completely fine. Was
it the food? Did I wash my hands? Maybe I touched a door handle and put my
hand in my mouth after. Maybe it was something at my desk when I got back to
work? Maybe it was something in my breakfast?

I think you're just giving a soapbox to people who have no ability to
determine whether or not their illness was food poisoning. And better yet,
what's the purpose of just putting these claims out there for everyone to see?
It makes much more sense for me to spend my time with the local health
regulator, explaining my concerns to them, rather than complaining openly.
Perhaps your service would be better if it was billed as a way to contact food
regulators rather than a yelp-but-food-saftey.

------
whalesalad
Earlier this week I was WRECKED by something. I was genuinely praying for a
higher power to take me from this planet. I called my hotel to see if anyone
had reported an illness from breakfast... they were surprised by my call. It
got me thinking “something like this has got to exist” ... what a coincidence!
Glad to give this a trial run based on my recent experience and hope it grows
to become more popular.

The bar is so incredibly low for food safety. Restaurants, especially really
popular ones, get away with a lot of really bad behavior. At some point data
like this will be as paramount as their yelp score.

------
thedak
FYI: the name of this project collides with the City of Toronto's own food
safety program:

[https://www.toronto.ca/health/dinesafe/index.htm?show=detail...](https://www.toronto.ca/health/dinesafe/index.htm?show=detailid=96103)

> DineSafe is Toronto Public Health's food safety program that inspects all
> establishments serving and preparing food. Each inspection results in a
> pass, a conditional pass or a closed notice. Find out more about the
> inspection system.

~~~
paddoq
Yes, Their consumer facing platform does not have the URL , but we do share
the name. I have since met the guy who built and runs that program, we are all
ok with it, since our Dinesafe is strictly a B2B platform. We actually partner
with them, and send them data.

------
wildekek
How do you weed out false positives?

~~~
reaperducer
Bingo. It seems pretty easy for one restaurant to file reports about a rival.

I'd be happier with a site that aggregated food poisoning reports from various
government health departments, but I'd worry about Joe Random telling me he
died eating someplace.

But then it wouldn't be crowdsourcing, which is the point.

~~~
paddoq
We do a pretty deep dive on every report in the moderating process. Someone
with malicious intent could get one report past us. Getting multiple reports
past us would be do-able but harder. Getting them actioned by public health
would be close to impossible. Rolling reports off after 30 days hopefully de-
motivates trolls, if their hard work is gone so fast.

~~~
hjorthjort
This wasn't much of an answer to "how", just restating that "we have a way to
do it, we promise!". Could you give some explanation as to why it would be
close to impossible to create enough reports to have them actioned? What
markers do false reports have? It seems you only collect some free form text,
and I can't imagine any way you could tell a good fake from a real report. So
to a business, driving out a competitor out may very well be worth the cost of
a few unscrupulous internet warriors.

~~~
paddoq
From us the data to goes to the governing public health agency. Each spammer
would need to individually re-present their case to that agency including a 72
hour food history, and potentially bio testing. The next steps can include
epidemiolist, site visit, lab testing and more. The likelihood that everything
could be falsified including lab tests with all these government officials is
low, and it is only when a case passes through this process that a health
agency will consider making an announcement such as "Restaurant X is the
source of X pathogen causing X people to be sick"

We collect more than free form text.

Thanks

~~~
stevekemp
So if I went out to eat and got sick, I might think I'm performing a public-
service by reporting it.

Then you come back to me and say "Hey your report was weird, go get some lab-
tests done"? That seems like a situation which would deter most reporters.

~~~
paddoq
Once we receive and moderate your report. It will go to public health. There
are many paths it can take from there. We don't require lab tests, that is
just a potential scenario, most common where there is either an important
(deadly) pathogen potentially involved, or if it appears to be potentially a
larger outbreak, and it is a pathogen that can't be detected in the facility.
It's not necessarily ever a requirement. What we offer to consumers is that if
you speak up there is potential that your report can make a difference.

------
matz1
So protection racket as business model. As a food lover，I personally hate
this, it will potentially add unnecessary burden and stress to food seller.

------
fergatmuhacct
A useful trick for reducing the chance of food poisoning with take out is to
re-heat the food in a microwave.

You do have to get the internal temp of the food pretty high to do a good job,
like 165+, but for many foods it works great.

Won't eliminate the risk from all pathogens but it's not a bad precautionary
measure.

I like the idea of Dinesafe. There's not nearly enough effort on enforcing
health codes.

~~~
paddoq
Thanks. Yes is is true, many state and city health agencies are under
difficutl budget constraints, in some cases having as few as a third of the
people needed to meet inspection targets

------
Kagerjay
This is an interesting tool. I can probably name a few that are probably
already on your platform. I imagine chick-fil-a & dominoes are already on that
list, they are IMO always one step ahead in technology over their competitors.

One of the fastest ways for a restaurant to die off is social media and
foodborne illnesses. Only big corporate clients, naming those in the 300+
chain stores would be looking into this technology. My question to you is - do
you intend to eventually work down to growing chains and smaller independent
restaurants as wel?

While these smaller chains do not have as much money, we are seeing an overall
trend towards SaaS solutions in this market. Things like yelp, google, etc are
already being heavily used. Do you intend to penetrate this larger but lower
revenue market? If so, how would the offering be different at all, in terms of
pricing? It seems like right now you are using a quote by quote basis which
100% makes sense.

Regulation. How can I, as a normal end user, trust your reports though? I see
you mentioned how you are validating this information, but how can I really
trust it? Also, do you intend to notify users based on a specific mile radius
of their home/work address (e.g. 25 or 50 miles out). I wouldn't want to get
spammed with places I don't go eat out a lot

Do you intend to do any partnerships with Tripadvisor, and or yelp, or
google(for reviews) to subadvertise in the same medium? Because that is
generally what most people look up when eating at a restaurant if they are
picky about what they eat.

Next, what's stopping your company from pulling a yelp? E.g. predatory
business 2 business practices, by hiding negative reviews etc. How do you
intend to combat this, if at all, or big corporations trying to buy off bad
social media if this scales upward?

In addition - do you at any point intend to remove outbreak data past a
certain point? E.g. an outbreak 10 years ago at a restaurant might not be
relevant today - they might have changed ownership, etc. How do you intend on
combating this?

I wonder as well, if you intend on targeting smaller clients eventually
(restaurants) would you also be targeting foodtrucks too & or caterers?

What big data analytics did your model use to "predict" chipotle's outbreak? I
am curious about case studies.

Did you also at advertise yourself at the chicago NRA show as well. If so,
what was the general reception of both small, mid, and potential big clients

~~~
paddoq
1\. Yes we intend to offer intermediate levels of service, eventually moving
all the way down to a self serve option for a single restaurant.

2\. We are still working on pricing for the smaller participants. The offering
will likely be slightly different, but this scales very well, so we still
think they can get access to quite a few of the features, just needs to be low
/zero touch on our end, and the pricing needs to be right for them to ge
involved.

3\. We have geo-fenced notifications for users, we eventually will allow users
to set a custom radius, and frequency and sensitivity, all pretty easy stuff
to do, just need to get to it.

4\. We are open to partnerships and have been approached about this. Yelp's
business model is somewhat predicated upon 'Eating out is great' so hosting
disparaging information may be less interesting to them. I think as our
service continues to become more normalized and understood and expected, there
will be a lot more great opportunities for partnerships

5\. While I am sitting in this seat, we will not allow companies to buy away
reports. Trust is everything, and I think consumers can figure this out really
fast, and once you lose trust, you don't have much, especially with what we
are doing, there is much more at stake than a normal review site. I thnk the
companies don't want this either. As what we are doing continues to become
more normalized, if our service started to become corrupted, then consumers
lose trust, and another medium will pop up, and it may be a more adversarial
organization. So in the end I think the large brands understand that, and
should want us to continue to be the leading platform in this space.

TBC

~~~
paddoq
6\. We roll data off our site after 30 days, to combat harming restaurants
where the circumstances may have changed. We think this is one reason
restaurants should actually prefer people report on our site vs twitter, or
yelp, or facebook. Our site is not intended as a permanent public record.

7\. Yes we have had interest from theme parks, music festivals, caterers,
airlines, gas stations, big retail that also sells food. We would go all the
way down to food trucks, we get data for all of these, and welcome everyone
taking advantage of it.

8\. What big data analytics did your model use to "predict" chipotle's
outbreak? The relative volume of data we received from Chipotle consumers was
staggering - and this was prior to their first outbreak when they were still
considered 'high quality' we did not need quants or data scientists for this
one.

7\. I speak at a bunch of events, but not yet at the National Restaurant
Association, they are still fighting transparency on restaurant ratings! It
will take them a second to warm up to us. We have started and had some great
conversations with them, but it may take a little longer for them to get
involved. When I have spoken at restaruant associations or other more broad
events (like the Food Safety Summit, or International Association for Food
Protection, which has a lot of industry participants) there are two camps. The
tech forward companies who embrace data, even where it's imperfect, and are
really interested. The remainder is a mixture, when I hear from the critics
among these I typically point out 1) people are already reporting on social
media 2) What I'm doing was bound to happen 3) Given how responsibly we are
running this service, they ought to be glad it is me who is running it. They
usually get these points.

~~~
Kagerjay
didn't expect you to answer all my questions but I would feel more confident
using your product now. Personally I don't eat at sketchy joints anyhow, I'm a
picky eater myself although I tend to eat anything in front of me

7\. I have not been to the food safety summit or internatiionalist association
of food protection, but those are tailored more towards corporate clientelle
anyhow. The NRA show is just a slog of everything so you would have a response
more skewed towards the smaller but larger number of potential clients I
mentioned. You are correct in that the adoption process would be much more
difficult on this level, but it is also a better way to get your name known
just in general among the growing franchisee/franchisor community.

On another note, its important to think of restaurants not as venues of just
places where they serve food. Really these big chain stores are in reality
real estate companies putting investments into their properties. Wawa and
McDonalds are both great examples. Smaller companies generally do not have
this mindset so bear that in mind.

\------------------------------------------------------------------

question - whats your plan for marketing to end user?

For larger marketing efforts towards the general public, what is your plan
here anyhow? The success of any software largely depends on its users sending
in reports (e.g. people eating). Are these people going to find your site
purely based on google searches?

For instance, if I imagined myself in the shoes of people reporting. If I got
sick from a restaurant, I would potentially as well go on a ranting spree and
google things like "how to report restaurant for ecoli/sick/__insert
term__/etc". And find your site

\------------------------------------------------------------------

question - How do you plan on using social media instagram / twitter /
facebook / email / etc to end user?

I'm curious how this will work. For instance, there's the end users social
media(s). The restaurant businesses social media(s) and regional socia
media(s). Your company's social media and possibly regional levels of it too.

You said you will be using SMS to alert end user, but have you tailored a
strategy laying out all edge case scenarios?

\------------------------------------------------------------------

question - if I search "X restaurant name" would I see a domain name link to
dinesafe.com/restaurant_name?

I have a question regarding this. Obviously corporations are going to have a
big social media presence, but smaller restaurants (should you most likely be
targeting this avenue) have a weaker social media / google presence.

I can see if your service were to really take off, it might inadventely affect
businesses negatively. For instance I might search "XYZ restaurant name" and
out comes a list on the 7th or 10th listing about a food safety illness report
on google.

I know you mentioned earlier you have no intention for businesses to tamper
with data entered from their clients. But, what about giving them a 2nd
chance? Unlisting the report directly on google, but leaving the report intact
on the site. Have you considered recourse on this angle as well?

\------------------------------------------------------------------

question - mobile users - webapp or native iOS / android app?

Reporting seems to be a one off thing I can't imagine someone frequently
reporting items. Do you, or do you not intend to make a native app? Possibly
for searching through reported areas, etc

\------------------------------------------------------------------

question - how do you gauge how much a corporate client will pay for your
software?

I'm just curious how this works. You don't need to answer this or be very
specific I am not entirely familiar on how marketing analysis is done to give
an accurate quotation estimate for how you quantity the "risk" they avert and
therefore potential revenue savings.

From a salespoint, it sounds interesting and sometimes hard to convey. Its
like selling just general IT services - some people will question a year down
the road "why do we need IT if they sit around doing nothing and not make us
money" mentality. Either through a change of leadership down the road nearing
the start of the next fiscal year, etc.

\------------------------------------------------------------------

I probably don't have any more questions just curious if you had thought of
the above cases

~~~
paddoq
Good! glad to hear it :)

Thanks for the tip re the real esate perspective, I had not thought of it that
way. The publicly listed companies definitely have a larger group of
participants who care about the outcomes, in their investors.
\-----------------------------------------------------------------

question - whats your plan for marketing to end user?

Earned media has been helpful to us here, search, and social media have also
been helpful. Google search "food poisoning kfc" (or any brand) and you can
see we do reasonably well at that. With more resources we can do a lot better
at all of these, and there is a virtuous cycle for us of identifying more
outbreaks = more press = more awareness = more reports = identifying more
outbreaks.

We are also pretty close to roll out languages - we have active users and
reports in most countries, and public health as well, but improving languages
will help that.

\------------------------------------------------------------------

question - How do you plan on using social media instagram / twitter /
facebook / email / etc to end user?

There is a ton of work to do here, and a lot of upside for us when we get to
it. In terms of the best strategy - this is a work in progress, and as we pull
more brainpower in to help us with that we have a high degree of confidence we
will get it right.

question - You said you will be using SMS to alert end user, but have you
tailored a strategy laying out all edge case scenarios?

We have not ironed out all the edge cases as yet. Our email subscription is
the most popular, there is demand for our app as well, but that is down the
road. There are some interesting opportunities with SMS and messaging, they
need more work.

\------------------------------------------------------------------

question - if I search "X restaurant name" would I see a domain name link to
dinesafe.com/restaurant_name?

I have a question regarding this. Obviously corporations are going to have a
big social media presence, but smaller restaurants (should you most likely be
targeting this avenue) have a weaker social media / google presence.

I can see if your service were to really take off, it might inadventely affect
businesses negatively. For instance I might search "XYZ restaurant name" and
out comes a list on the 7th or 10th listing about a food safety illness report
on google.

>> Yes this does happen, there are some cases where we do rank higher than the
companies own website. Not our intent, we are thinking through this.

question - I know you mentioned earlier you have no intention for businesses
to tamper with data entered from their clients. But, what about giving them a
2nd chance? Unlisting the report directly on google, but leaving the report
intact on the site. Have you considered recourse on this angle as well?

>> We offer the restaurant the opportunity to secure message with the
complainant (anonymized complainant information). Fast, and positive response
to customers can often result in review retractions, and even stronger brand
loyalty. If a customer wants to take a review down we do it. We encourage this
route. Given we roll data off our site after 30 days we feel like we are doing
a lot already, but we are open to refine our solutions on this point.

~~~
Kagerjay
By the way Patrick if you ever need input or feedback I am very well
acquainted with the industry in many different angles. Feel free to reach out
to me, I am interested in seeing how your company progresses

I have my contacts on my username

You can always search through posts comments I've made here on hackernews to
get an idea of what my background knowledge is in.

~~~
paddoq
Thanks! I will do that. I appreciate it.

------
adtac
>We moderate every report, with both a back end review, and front end/human
review of each submission with the goal of eliminating malicious and
inauthentic reports

Humans don't scale. How do you plan on _reliably_ doing this when you get
larger?

>With our data, we predicted that Chipotle would have food safety issues ahead
of their series of outbreaks, and we detected several of their outbreaks, and
many others in real time.

Not to sound pessimistic, but I'd also like to know if you had any false
flags? Where you predicted an outbreak and it never happened? As you can
imagine, falsely publishing something like this could be hugely detrimental to
a company's reputation.

Cool idea, just curious about certain aspects of your operation :)

~~~
solarkraft
A single human doesn't scale, a work force of multiple humans can.

With something this sensitive I would be very wary of machine classification.

~~~
paddoq
Agreed, I expect we would use it to supplement but not supplant human reviews.

------
seapunk
Do you plan to offer an API or a app which show venues where food poisoning
was detected?

~~~
paddoq
Hi, yes we have an API service. We have had interest in an app, and do plan to
release one, we are beta testing right now for IOS and Android.

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SnowingXIV
The cynic in me is screaming that this site is simply a lawyer referral intake
front. There are a number of websites that try to brand themselves as public
service tool but it's basically attorney advertising except more clever.

That's their monetization. They don't have to sell advertising because the
submissions are worth real money alone. I do a fair amount of work in the
legal space and these deceptive tactics are really disappointing to see. I'd
name some of the top offenders of this but I rather not give them anymore
traffic and signals for google. If you're funded by lawyers or are a lawyer
yourself please just say you are without the fog of a non-profit community
driven platform.

If that's not the case with these sites (no way to really know what sort of
handshake deals were made but I'd be surprised) I wish you the best of luck.

~~~
paddoq
Ha. ex-finance guy, nothing to do with law. Thanks for the well wishes. As fyi
- I have been approached by law firms for lead generation, but I think only
twice ever. As I understand it, succesfully litigating a foodborne illness
case can be relatively difficult.

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sametmax
I can't see any way this will be abused.

~~~
crsv
I'm curious if it will have a commercialization model similar to Yelp! - a la
"extortion as a service", wherein the business owners have to pony up to
defend themselves against potentially false allegations.

~~~
paddoq
We are not attacking them, nor are the public health agencies, so hopefully
they do not feel the need to defend. Also given we roll reports off the site
after 30 days we believe there is less of a concern from that perspective. We
are not a permanent record like Yelp or other platforms. Naturally they do
have to pay if they want to get any of the features and services we offer to
help strengthen their food safety program, but we are presenting ourselves as
a partner not an advesary.

~~~
sametmax
Yes it's not extortion. It's protection.

~~~
paddoq
Exactly. This is one topic where everyone is on the same page, people don't
want to get sick, restaurants don't want to make them sick. We are helping
restaurants to do better on their most important core objective.

~~~
afdfwge
Woosh.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket)

