Foodspotting secures $3 million Series A

The next year will be huge for mobile and mobile-based startups; Foodspotting will be a part of that

Food discovery service Foodspotting announced Monday that it has secured $3 million in Series A funding led by BlueRun Ventures with follow-on participation from seed round investors. Last August, the startup raised its $750,000 seed round led by Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures, with participation from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Shana Fisher’s High Line Venture Partners, Zelkova Ventures, and 2020 Ventures and several angels, including Dave Morin.

Jay Jamison, a partner at BlueRun, will be joining the company's board of directors.

Since launching publicly a year ago, Foodspotting has hit some awesome milestones. The Foodspotting iPhone app launched in March 2010 and has since accumulated 550,000 users and the Android app just launched in beta last month. Over 300,000 visit the main site monthly to sift through over 275,000 dish recommendations worldwide.

The startup has also secured numerous partnerships over the past year with leading media brands, including The Travel Channel, Zagat, Bravo and food publications such as Grub Street, Thrillist, TastingTable and YumSugar

The site is rapidly becoming the choice destination for consumers who want a “Pandora for food,” as the company puts it.

Even more than Pandora, however, Foodspotting is a service that truly shines when you’re on-the-go. Foodspotting for iPhone is a location-based app that lets users quickly scroll through user-submitted photos of meals and dishes at nearby restaurants, bakeries, etc. As the name implies, Foodspotting distinguishes itself from other similar discovery apps, most notably Yelp, by focusing specifically on images of the food.

For that very reason, Foodspotting selected BlueRun Ventures, a mobile-focused technology investment firm, to lead the Series A round.

Expecting the startup to aggressively develop its mobile apps as smartphone usage only rises in 2011, we asked them if they have plans to bring Foodspotting to other platforms. Their reply: “Definitely - we're looking into other mobile platforms in the near future.”

What is Foodspotting? from Foodspotting on Vimeo.