Show HN: CheapFoodMap – A map of good meals under $10

This feels like GasBuddy, but for food.

One of the reasons GasBuddy took off was that it wasn't just based on community reports; there was an incentive for gas stations themselves to accurately report their prices and keep them up to date.

It seems like you're trying to discourage businesses from participating (e.g. by not accepting sponsored placements), and that will have implications for your growth rate. I think you should look for ways to give businesses an active role, without eroding user trust in the recommendations, of course.

Think of the possibilities:

- Business can add coupons to its listing, making cheap food even cheaper

- Business can confirm a reported deal, adding to its credibility

- Business can provide full menu and a link to order takeout

I don't think any of those features would make users feel like the business is "buying" a listing it didn't earn.

Could see this being useful for people who are on the road for a living, or regularly operating in areas where they’re not familiar with the offerings. Truck drivers, salespeople, etc.

That said, kneejerk after using it is: price is a challenging anchor, because food is not uniform. I’d be curious if users are more interested in “under $10, ignoring all else” or “a better deal than comparable” - though, there’s a lot of subjectivity in that.

Gasbuddy works because 1 gallon of gas = 1 gallon of gas, so price is a useful anchor.

$5 for sushi at one place could be a bad deal, while a great deal at another place.

An $8 steak would be cheap. An $8 hot dog would be a ripoff.

I’d be skeptical of restaurants luring people with a single cheap item, or about quality/portion changes.

All this said, Ikea is known for designing furniture _around_ the price their target customer thinks a table should cost. Restaurants are likely (hopefully!) aware of where these price thresholds are for their customers … and your site could be an interesting way of sending them a different type of customer than they’d historically targeted. Or, allow them to refine an offering to maximize profit at the $10 price point.

As others have said, engage restaurants and make them part of the equation. They’re not your adversary.

In short: cool! Do lots of experiments and research!

  - 1/4 lb burger and fries, 
  - bec on a roll with coffee, 
  - 2 eggs, hash browns, toast and coffee
  - soup and sandwich 
  - slice of pizza

  - 3 tacos
  - burrito

  - rice & protein and side

  - 1/2 rotisserie chicken and fries
  - (Hempstead, LI) 1/2 rotisserie chicken and a Heineken haha

Sam's Club Cafe sells $1 hot dogs and $2.50 pizza slices with a drink, and it doesn't not require a membership to visit.

Larger families (4+ kids) shop at Warehouse clubs because they need items in bulk, but they are also often cost sensitive because they have a higher multiplier. You might see a family of 8 eating for under $20. Talk to that family, and they will tell you all the other places in town that they can afford to take their family to. They will also know other families who would be interested in your site.

I love the idea, but a quick glance (randomly at SF) reveals entries that aren't "meals" (IMO, anyway) but rather snacks - like two spring rolls for $8, or a slice of pizza for $5.53. Also, the days of a $1 slice may have (long) gone, but $5.33 for a slice seems median at best, not "cheap".

Have you thought about either some guidance, or even a filter, for meal size?

$10 isn't $10 everywhere. There are still places in the country where $10 feels expensive. You may want to add a filter for even cheaper meals.

On the other end, increasingly, even fast food combos are more than $10. It would be helpful to highlight franchise meals that are actually affordable. Just don't let people add dollar menus or non-combos.

Posts should somehow only admit whole meals. If someone says their local taco truck sells a single street taco for $6.99, that's means a meal is more like $20.

This is a great idea I fully commend. An additional option for meals under $10 is cooking them oneself too.

I know this might appear to be obvious, but is still a viable option IMHO. A used copy of the "Joy of Cooking" book and some creative shopping can go a long way.

When visiting the US, I lerned that a meal that costs 10$ is actually 10$ + some random tax + a tip = 20$

The leaderboard with acorns is a smart touch. gamification might actually solve your price freshness problem better than anything else. If updating a price earned acorns too, your top contributors would keep the data current for you. Nice project, and the 10% to food banks commitment on the about page is a good look.

Neat idea.

I don't like giving my location, zip code should be good enough. I think if I tap List it kind of works but not really. I'm in SoCal for what it's worth.

I like the idea. It would be nice a worldwide map. I mean, not only across the US.

How do you vet 'a meal'? Manually? I ask because some places will have say fries, or sides or $1 oysters or others will have $2 wings but with a minimum purchase of 6.

Otherwise, great job. I like it.

UX report: On desktop chromium, clicked on a "14 restaurants nearby" restaurant item, and... nothing changed on the map. Little idea where it is. Got address from popup and... map wasn't showing that street name. Zoom in, pan around, repeat. Struggle. Apparently cluster markers (like "(2)") don't visually indicate selection at all. And the unclustered restaurant marker selection indication was subtle enough for me to miss, at least when getting started. Especially given the draws-the-eye distraction of the popup, so the indication transition itself wasn't noticed.

Also on the "restaurants nearby" list, every card said "New York, NY". Unhelpful ink. I wished it was showing the address line, at least when all the city lines were the same.

A relieved word of thanks for not using the frustrating Google Maps "Search this area" yes-really-please button.

I saw someplace interesting, then realized, "oh yeah, I tried to go there, but they don't open until <after my window>". Also, "that looks interesting... I wonder when they're open?", then checked GMaps via button, which didn't have hours but did have popular times (it's a truck).

Fwiw. Has given me a couple of places to try - thanks!

Meal is a bit hard to define.

Here are some cases:

You can get food for under $10 at many casual NYC restaurants -- if you just order an appetizer.

Also a snack is not a meal. For instance, I noticed a Salted Egg Yolk Bun in NYC for $1.50. But that's not really a meal (unless you get 4 of them). https://cheapfoodmap.com/spot/golden-steamer-new-york-ny

The average check price in NYC Chinatown can easily be under $10 if you get the right combination of appetizers/snacks.

Furthermore there are places where you can get food by the pound. Technically you can get a prepared meal at Whole Foods ($12.99/lb salad bar) if you get it just under 0.76 lbs. If you're light eater, then every Whole Foods in the country qualifies as cheap eats. Then the map will be saturated.

I don't understand the $10 part. Today's $10 is 2027's $12. You mentioned inflation.

It should be value for value, or pegged to a state's minimum wage or something, but then you lose the $10 marketing angle.

Sucks about getting laid off (been there, still there), but I don't see this as an ongoing concern if you are targeting consumers. If I am hungry, $10 is not my criteria. It could be $5, it could be $10.59 depending on fast I can get that protein in. Do I drive, does it get delivered, or do I just go downstairs to a taco stand.

OTOH, as others suggested, you could have businesses and franchises fight for foot traffic with coupons/promos.

Define "good" and "meal"

I’d like to see something similar to Spain’s menú del día. Also, please indicate whether guilt-inducing tipping is required.

In Dallas, you can eat affordably at any 99 Ranch supermarket hot deli—think Panda Express, but with larger portions and lower cost. You can also get low-cost dim sum items at 99 Ranch.

Many Dallas food halls, such as Legacy Hall, are fairly overpriced, so I’d avoid them. The cost at mall food courts varies.

Some fast-casual restaurants offer a free kid’s meal one day a week or with the purchase of an adult entrée. But usually, an Asian supermarket’s hot deli offers the best value, especially if it’s located in the heart of an Asian neighborhood. Avoid any asian food located in downtown as that tend towards high prices.

website name: eat2live, dailyeats, affordableeats, weeat, eatdaily,

I also live in Dallas and had a feeling Fuel City would be #1 or close to it. Apparently, there's a taco place a few miles away in Bishop Arts that is 2 cents cheaper, but I bet they don't have outdoor block parties with live DJs, longhorns on site, a swimming pool with a statue of a velociraptor, or a huge neon sign over a gas station saying "Where Dreams Come True." I'm sticking with Fuel City. There are downsides hard to account for with price alone, though. Riverfront Blvd has been under construction for 7 years and hasn't had usable sidewalks in longer than I can remember, so you have no choice but to drive there. Plenty of other places I can walk to, so in practice, that's usually what I do.

I checked and will stat from positive that it looks cool although it feels confusing seeing so much things on map. can it be like remove all other things than road . just keep road so only visible thing would be path and the food address. also I tried with email login but magic link never sent to email. also it would be great if you integrate with food delivery people and also show there rates od delivery . because they keep it hidden and than at the end of bill or invoice as customer I get annoyed to see much charges by them.

This would also work amazingly with https://beliapp.com which is a tool for - only - sharing restaurant reviews with your contacts to serve as a personal graph of trust.

Or you could also implement your own on-site equivalent of it, if people are sharing their reviews anyway.

It's also excellent for vlogger content, if you want to get the word out, although influencers aren't historically known for tenacious attribution and credit in their content. :)

> It's inspired by 거지맵 (Beggar's Map) a Korean crowdsourced map students use to find cheap eats.

This sounds great; really hoping it takes off. I'm curious: would Beggar's Map work pretty much as-is in other countries, or if not, why not?

I'd suggest making whatever price cutoff you decide on the price for a meal, not a dish. One dish, like a great bowl of tofu stew, can be a meal in itself, but let submitters decide.

Students in college towns are an obvious audience, and I can imagine plenty of low-cost ways to reach out to them and get them to seed the site. Be sure to include Berkeley in your outreach!

I like it. I built a chrome plugin for rating the best dish at a restaurant, this definitely reminds me of that.

Added a couple spots in Seattle (where it's exceptionally hard to get any food below $10)

No suggestions, just happy to see something that's NOT an AI tool. Even happier that I'll get some use out of this. Maybe add somewhere on the site/app where I can input suggestions if I were to have any later?

Noticing all of the Costco hot dog listings on the map reminds me: There's also an incentive for businesses to pose as users and misreport prices of competitors. My local Costco gas station constantly has a set of users misreporting the price of fuel, reporting the price as several cents higher than in actuality, seemingly in order to prevent consumers from refueling there. Something to watch out for.

That's very very nifty. The midwest is devoid of users, or cheap food, or both?

1. I can't add a thing, says address incorrect. Confirmed via google maps entry. 2. Drag and drop image upload expected by the dashed outlines but doesn't exist. 3. It should be possible to choose/save a location from a map after a search instead of entering it from blank fields. (see #1)

it's not working for me. probably just slammed.

it'd be nice to be able to actually just click on a restaurant listing in the map rather than having to search for it.

also, happy hour options might make sense -- maybe some way to filter out (or see) results that are only available during a happy hour. Users could check "happy hour item" and enter the times for the happy hour.

finally, if people enter cheap items that aren't large enough to be a "meal" (like one taco for $3.50) this might become less useful.

I would be interested in adding some slovenian spots for the love of the game if you are looking for a europe branching :)

Would love a gluten-free / dietary restriction filter, or at least a filter where gluten/wheat is not an ingredient (separate from cross-contamination). Unfortunately, cheap-ish food is harder to find with dietary restrictions. Even filtering by Asian, Mexican, Italian, Mediterranean, etc., would be helpful.

Also, a way to verify or link to the menu item, hours, etc., at a place would also be helpful.

One thing I’d recommend is somehow separating a la carte versus full meal type items if theres a way to separate them on the data side. You should see this in Texas where you might have a taco place with a $4 taco or Vietnamese with a $9 banh mi, the latter being substantially more food.

Also the map viewport does’t restore when click back from a restaurant/menu item page and it throws me back to Texas.

Would love to see restaurants in Canada included

I like that I can filter by a specific area, but I wonder if people would be better served to get down to regions instead of a city. Dallas is pretty big, and I don't want to drive from Love Field all the way to Lakeside for lunch...

It would be great to somehow either

- Get to the map from a city list

- refine the city to a neighborhood level

“$9.50” with a bowl of ramen emoji. I click it and it’s coffee. Is the $9.50 for coffee? What is $9.50

Edit: I’m in SF near Union Square maybe that’s why. Looks a lot better in Dallas with photos of the menus

I see taxes and tips, but not whether a drink is included or if you have to drink water to keep it under $10.

(Only one place with a drink can give you a small lunch around $10 here, because no tip.)

At the bottom of the lists, after you've scrolled through and clicked on some restaurants, you should have a "I'll do it myself" button that uses some llm to create a $10 meal recipe using the restaurants you clicked as inspiration.

I really liked the user experience and how easy it was to use.

Would you mind sharing where you got this food data? I wanted to create maps labeling free parking areas, yet I can’t get access to the required geospatial data.

I just tried to add a place in Rahat, Israel, but the site seems US only. Go ahead and open it up internationally. I only know two places with under-$10 USD meals, but I love them both.

Why wouldn't you just use Google Maps with a single-$ price filter?

I like how cute the design is! What tech stack did you use and how did you design the website?

Signed, Backend dev struggling to have good designs for a mobile app I’m making

I tried to add some spots in Berlin, but when I'm looking at the spot on the map and then click "Drop a spot" and type the restaurant name it's not finding it.

What about just linking their Google Business instead of filling out a submission and uploading photos? That actually helps the business rank more.

What tech did you use? Are you caching the locations? Are you using google data but openstreetmap?

Tried to add a spot in New Zealand and couldn't select the address.

Bahn Bi at Miss Saigon in BNZ Centre, Christchurch if anyone is looking!

Nice! I've always wanted something like this clubbed with Coupons, Offers and combos that can be a steal deal sometimes.

A lot of things aren't healthy like pizza and fried chicken.

They should add the cost of future open heart surgery to the cheap meal.

Great idea here, you got my click right away when I read the title.

I added a good spot in Tyson's Corner, VA - Falafel Inc. $5 for a sandwich

I also clicked around some more and noticed that there are some chains on there but only one is tagged per chain. Maybe some automation around finding the other locations of chains at data entry time. Some examples - Taco Bamba is a staple here and can be cheap, multiple locations all over the place. Andy's pizza is another one, although as another user pointed out, $5 is not a screaming deal for a slice, but it is under $10. When I typed in Falafel Inc, I saw the other locations there already, so maybe as simple as a multiselect or select all.

I like the google auth integration without forcing the use of my identity for the username. Probably worth adding a google logo as I read right past that initially as an option for auth.

I also love some of the other ideas for expansion and offering advertising options for restaurants that want it. That could be a good way to support your efforts. Maybe you could even incentivize users to tell the restaurants about this in some way.

Minor issue - When I liked my own drop, it took a few seconds to update in the UI.

As for price freshness model, I'm not exactly clear on how well that will work until there is more data there. If I could click and check out the menu real quick, that's enough for me to commit to trying it out. Looks like you are going with the upvote/downvote model, which I think could work. It might also be possible to hook into some of the online ordering apis to get the live data (ie. Slice - https://slice.com/ and others)

Can you give us negative filters? Literally nothing but Mexican food listings in my area.

I wish this had existed when I was a student. Please support non-US locations as well.

Dropped a couple spots in my area. I like seeing the deals in the community section.

> The map couldn't load. This usually means an ad blocker or privacy extension is blocking Google Maps... > Try disabling blockers for cheapfoodmap.com,

Try disabling your goofy expections that I'll spend a minute to learn if your page is worth it.

No results in my particular metro area, but I love the idea!

Wow! I like it even if Im living in South Korea.

거지맵 meaning beggar is a generous translation of the word

Australia support, please! AUD15 limit?

Love this. Great idea.

It would be cool to drop a bounding box.

Great app. Not a great sign for global economy.

neat site. just added a spot for Savannah, GA. I submitted my email for a magic link, but nothing arrived (yet) fyi.

Do you filter out snacks/appetizers?

I love it, but I want EU support!

(US only)

It will end up like this:

- $9.99 (slob food that much cheaper if you bought it from any grocery store)

- $5.99 delivery

- $7.99 tip

- $2.99 service fee

- sales tax on all that

Total: ~$30.

any plans on expanding it internationally?

brb gotta add literally every pizza place in NYC

But seriously, this is great, and has already given me some new spots to try for lunch. Hopefully it takes off! I’d imagine it’ll be easiest to get a good engagement loop going in the big cities, so maybe worth focusing on them at the outset? ~80 places in NYC is a good start, but it’s the tip of the iceberg.

Edit: oh yeah I know we all love the web, but this would be nice as an app

cool concept, seems like also a good way to avoid touristy places :)

how do you verify the prices btw? even yesterday I'd check a place that had their own website with menu and when I arrived there the prices were ~10-15% higher. noped out of there real quick.

eat2live dot info

One taco and one slice of pizza.

I mean, technically correct but...

See also, Too Good To Go, which has full meals at the end of the day and often comes under 10 dollars. I use this quite a lot as you basically get the same food, you just can't choose what you want, they just give you whatever, but it's supposed to be 3x worth the sticker price ie an 8 dollar TGTG meal must be worth 24 bucks retail.

I tried to add Corti bros in Sacramento but it’s not considered a restaurant. It’s a grocery store with a sandwich shop and deli inside. 8.50 for a big sandwich.

https://orderonlinemenu.com/CortiBrothers

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