Chopstreets is an exciting and ground-breaking new social app, the first of its kind in the UK, which puts African and Caribbean food establishments on the technological map. The seeds for developing Chopstreets was born when the app’s founder, Vivian Ngwodo, noted the difficulty of finding good African and Caribbean restaurants, despite the burgeoning appreciation of cuisine from these areas of the world.
Chopstreets curates the best African and Caribbean restaurants, takeaways, pop-ups and supper clubs, and now users can eat their way around the African continent and taste the delicacies of the Caribbean. At the touch of your fingertips you can see African and Caribbean food recommended by your friends and contacts, and ‘event share’ your own dining experiences too!
Born and raised in Nigeria, Vivian has always been a problem solver and a lover of food. In 2010, she resigned from her Foreign Operations job in one of Nigeria’s major banks. She relocated to Scotland to pursue a Master’s Degree and began building her career in the UK financial industry.
Vivian soon moved to London in 2012 to start a new job, and was excited with the prospect of having better access to Nigerian food. Yet, Vivian was soon to find that locating Nigerian or other African restaurants, as well as Caribbean, was easier said than done. Vivian said:
“African and Caribbean cuisines have been under-represented for far too long and I am on a mission to make them famous by using technology to provide a platform for people to discover Afro-Caribbean cuisine easily and also set a standard for the Afro-Caribbean food industry in the UK.”
Realising that there is little visibility or recognition of African and Caribbean restaurants, Vivian saw it necessary to start a restaurant blog and a super directory where she reviewed and listed African and Caribbean restaurants, and food businesses across London, in 2014. Within two years, Londoners appeared to have a burst of appetite for exotic and diverse flavours from Africa.
Whilst undertaking an internship with a digital media company, Vivian began developing the location based app, joining the growing numbers of African women who are using technology to take their entrepreneurial flair to the next level. She said: “My vision for Chopstreets is that it becomes an active social network for both African and Non-Africans as I believe eating is a social activity and the best friendships are made over food.”
Find out more at: www.chopstreets.com
