As we minted out on our 8888 PFP collection of Foodies on MagicEden during a bear market (back on December 2nd, 2022), many new Foodies in our community started to ask us the question:
“How are you not like STEPN and other x2earn projects?”
I will try to answer this question by laying out what is Plato and our plans for growing this project.
What is Plato Eat&Earn?
First off, what is Plato?
TL;DR:
Plato is a marketing platform for restaurant, powered by Eat&Earn.
Slightly longer:
Plato is a marketing platform to help SMB restaurants to spend targeted ad dollars that directly rewards verified eaters. Our eater and earn app is like to Yelp! + Foursquare with tokens and NFT that gamifies and enhances the eater dining experience where eater earns our DINE token, which is funded by marketing spend from restaurants.
How does it work?
Via our mobile Plato Eats app (on iOS and Android):
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Foodies can check-in to their favorite restaurant
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Order food, and take food pics of what they ate and review them
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Verify restaurant spend by capture the restaurant itemized receipt.
What are eaters being rewarded to do? (what’s the work)
Honest reviews: eaters are rewarded to leave an honest review (good / meh / bad) about the dishes they ate (not just the restaurant). A site like Yelp! is negatively biased and only extreme experiences yield reviews. So with Plato, fellow foodies can not only get an honest review about the restaurants but also the actual dishes (review on the dish level)!
Eaters are rewarded with our DINE tokens, which is in the long run sourced from the advertising dollar that restaurants are spending. (more on this below)
What’s the problem Plato is solving for restaurants?
For retail businesses around the world (restaurant included), there is no way to track how digital ad dollars convert to actual foot traffic. SMB restaurant owners can only track visit to website, but not actual eaters who eats at their establishments.
With Plato, restaurant can spend ad dollar and measure how many clicks and visit to their restaurant profile on Plato Eats app converts to actual visits and finally measure how effective their ad spend is.
In fact, with Plato, 75% of restaurant’s ad dollars goes directly to reward the eaters who ate at the restaurant in the form of DINE tokens (25% of the ad spend goes to Plato treasure). DINE token are best used when eater returns to the same restaurant where they earned to redeem for food at the maximal redemption / conversion rate.
So how is this NOT like STEPN?
The restaurant industry is close to a trillion dollar market in North America alone, and if you focused just on restaurant ad spend, it is $25 Billion dollar industry in North America alone.
However, any restaurant owner will tell you that the food industry is a razor thin margin business. As a result, being effective in bring in new eaters and convert them to frequent eaters is KEY and critical in surviving in a post COVID world.
As mentioned before, the problem is that digital marketing platforms like GoogleAds, Yelp!, and many others are not able to track and show restaurants (nor any retailer) how much digital advertising dollars converts to actual food traffic (and purchases)…
Plato stepping up!
When a restaurant put an ad in Plato Eats app, what happens is 75% of ad dollar spent by the restaurant is directly rewarding eaters who visit the restaurant in the form of DINE tokens.
DINE tokens can be redeemed for appetizer (or anything deemed by the restaurant) by eaters the next time they return to the same restaurant.
So how is Plato not like STEPN?
In short, Plato is solving a real world problem in restaurant ad tech (that is a huge market) via Eat&Earn.
Intrigued? Want to learn more?