Taylor A. Davis describes Troodie as “a social dining ecosystem where everybody wins.” The Charlotte-based founder and former investment banker has built a mobile app that connects restaurants, content creators, and diners, combining personalized recommendations with creator monetization tools. 

“If you like to travel and eat, you’ll love Troodie,” Taylor explains. “We help restaurants measure the ROI (return on Investment) on their social media marketing by connecting them to content creators in our marketplace who generate content for their businesses. Diners get Personas based on their food and travel preferences, which helps us personalize recommendations. Everybody wins.”

Troodie focuses on local and small-chain restaurants, which Taylor says “keep each city and community going.” The platform serves as a bridge between small hospitality businesses that lack in-house marketing teams and creators who want to monetize their passion for food and travel.

Before founding Troodie in 2023, however, Taylor spent nearly a decade in finance, most recently as a healthcare investment banker at Cain Brothers. Her path to entrepreneurship began with a personal frustration. “My friends and I loved trying new restaurants, but we had an Excel sheet, bookmarks, and notes all over the place. It wasn’t very practical,” she recalls. “I thought there had to be a better way to share recommendations.”

That idea became the seed for Troodie, initially envisioned as a social dining app where users could save and share restaurant lists. But conversations with restaurant owners and content creators revealed a much larger opportunity. 

“One restaurant owner told me they knew social media was important, but didn’t have anyone on staff to manage it,” Taylor says. “At the same time, content creators were saying how much time they spent doing cold outreach or posting and hoping restaurants would collaborate.”

Personalization at the Core

One of Troodie’s defining features is its Persona system, which uses AI to tailor restaurant recommendations to each diner’s preferences. “When you download the app, we ask eight questions about your food and travel habits,” Taylor explains. “Based on that, our algorithm assigns one of eight Troodie Personas.”

For example, users who enjoy fine dining and craft cocktails might be “Luxe Planners,” while those who prefer hole-in-the-wall discoveries could be “Hidden Gem Hunters.” The app’s goal is to make discovery feel human, not algorithmic. “If you Google ‘best restaurant in Chicago,’ the top result might not be the best for you,” Taylor says. “We want to recommend places that match who you are.”

This personalized model extends to Troodie’s community-building features as well. Diners can create collaborative boards, i.e., shared collections of restaurants for trips or group outings, and join local communities within the app to exchange recommendations. 

“Food brings people together,” Taylor says. “We wanted to keep that sense of community alive.”

A Marketplace for Creators and Restaurants

For content creators, Troodie functions as a job board for food collaborations. “Fashion and retail creators often earn 20% more than food creators because they have more opportunities,” Taylor notes. “We want to change that.”

Through Troodie’s Creator Marketplace, local creators can find campaigns from restaurants looking to promote seasonal menus or special events. “You don’t have to send a hundred cold DMs anymore,” Taylor explains. “You can log in, see which restaurants are looking for content, and apply directly.”

Restaurants, meanwhile, gain a way to track return on investment. “Over 50% of people now discover where to eat through social media,” Taylor says. “If a restaurant isn’t showing up on TikTok or Instagram, it’s getting harder for them to be found. We help them fix that.”

The marketplace also factors in the growing influence of AI in search. “It’s not just about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) anymore,” Taylor says. “With AI summaries appearing on Google, restaurants need to be optimized for AI discovery too, and most small restaurants don’t have the time or know-how to handle that. We help them stay visible.”

Early Pilots and Results

Before the app’s official rollout, Troodie ran a pilot program with several Charlotte-area businesses. 

“We helped a local wine shop promote their weekly tasting,” Taylor says. “By running a short campaign and posting consistently, we increased attendance by over 50%.” A year later, she adds, the shop reported that most of those first-time attendees had become regular customers.

Troodie also ran pilots with a local coffee shop and another wine retailer, both of which saw significant increases in customer turnout. For Taylor, these results demonstrated that structured creator collaborations can yield long-term gains for local businesses. “It showed how powerful social media can be when it’s done consistently,” she says.

Learning to Build from the Ground Up

Transitioning from finance to tech entrepreneurship was not without challenges. “I’m not a software engineer,” Taylor admits. “In the beginning, I built a no-code MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and worked with contractors, but that took much longer than expected. I eventually had to start over with new code and a new team.”

Her biggest lesson came from timing. “If I could go back, I would have waited to go full-time until I had a full-time engineer fully bought in. It took longer than I expected to find the right technical partner.”

Taylor eventually met Troodie’s CTO (Chief Technology Officer), who helped rebuild the product from scratch. “Now product development is smooth, and we’re finally able to launch,” she says. “It’s been a long journey, but worth it.”

Affordability is central to Troodie’s business model, Taylor emphasizes. “We’re focused on local and independent restaurants, not corporate chains,” she says. “We want to make sure the places that make every city special have access to the technology they need to compete.”

Scaling From Charlotte to the World

Although Troodie launched in Charlotte, North Carolina, Taylor says interest is growing beyond the city. “We already have restaurants and creators on our waitlist from other cities,” she says. “We’ll launch nationwide and eventually globally.”

The immediate priority, however, is the beta launch of the Creator Marketplace. “We’re completing our beta testing and preparing to launch publicly,” Taylor says. “The goal is to start generating revenue, expand our user base, and keep helping restaurants and creators connect.”

For now, success is defined less by downloads than by impact. “If a restaurant says, ‘We were struggling to get people in the door, but now we have consistent revenue because of Troodie,’ that will mean everything to me,” Taylor says.

Taylor also envisions future features that close the loop between online discovery and offline dining. “Fashion creators can use affiliate links to track sales,” Taylor says. “Food creators don’t have that yet. With Troodie, we can change that.”

As Troodie enters its next phase, Taylor remains focused on community and sustainability. “Everybody eats, and everybody wants good food experiences,” she says. “We’re helping restaurants stay open, helping creators build careers, and helping diners discover the places they’ll love.”

When it comes to defining success, Taylor returns to her mission: “When a restaurant tells us they’re thriving because of Troodie, that’s when I’ll know we’ve done something meaningful.”

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