TL;DR:
BiteSight is a Y Combinator-backed food-delivery app using short-form video for food discovery.- A viral TikTok pitch by the founder’s sister drove the app to No. 2 in the App Store’s Food & Beverage category.
- The app gained 100,000+ users overnight and triggered engineering chaos during the spike.
- BiteSight prioritizes authentic video content, peer restaurant recommendations, and social discovery.
- Co-founders Lucious McDaniel IV and Zac Schulwolf built the app to reflect how Gen Z finds food today.
TikTok Virality: A Founder’s Sister Sets the Stage
The internet trend was simple: look straight into the camera and say, “This is a presentation; be nice.” That’s exactly how Kendall, sister of BiteSight founder Lucious McDaniel IV, kicked off their viral pitch video. What followed was McDaniel explaining his Y Combinator startup—BiteSight—a new kind of food-delivery app powered by video and social discovery.
The app lets users watch videos of dishes before ordering and browse their friends’ food choices. It aims to replicate how Gen Z finds food—through influencers, viral trends, and social proof, rather than generic listings.
Fifteen minutes after posting, McDaniel’s sister texted: “It’s going viral.” The video hit 20,000 views in 15 minutes. Soon, BiteSight’s backend began breaking under the sudden traffic. The engineering team worked around the clock to stabilize the app while McDaniel posted behind-the-scenes TikToks about the chaos—which went viral too.
“People loved the authenticity,” McDaniel told TechCrunch. “They saw what it’s really like when your app explodes overnight.”
A New Way to Order: Social Video Meets Delivery
The original TikTok pitch now has nearly 4 million likes, and the follow-up posts about BiteSight’s journey have added hundreds of thousands more. On Instagram, the trend continued, pushing the app into new user groups and markets.
The inspiration came from a friend of McDaniel’s who made a viral video for his dating app, which gained 1M+ views. That success sparked the idea to try the same for BiteSight.
McDaniel, 24, built the app after realizing he was stuck ordering from the same few places due to how sterile and repetitive existing platforms had become.
“I’d see stock photos and the same 4.6-star ratings everywhere,” he explained. “It didn’t reflect how people actually discover food.”
To solve this, he started manually tracking recommendations from Instagram and TikTok, creating a spreadsheet of authentic reviews and social referrals. Recognizing others were doing the same, McDaniel and co-founder Zac Schulwolf built BiteSight to scale the behavior.
BiteSight’s Origins and Y Combinator Journey
Both founders are no strangers to tech. McDaniel previously worked at General Atlantic focusing on restaurant tech and had founded Phly, a payments startup. He’s also invested in companies like Mercury, a fintech platform.
Schulwolf, 25, serves as CTO. The duo built the first version over a year, eventually joining Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 batch. Their beta launched at NYU in April 2025, followed by an early release in mid-May and the now-famous video in June.
“What made our video work is that it felt authentic and Gen Z could relate,” McDaniel said. “They’re ready for platforms that look like how they live.”
After the video, BiteSight jumped to No. 2 in the App Store’s Food & Beverage category, surpassing Uber Eats, Starbucks, and even McDonald’s.
BiteSight App Surge
| Metric | Value |
| TikTok Video Likes | 4M+ |
| Instagram Likes | 250K+ |
| App Downloads | 100K+ |
| App Store Rank | #2 in Food & Beverage |
| Launch Market | New York City |
| YC Batch | Winter 2024 |
Investors, Restaurants, and Nationwide Demand
Though BiteSight is currently live only in NYC, user demand from other cities began pouring in. Restaurants—ranging from local mom-and-pop shops to national chains—also contacted the company seeking partnerships.
McDaniel noted the surge in investor interest but didn’t disclose deal terms yet, saying only, “Expect some news soon.”
The startup is now gearing up for expansion, planning additional launches in new cities.
Beating Big Tech with Lean, AI-Driven Operations
Despite competitors like DoorDash and Uber Eats, BiteSight believes its nimble model gives it an edge. McDaniel said the company is leveraging AI tools to streamline workflows, automate operations, and reduce staffing needs.
“Instead of 300 engineers, we can get the same result with AI doing 10x the work,” he noted. “It keeps us lean and lets us pass value to customers and small business partners.”
This lean approach, paired with Gen Z-centric UX, is BiteSight’s core bet.
Conclusion: Building the Next Generation of Food Apps
BiteSight isn’t just a viral hit; it’s tapping into something bigger—the shift in how people discover and trust food experiences. Rather than ratings and menus, users want to see, hear, and feel what a dish is like, just as they do on TikTok or Instagram.
“We’re building for a generation that lives on social video,” McDaniel said. “And we’re just getting started.”
