Eat St. iPhone app hits 100,000 downloads

VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA, April 30, 2011 (Press-News.org) One hundred thousand and counting — that's how many people have downloaded the Eat St. App, used to locate mobile food carts throughout North America for a delicious culinary experience.

The app, designed and built by Vancouver interactive agency Invoke Media, landed in the New and Noteworthy section in iTunes App Store and on the What's Hot list for the Canadian app store. Eat St. launched April 3 and hit 50,000 downloads in eight days.

The app is also one of the first to link real time with television programming for an interactive experience. The application is an extension of Eat St., a television series profiling street food vendors across North America. The show runs Wednesdays 9:30 p.m.ET/10:30 p.m. PT on the Food Network Canada.

"Eat Street may be the best example, at least in Canada, of how a television series can co-exist online and in real time" said David Tedman, chief operating officer of Invoke Media (the company that created HootSuite, a social media dashboard). "It gives fans a far deeper experience, and genuinely connects the whole street food community, right down to the folks who cook it all up on street corners across North America."

The free Eat St. application is available for iPhone or via the web. A pre-loaded database of the best street food vendors means it's instantly useful in most major cities across North America, with growth expected as users and vendors add carts.

"We felt that to make Eat St. a great tool at finding the best street food, it also needed to have a simple but powerful way to help vendors connect with their customers," said Jonathan Chui, an app developer at Invoke Media. "Vendors can now update their location, menu items, website and social networks all from within the app or a desktop computer. We're also working hard to allow vendors to schedule future locations, see what users are saying about them, and tweet or update Facebook with a few simple clicks."

Paperny Films created and produced the Eat St. TV series with the Food Network Canada. Invoke Media was brought in to design, build and launch the accompanying app, once a grant was secured from the Bell New Media Fund to help fund it.

For more information about the Eat St. App and television show, check out the press kit at http://eatst.foodnetwork.ca/blog/media-kit. You'll find press releases, images and a teaser video. Go right to the app at http://itunes.apple.com/app/eat-st/id425451799?mt=8#.