onezone, a new app for Londoners looking for cool places to eat and drink, is launching this month to coincide with the forthcoming relaxation of lockdown restrictions. onezone’s mission is to ensure everyone can find cool places in the city easily.
onezone has curated over 1,500 places in London including restaurants, bars, cafes, pubs, hotels and hangouts. Every place is visited and photographed to make sure it fits the onezone approved standard – great food, cool vibes and top service – before being added to the app. On top of curating London for you, onezone makes discovery even easier by putting everything from search and discovery through to booking and sharing with your friends all in one app.
London onezoners, who include the likes of Kieran Gibbs (ex-Arsenal footballer), Nikki Lilly (Gen-Z influencer/teen star) and food influencer ClerkenwellBoy (who has also come on board as an investor and advisor), have quickly adopted the ‘onezone approved’ standard as a brand they can trust.
“As lockdown restrictions start to ease, people are excited to get out and support London’s hospitality industry. Twenty-eight percent of people are planning to up their spending in restaurants and cafes once restrictions lift*,” commented onezone founder and CEO, Natasha Zone. “And with so many new openings and closures over this time, keeping on top of where to eat out in London can be a challenge. We believe everyone should have access to the coolest places in London and onezone makes it easy to discover what’s cool, and book and share easily, all in one app.”
onezone users can scroll through the homepage for new openings, search by areas within a city or filter by cuisine/occasion using the lists or tags feature. When out, users have the ‘near me’ map to discover cool places around them, and while browsing, they can tick off where they’ve been and save favourites or places they want to “go try” straight to their profile. They can also follow their friends and check out their profiles to see where they have been or book somewhere to “go try” together next. onezone-approved venues have their own profile that allows users to see unique photos, check the menu, book a table, DM with friends and get an Uber or directions straight there.
During lockdown, Clerkenwell Boy, an award-winning food influencer with 278k+ followers on Instagram, spent time pulling together an extensive, constantly updated list of openings and closures to keep London’s diners informed of dining options, before discovering and investing in onezone.
“I am extremely excited about the onezone app,” commented Clerkwenwell Boy, “I strongly believe in supporting the best restaurants, bars and pubs, including local and independent food vendors, as well as being able to connect them to a wide audience of diners who are keen to discover the places across London offering incredible food, great service and good vibes. I get hundreds of messages asking for recommendations of where to eat out – it can be hard to narrow down to the best of the best. The onezone app does it all for you, and much more!“
onezone was created by 28 year old Londoner Natasha Zone, who started the business in early 2018, after ten years in hospitality and concierge. As the ‘go to’ person for where to eat and drink in London for her friends and family, Zone realised that finding cool places is tough, and relying on friends or trawling through online user reviews is time consuming and unreliable, and she knew there had to be a better way.
Natasha quit her job to build onezone, which has generated more than 300,000 monthly screen views and 5,000 bookings through the beta app, and experienced 60% month-on-month growth from downloads by Gen-Y’s and Z’s.
Following a soft launch and beta-testing in London pre-pandemic, onezone secured 25,000 users and is on track for 50,000+ new users this summer. By the end of 2021, onezone will have added new UK and European cities to the app, including Manchester, Amsterdam and Paris.
In the near future, users can also expect further development of the app’s personalisation and social features, including a sophisticated recommendations algorithm and new ways for onezone-approved venues to talk directly to their customers. onezone is ready to deliver its vision of bringing curated discovery to the world: land in any city and know exactly where to eat and drink.
