OwnerListens has raised over $1 million in funding for its suggestion box that lets customers anonymously communicate with store owners.

The business was formed out of a Hummus restaurant in Palo Alto. Owner Oren Dobronsky noticed that patrons would usually request to speak with him to leave positive or negative feedback — but he wasn’t always around to hear it. Dobronsky also came to the conclusion that it’s easier to offer incisive feedback (highly valuable for any business) in an anonymous setting.

He’s got a point — we’ve all probably been irked by an experience at a restaurant or hair salon, but have opted to wait until we’re home to let out our frustration on a site like Yelp.

The Android and iPhone apps were originally developed for patrons of his own restaurant, Oren’s Hummus. But the apps developed a small following among consumers, and 1,200 businesses promptly signed up. TechCrunch reports that Philz Coffee and Whole Foods are OwnerListens’ customers.

Establishments will still receive feedback if they’re not registered with OwnerListens. The team will hunt down the right inbox, and forward along the message. It’s a great customer acquisition tool — once they receive feedback, many business-owners will opt to sign up.

Menlo Ventures, Promus Ventures, Commerce Ventures, Subtraction Capital, Steve Blank, Jeff Epstein, Cary Rosenzweig, and Marc Abramowitz are among the investors that funded the company’s seed round.

photo credit: andreakw via photopin cc

Locu simplifies the technical aspects of maintaining a current online menu so chefs can focus on more important things, like creating delicious food. Using Locu’s menu management dashboard, restaurants can edit, design, and share their menus across the web. As McClure noted, the restaurant industry is not the most technologically advanced, and many eateries gain a significant amount of exposure through Yelp. However, menus on Yelp are often outdated, so potential customers still have visit the restaurant’s actual website (if they have one) to check out their options.

This partnership will make it easier for the 15,000 small businesses on Locu to extend their storefront by posting their menus , photos, and daily specials to Yelp’s 100 million unique visitors across multiple channels. Yelp, in turn, will benefit from a better menu offering, which is likely encourage higher levels of user engagement.

“Like most consumers, one of the best ways to discover great local businesses is by searching online,” said Locu CEO Rene Reinsberg in an email. “Yelp is one of the most important places for our local businesses customers to be found by consumers. I want to see whether a business is open and what they are offering right now, so having a real-time price list and photos can make a huge difference in my decision.”

Locu also works with hair/nail salons, spas, home cleaning services, and fitness studios. The API gives developers access to “the world’s largest real-time structured repository of local business offerings data,” which comes directly from merchants. The platform is built on machine learning, and distributes information in real time to hundreds of publishers and other search platforms, like OpenTable, TripAdvsior, Citysearch, and now Yelp. The company was founded by MIT graduates and is backed by General Catalyst Capital Partners, Lowercase, Lightbank, SV Angel and angel investors.

Some people still enjoy the thrill of surprise when you open up a restaurant menu and glance at the offerings for the first time. However, in today’s world of dietary restrictions, checking ahead of time to make sure there are gluten-free, vegan-friendly, paleo-approved options is a necessity for some. And as the restaurant industry becomes more focused on using seasonal ingredients, menus are constantly changing. Restaurants that are committed to a dynamic menu put a lot of work into coming up with the dishes and finding the right ingredients, and a lack of tech-savvy shouldn’t limit their capability to connect with consumers.

This partnership is one step toward making menus suck less.

Photo Credit: Thompsoe/Flickr, Locu

Chefs Feed launched in four new cities today, bringing its curated selection of chef-recommended dishes to Las Vegas, San Diego, Denver, and Boulder. The app is now available in 19 cities in America as well as London, and it features curated content from over 600 elite chefs. But the founders are not just interested in geographical growth; they are setting out to build a media empire.

“Everything we do, we do with the chefs in mind,” said founder and CEO Steve Rivera, in an interview at VentureBeat’s office. “Before they were just the guys with big white coats back in the kitchen, now they have this celebrity status. Their brands are bigger than they are. We are capitalizing on where the food scene is and creating dialogue, to help chefs keep the lights on in their restauranteurs and monetize on their fame.”

Chefs create profiles with a selection of their favorite dishes at other restaurants with the app. The content provides a glimpse into what the best chefs like to eat and serves for a guide for diners who want to track down the most delicious dishes. It’s an excellent way for locals to discover hidden gems as well as for travelers to quickly figure out where they’d like to eat in a new place.

“People are getting frustrated with user-generated content,” said founder and CMO Jared Rivera. “They want to get straight to the point. Anyone who cares what they are putting in their body and doesn’t want to sledge through a bunch of noise to find out whats good, goes right to the experts. A meal is a terrible thing to waste and you don’t want to screw around with good food.”

I have tested out Chefs Feed in San Francisco and on a recent trip to Seattle. For me, the content provides an exciting glimpse into the worlds of chefs I have read about and admired. Users scroll through the images on chefs profiles, and can click on specific items and chefs to learn more. You can also follow your favorite chefs and click on “Ate it” or “Plan it” buttons for dishes you have or want to try. A feed surfaces content as chefs add it, and the “Feed Me Now” feature will pull up a map of tasty options in your area.

It is Chefs Feed I have to thank for guiding me to Zuni’s roasted chicken for two. I am still drooling.

Diners benefit from help with where to eat and what to order. Chefs, on the other hand, view Chefs Feed as a platform to engage with their fans and patrons when they are outside of the kitchen.

“A lot of chefs realize they should use social networking and technology, but you forget to do it or time becomes an issue,” said chef Mark Dommen of One Market Restaurant in San Francisco. “This is a great way to connect with customers when are are unable to get out in the dining room. There are so many restaurants out there, to be able to connect with anyone is really helpful. I like the fact that the audience all are people who are into food.

Founders Steve and Jared Rivera are brothers who ran a successful restaurant PR company that Wagstaff Worldwide acquired last year. They had been working on Chefs Feed as a side project and decided to turn it into a full-fledged business. Jared then embarked on cross-country journey, sponsored by Virgin, where he became the “chef whisperer” and ate at over 500 restaurants in eight months. Twelve cities (and a few extra pounds) later, they launched the first version of the product.

Chefs Feed 2.0 came out last October with added social features that pulls in social graphs and helps you communicate more directly with chefs as well as make OpenTable reservations. Now, their vision is even bigger. Continued national expansion is on the way, but the Riveras have plans to add in more marketing tools for chefs, syndicate the content, explore e-commerce, build a unique lead generation system, and take transactional costs for referrals.

In the meantime, I will continue to lust over images of roasted meats, seasonal salads, and decadent desserts.

Photo credit: Chefs Feed

To make that possible Evernote is serving up a brand new version of Evernote Food, an app for iPhone and iPad. Just as bakers do when their cake is missing that je ne sais quoi of deliciousness, Evernote started again from scratch.

Evernote Food launched in December of last year to capture memorable moments around food. Users could create Meals and add photos, captions, location tags, and notes to document their dining adventures. Evernote is a wildly popular digital notebook that can be used to save ideas, liked things, lists, and images and even to organize work projects.

The company recently raised a whopper of an $85 million round of funding. During an interview with VentureBeat, chief executive Phil Libin stated his intention was to focus on product and the app’s mobile platforms to keep its 45 million users excited and engaged.

With Evernote Food 2.0, foodies of all persuasions will be able to capture every stage of epicurean pleasure, from the initial inspiration through the preparation process, up to the “grande finale” of the meal. The design takes into consideration that meals often start “hours, days, even weeks before you take the first bite.” Now upon opening the app, users can choose from four options: Explore Recipes, My Cookbook, Restaurants, and My Meals.

The recipes function is a search tool with content from popular blogs and websites. Users can casually peruse recipes or search the database by dish, ingredients, or source. They can then store recipes in My Cookbook.

For those looking to eat out, Evernote Food 2.0 has a restaurant discovery feature. Diners can search by location or type of cuisine and can access relevant information about each location. Places can be saved in a to-do list or logged as a place already visited.

Once you have created a beautiful home repast or stuffed yourself at a restaurant of your choosing, the My Meals feature lets you preserve those memories in true Evernote form.

There are hundreds of food apps out there for finding and sharing recipes and just as many ways to document food experiences. Many of these products are great in one particular area but don’t offer options for the entire spectrum of eating.

As the team stated it in a blog post, this single app can work for “everything from cooking your grandma’s recipe to planning a dining tour of Tokyo.”

Evernote was founded in 2009 and is based in Redwood City, Calif.

Check out this video exploration of Evernote Food 2.0:

Our parents told us not to trust strangers, and while this wisdom is primarily applicable to issues of safety, it applies to food as well. LocalSpin is an iPhone app that lets people share recommendations on restaurants, bars, and cafes with people win their social network. Rather than trusting 250 anonymous strangers on Yelp or the high falutin’ opinion of a food critic, users can access their friends’ preferences to decide where to eat. The New York City company has raised $250K from a group of local angel investors.

When planning a night out, choosing the right venue is paramount. A romantic aura can take a dinner from mediocre to magical, while an overly formal setting can quash the lightheartedness of a girls’ night out.

Gentlemen, you can stop worrying about picking a good date spot: LifeStyleFeed is here to make the selection process easier.

LifeStyleFeed is a database of video previews for restaurants, bars, and entertainment spots. The company works with venues to produce short videos that capture the atmosphere of the place. Consumers watching the content gain a stronger sense of their potential destinations, helping them make better informed decisions.

“As a concierge, host, and restaurant-industry veteran, I am personally involved in charting people’s experiences,” said CEO Leon Harvey. “This is an enormous responsibility, as it can make or break an experience. LifeStyleFeed lets you learn about each venue before you arrive, so there are no surprises. It literally lets you be your own concierge.”

Reviews and recommendations are useful, but require a certain amount of trust in the source. People have different tastes, needs, and opinions, and what is right for one person’s birthday party may not be right for others. I could rave about an intimate wine bar to a friend, who finds the space too cozy for comfort, and two groups can have divergent experiences of the same place.

These video clips enable consumers to make more informed, personal choices without prior knowledge of a venue. They’re organized into categories, including Fine Dining, Casual, and Night Clubs. Some restaurants focus on glamour shots of signature dishes, while a lounge may choose to show footage of a busy Friday night when the space is filled with a well-heeled crowd.

While LifeStyleFeed’s direct customers are businesses, the service is not valuable without a large and engaged user base.

“One of the criticism of sites like Yelp is that the consumer voice dominates,” said Mitch Latsky, a general partner at Benchmark Capital. “This product gives restaurants the opportunity to talk back and provide a broader advertising experience, but it looks like a service that would have to be sold as opposed to bought, and those tend to be expensive and hard to scale.”

Right now, the site has content for 53 venues split between Washington, D.C. and Chicago and will soon add California locales. Harvey says he is looking to work with OpenTable and GoogleMaps and strives to be present in every market around the U.S.

LifeStyleFeed is currently free for consumers, and there will soon be advertising opportunities available. The company is based in Washington, D.C. and has three employees.

LifeStyleFeed is one of 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

NoWait has raised over $2 million to save diners the inconvenience of waiting at restaurants.

Americans spend roughly 37 billion hours each year waiting in line. Waiting for an extended period of time, researchers found, can causes stress, boredom, frustration, and dissatisfaction.

Seating people in a timely, organized manner is thus an important component of a diner’s overall experience. NoWait strives to add an additional layer of customer service by making inevitable wait times more organized, transparent, and manageable.

Restaurants can use this iPad app to keep track of available tables and alert customers with a text message when their table is ready. Rather than hovering like a vulture around that large group lingering over dessert, wielding a UFO-like buzzer, or worrying that you’ll lose your spot while you drink to kill the time at the bar next door, NoWait provides a more convenient alternative for hosts and patrons alike.

It creates wait lists and stores them online, including information about the parties, wait times, and status updates. Customers can be notified with one-touch when they are ready to be seated, as well as check their position on the list. They can also respond to the message to confirm their place.

The iOS app syncs multiple devices around a restaurant, so all data is updated in real time. NoWait will also deliver an analytics report that reviews the number of people on the wait list, walk-outs, and actual vs. quoted wait times, so restaurants can keep tabs on their efficiency.

The company currently has clients in 45 states and is signing hundreds of new locations every month. In the past year, over 4 million customers have been seated. It takes the convenience of OpenTable and applies it to casual dining. It is a useful solution for restaurants that do not take reservations, as well as for customers who do not book tables in advance.

This investment came from Birchmere Ventures, Sand Hill Angels, and Innovation Works (IW). The app was built with seed funding from IW’s AlphaLab Tech Accelerator and Carnegie Mellon University Open Field Entrepreneurs Fund. NoWait is based in Pittsburgh.

Other than the restaurants surrounding Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Silicon Valley has to be one of the best places to eavesdrop. Which is exactly why Apple is building a private, off-campus eatery.

The Cupertino Planning Commission granted Apple permission this week to build the structure, which will exist at the northeast corner of Bandley and Alves Drives. The 21,468-square-foot restaurant will be two stories tall and will include a courtyard, meeting rooms, lounging spaces, and of course, a cafeteria. The second floor will be reserved for cafeteria staff only, and will probably house Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory along with all of Apple’s other secrets.

“We like to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable talking about their business, their research, and whatever project they’re engineering without fear of competition sort of overhearing their conversations,” said Apple’s director of real estate facilities Dan Whisenhunt at the Cupertino Planning Commission meeting Tuesday. “That is a real issue today in Cupertino because we’ve got other companies here in our same business.”

The new private restaurant will have parking for 70, though it is expected that most people will walk from Apple’s satellite offices in the area. Apple has set up shuttles as well, and is planning to transport 228 people per hour to the eatery during peak eating times. It can double that if people get really hungry.

Whisenhunt also mentioned a second private restaurant in the works, as Apple begins work on its new campus.

The company is moving its complete staff from One Infinite Loop in Cupertino to a new, spaceship-like building on a piece of property once owned by HP. Plans for the building design were submitted to the Cuptertino City Council by Steve Jobs himself and will accommodate up to 13,000 employees.

What Apple actually needs to do is turn their Genius Bars into drinking bars. That seems to be the real venue of choice for leaking information. They can serve Apple-tinis.

Photoshop by Meghan Kelly, Apple logo via zolierdos/Flickr, Waiter image via Shutterstock, hat tip The Next Web