Cape Town Student Builds App to Help Young Diners Beat Rising Restaurant Prices

A Student’s Frustration Becomes a Digital Solution

Dylan Steiner, a 20-year-old Business Science student at the University of Cape Town, has launched Bites — a food discovery and price comparison app targeting diners tired of overpaying for meals across Cape Town. Built almost entirely by Steiner himself over roughly two months, the app lists between 300 and 400 restaurants and gives users real-time price data before they even step out the door.

The idea hit close to home. Steiner, originally from Johannesburg, found that a night out in Cape Town had quietly transformed from a casual pleasure into a financial calculation. One moment crystallised it: a R130 chicken meal that sent him searching across the street, where he found the same kind of food for R79.

That R51 gap changed everything.

One Person, Hundreds of Restaurants, Zero Shortcuts

Steiner did not outsource the groundwork. He personally visited more than 400 restaurants across the city, manually entering menus and prices to ensure the platform had real, usable content from day one. That kind of hands-on commitment is rare — and it shows in the numbers.

He estimates he put in roughly five hours a day on the project, funding it entirely through his own savings: money earned from debating coaching, and from two years spent in the United States working as a waiter, DJ and chef. No investors. No institutional backing. Just one student betting on his own idea.

The coding side was equally self-driven. Steiner taught himself to build the app, leaning on artificial intelligence tools to accelerate his learning curve. “I’ve had to learn code by myself, and it’s been such a great journey learning how to code, using AI to help me, teach me and improve,” he said. For young Africans watching the tech space and wondering whether formal training is the only entry point, that statement carries real weight.

What the App Actually Does

Bites — officially named Bites – Price Compare — lets users search by craving: a burger, a pizza, a coffee. Results come back sorted by cheapest, closest, best value, top rated or most recently verified, all based on prices reported by real users nearby. It is part price aggregator, part social food platform, designed for people who want transparency before they commit to a table.

The social layer matters. Users can share what they are eating and flag good deals, creating a community-driven database that grows with every meal posted. In a city where the gap between a tourist-priced menu and a student-friendly spot can be enormous, that kind of peer intelligence is genuinely useful.

Early Traction and What Comes Next

On its first day live, Bites pulled in approximately 160 downloads. Steiner described the response as exceeding his expectations — a strong signal for a self-funded, one-person launch with no marketing budget to speak of.

Cape Town’s restaurant scene is vibrant, diverse and, increasingly, expensive. For young people aged 18 to 25 navigating the city on student budgets, the cost of eating out has become a genuine barrier to social life. Bites positions itself directly against that barrier.

Steiner is still a full-time student. He is still balancing lectures, deadlines and the ongoing development of an app that has already attracted real users. His advice to other young people sitting on an idea? Start. Not next semester. Not after graduation. Now.

In a continent where youth unemployment remains one of the defining economic challenges of the decade, stories like Steiner’s — a student who spotted a problem, taught himself the skills to fix it and shipped a product — deserve to be told loudly.