What do you get when you cross Foursquare with a restaurant review? “DontEat.at.”

CAS junior Max Stoller’s brainchild makes accessing information about health code violations easy.

The idea for the texting service came to Stoler during HackNYC. The computer science major came across the New York City Department of Health restaurant inspection data set and decided to combine it with Foursquare. When users check into a restaurant, “DontEat.at” texts them in a minute if they’re dining at a health code disaster.

“Location data is incredibly powerful and really fun to hack with,” Stoller said.

“I think it’s a good example of taking information and making it more relevant by getting it to people when and where they need it,” said Christopher Hoadley, associate professor of educational technology. “Not only is this a great university for learning the engineering skills to build great tools, but a place where we teach how technologies impact people, and how to design creative solutions to real problems.”

Ofelia Mangen, a third-year Steinhardt Ph.D. candidate studying in the Educational Communication and Technology program believes the program could revolutionalize the way patrons select restaurants.

“The app has a clear message: This place has troubles, and you probably don’t want to eat here,” Mangen said. “It functions as an alarm and a filter.”

So far, over 1,000 people have taken advantage of the texting service, available on all phones that can run Foursquare.

“The only restaurants that would complain are those that have bad scores, in which case we should be the ones complaining,” Stoller said. “I hope it promotes transparency in the inspection system and makes restaurants more accountable for their grades. Most of all, I hope it helps people avoid eating at a restaurant that might make them sick.”