About Yulai
Yulai matches you to restaurants from your Food Fingerprint: taste, diet, budget, and distance.
Star averages cannot taste
People open restaurant apps, see 4.5 stars and a thousand reviews, and still cannot tell if they will like the food.
Taste is personal. Yulai ranks nearby places by your Food Fingerprint so the list is for you.
The Story
Two and a half years ago, this started as a small side project: an AI chatbot that recommended cocktails based on someone's taste. Then large language models arrived and changed what felt possible.
The more I built, the clearer the real problem became. We have all stared at a menu, defaulting to the "safe" choice, not because the options were bad, but because taste is hard to describe and even harder to compare. So the idea shifted from cocktails to something far more useful: matching people with restaurants they will genuinely love.
With a background in AI and machine learning (Computational Engineering Science, RWTH Aachen University), I turned that side project into Yulai. A system that learns your palate and recommends restaurants that fit your taste, your diet and your budget.
Today, Yulai is on the App Store for iOS and open on Android in our launch cities, and this is only the very top of the iceberg.
What We Believe
Personalization
Your taste is unique. Recommendations should reflect you.
Privacy
Your preferences stay yours. Always.
Simplicity
Complex tech should be easy to use.
How we got here
The Spark
A side project: an AI chatbot for cocktail recommendations. LLMs made it feel possible.
The Pivot
From cocktails to the daily problem: restaurants that genuinely fit your taste.
From Project to Startup
The side project becomes a company.
Website Launch
yulai.online goes live and sets the design language for the app.
App Launch
The app ships locally with our first testers.
Public Launch
Android opens in Aachen, Cologne, Gdansk and Milano. iOS on the App Store, with more cities to follow.
Download Yulai
Build your Food Fingerprint and never miss a table that fits you.