South Africans love a good deal almost as much as we love a good meal… and one UCT student has figured out a pretty clever way to bring the two together.
Western Cape, South Africa (05 October 2026) – A R60 burger or a R150 burger? If they’re being sold just down the road from each other (or across the street), most of us would probably like to know about the R60 one before sitting down and ordering.
That’s the idea behind a new South African app getting plenty of attention online, after 20-year-old UCT student Dylan Steiner posted a video showing just how wildly restaurant prices can differ.
Yes, the video comes with a few choice words. But he made his point… and an app!
@dylan_steinerCape Town restaurant prices are unacceptable. So I did something about it.♬ original sound – Dylan
Dylan, who is currently studying Business Science at the University of Cape Town, created “Bites – Price Compare”, an app designed to help South Africans discover affordable meals and share the good deals they find along the way. It’s simple too… search for what you’re craving (burger, pizza, coffee) and see prices reported by real people nearby, sorted the way you want: cheapest, closest, best value, top rated or most recently verified.
His video piqued our interest, so Good Things Guy reached out to find out where the idea came from. And while we expected a story about food and the rising cost of eating out, we discovered something even cooler… Dylan isn’t an app developer. In fact, this is the first app he has ever built.
“I’m 20 years old, and I’ve always been interested in food, not necessarily the cooking or the taste of food itself, but the social aspect around food. I love going out to eat with friends. I love cooking at home with friends or family, or people you just met.”
For Dylan, food has always been about connection. It’s the meal with friends, the late-night bite after going out or the table where people gather and spend time together. But being a student also means watching what you spend, and it was one particular meal with his friend Gabriel that sparked the idea for Bites.
The pair were walking around Cape Town when they decided to grab Nando’s. Dylan says their half chicken and rice came to around R130. A few days later, they passed another chicken restaurant across the road, Crispy King, selling a similar meal for R79.
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And that was the beginning of Bites. The concept has since grown beyond just comparing prices. Users can upload photographs of meals and discover recommendations from other people, while another feature allows friends to create a food plan together, add places they want to visit and build a route using Google Maps.
Essentially, Dylan is combining the social side of food with something South Africans could really use right now… better information about where their money goes furthest.
There was just one rather significant hurdle.
“I’m not an app developer. This is the first app I’ve ever made.”
Instead of letting that stop him, Dylan started learning. He taught himself to code, experimented with new technologies, and worked his way through YouTube videos to learn how to turn the idea in his head into a functioning app.
“I just thought it was a good idea, and I just learned how to code… so that’s been really awesome. I’m just learning this process and all these different things.”
Then he put it on social media. Within two days, Dylan says videos about Bites were nearing a combined 100,000 views, while the app clocked around 300 downloads on its first day. For an independently built app created by one university student, that response has been pretty incredible.
“It’s kind of been validation that this idea definitely has a target market,” he explains.
“It’s been very validating to see that this isn’t just a frustration I hold, but it’s a frustration a lot of South Africans hold.”
And this is where social media can be a good thing! One young South African had an idea. He taught himself the skills he needed to build it, put it online and South Africans started watching, downloading, sharing and contributing. Instead of social media being a place to complain about how expensive everything has become, Dylan is using it to crowdsource a possible solution.
“If you see a good deal, upload it, upload it, upload it, and there are good deals out there. It’s just access to that information, and that’s what Bites is trying to do.”
His dream is ambitious. Dylan hopes that if enough people use the platform to compare prices, restaurants may eventually have another reason to keep their pricing competitive, making eating out a little more accessible to ordinary South Africans.
For now, “Bites – Price Compare” is available on the Apple App Store, with an Android version awaiting Google approval and expected soon. The app is also only Cape Town based but Dylan plans to launch more regions across the country really soon!
And we’ll be waiting to see where his app goes and how big it grows. Cheaper food options at our fingertips… now that’s an idea worth biting into.
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