USA | MOMMY NEAREST, THE "YELP" FOR PARENTS

(By Charlotte Burgoyne)

“What should we do with the kids this weekend?” Every Friday night, parents have the very same question in mind. In 2013, a handful of moms and dads in NYC launched Mommy Nearest in order to help them out. Originally only available as an App for the first three years, but now also a website, this company lists family-friendly activities and places in nine local markets across the USA. Every month 2 million parents nationwide use Mommy Nearest. The team of this smart App tells us how and why it was created.

" Founded in 2013, Mommy Nearest was the first geo-based resource for helping families find kid-friendly places while on the go. Since our launch in NYC, Mommy Nearest has expanded into nine other local markets and has quickly become the largest database of family-friendly places nationwide.

The app was created because nothing like it had previously existed in the market, and because parents were increasingly looking to their mobile devices for answers regarding the best places to take their children. With reviews from both real, local parents, as well as curated content that is produced by local experts, Mommy Nearest quickly became regarded as a “Yelp for Parents.”

The main goal was to help parents across the country feel more comfortable in knowing that just because they had a child, they didn’t need to completely lose sight of the person they were before they had kids. We heard from parents of young children that they felt helpless and trapped because they didn’t know if they would get dirty looks from patrons at restaurants for taking their children with them or, if there was a diaper that needed to be changed, they would be stuck changing a diaper on a dirty floor. When the app was launched, we got hundreds of emails from thankful parents telling us how Mommy Nearest got them out of many sticky and dirty situations."