One Christmas Day in Escondido, Carter Quartararo and his friend Elliott headed to TJ Tacos for tacos al pastor after spending the morning with their families. Meat shaved from the trompo landed straight in warm tortillas, and Quartararo still remembers the feeling of that meal. The Cal Poly industrial engineering senior put it simply: “You can never order enough.”
Food has long shaped the way he experiences a place. Quartararo spent part of his early childhood in Amsterdam and later traveled often with his family, connecting certain meals with the places they visited and the memories those trips left behind. Both of his parents are Cal Poly alumni, and he grew up in a home where making and eating food mattered.
By college, he had become the kind of person friends turned to when they needed a restaurant recommendation. Online, though, the search rarely matched the experience of eating there. Reviews leaned heavily on text, leaving little room for the visual pull of a dish.
At Cal Poly, that disconnect came to seem like a problem he could solve.
An Idea Comes into Focus
He kept coming back to the same instinct: food itself should come first. Instead of chasing down scattered posts or half-remembered dishes, he pictured a place where meals could be easier to revisit.
“I wanted to build a designated app to give a view of food that you can share with friends and save for later,” he said.
In Business 310, Quartararo built an early prototype and tested how the idea might work in practice. He did not want to build a chatbot. He wanted something more visual, closer to the way people actually decide where to eat. “Seeing the food is the most important thing,” he said.
He called it Eat With Your Eyes, an app designed to keep food at the center of the search.
AI coding tools helped Quartararo get a base product off the ground. He said the process let him draw from various parts of his background, including engineering coursework, Python and a growing interest in machine learning and finance. “This gave me the ability to combine my academic passions,” he said.
Duha Ali, an industrial and manufacturing engineering professor, first met Quartararo in her human factors course, where students study how users interact with apps and other products. Now, while still an undergraduate, he is continuing to refine Eat With Your Eyes in Ali’s graduate-level class through user testing, market research and AI tools built into the coursework.
After the launch, Ali downloaded the app herself and began adding posts, becoming both a user and a mentor. She said moments like that can be meaningful because they let students see the results of their work. “You have something tangible to show for it,” she said.
Putting It Out There
Quartararo first shared the app close to home. He released a test version to his mom, who gave him feedback before he shared it more widely. By April, Eat With Your Eyes had launched publicly. Early users — many of them friends and family — began posting their meals, giving him the first signs that the app could live beyond his own habits and preferences. That early response was encouraging. It was good to put it out there and see if people would use it, he said.
A platform built around food needs content to feel alive, and Quartararo knew building that up would take time. At the time of his interview, the app had 102 users who had made over 50 posts, with most restaurants concentrated in San Luis Obispo and San Diego. Users could upload photos, add stars and tag their posts.
Putting his own project into the world has stretched him in other ways, too. Quartararo said he still struggles with putting himself out there, especially in a culture where far more people scroll than create. He has seen friends make private food accounts that never really reach beyond a small circle. He wants Eat With Your Eyes to offer something more connected, while also helping spotlight restaurants that may not have strong branding or a large marketing budget.
His larger ambition is still evolving. Quartararo said he wants to keep developing the app until he starts his job in August, with the long-term goal of growing it into a business. He hopes Eat With Your Eyes can move toward more professional content while still giving restaurants useful insight into what people respond to.
“I’m really passionate about it and I want to make an impact,” he said.
Even now, one challenge remains surprisingly ordinary. He has to remember to post the food before he starts eating.
Eat With Your Eyes is available in the App Store.
By Emily Slater
