How one app is spotlighting sustainable and ethical venues for discerning diners

Natasha Zone is the CEO and founder of one­zone, a “curat­ed dis­cov­ery app”, which puts togeth­er lists of the best bars and restau­rants in dif­fer­ent major cities across the globe. Increas­ing­ly, the 30-year-old entre­pre­neur says: “Young peo­ple care about where they are spend­ing their mon­ey and what kind of brands and busi­ness­es they are sup­port­ing.”

Envi­ron­men­tal and social gov­er­nance (ESG) cre­den­tials have become a key con­sid­er­a­tion for con­sumers. A sur­vey by YouGov found that 69% of gen Z con­sumers in the UK would be will­ing to pay more for food and drink prod­ucts that are envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, com­pared with 53% of baby boomers. A glob­al sur­vey of mil­len­ni­als and gen Z by Glass­door, mean­while, found that 76% feel that a diverse work­force is an impor­tant fac­tor when shap­ing their opin­ion of a com­pa­ny.

Easy customer journey

In a bid to cap­ture this mar­ket, the one­zone app allows users to fil­ter busi­ness­es accord­ing to a range of ESG cri­te­ria, such as the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of their sup­ply chain and the eth­nic or gen­der make-up of their lead­er­ship teams.

“There is in-app reser­va­tion func­tion­al­i­ty for ‘one­zone-approved’ venues,” Zone explains. “Our users can do every­thing in one place. The idea is to make it eas­i­er to organ­ise your dis­cov­ery from start to fin­ish, from research to book­ing, all in one go.”

The app is avail­able only on Apple’s iOS, but has achieved more than 135,000 down­loads since launch­ing in April 2021. An Android ver­sion of the app, Zone says, is due for release this year.

Investors in one­zone, which now employs a team of eight, include Lord Waheed Alli, the for­mer chair­man of Asos, and Clerken­well Boy, one of London’s largest food and hos­pi­tal­i­ty social media influ­encers. At the time of writ­ing, the app is avail­able to use in Lon­don, Paris, Lis­bon, Berlin and Barcelona, but the aim is for it to be a world­wide propo­si­tion.

The onezone standard

Zone, who stud­ied pol­i­tics and phi­los­o­phy at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, pre­vi­ous­ly worked for pri­vate fam­i­ly offices, design­ing itin­er­aries across hos­pi­tal­i­ty and trav­el for a range of clients.

Where open-forum aggre­ga­tors such as Google or Tri­pad­vi­sor run the risk of allow­ing neg­a­tive reviews to “dis­tract from the infor­ma­tion you’re look­ing for”, Zone reflects, her app aimed to do the job of sep­a­rat­ing the wheat from the chaff. “We’ve done the hard work, so users don’t have to,” she claims. 

“Most peo­ple tend to only write a restau­rant review if they’ve had a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence. If they had a great din­ing expe­ri­ence, on the oth­er hand, they’re like­ly to thank the staff and per­haps just tell a cou­ple of friends. I think that’s come through for both the con­sumer not nec­es­sar­i­ly trust­ing what they read on those plat­forms and restau­rants not want­i­ng to be on them.”

Guid­ed by the “pil­lars of diver­si­ty and con­ve­nience”, Zone wants one­zone to be the go-to guide for where to eat and drink. “It’s not like some of the sea­son­al media round-ups you might see,” she says. “We’re con­stant­ly updat­ing, chang­ing and point­ing out the places and peo­ple with inter­est­ing caus­es and sto­ries.”

Zone says one­zone has a team of “expert cura­tors”, with an “instinct for qual­i­ty”. She admits that one­zone users must take a leap of faith and “trust” her team’s judge­ments on which venues war­rant their billing as the best in their cities, but is con­fi­dent that those judge­ments will be proven right. The app also allows users to make sug­ges­tions and give feed­back, she points out, which she and her team review reg­u­lar­ly.

What hap­pens in the event of a user hav­ing a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence with a one­zone-list­ed venue? And what if a one­zone-list­ed venue sud­den­ly did some­thing that mis­aligned with the core val­ues of the app? “We would review every sit­u­a­tion indi­vid­u­al­ly,” Zone says. “You can’t guard against some­one, some­where, at some point, per­haps not hav­ing the best time. That’s just a nat­ur­al risk of going out. We’d need to see if there was a trend of this hap­pen­ing at the same place, though. If a com­pa­ny did some­thing that mis­aligned with our val­ue sys­tem, we would remove them from the app. We’ve done it before. If a com­pa­ny fails to meet our stan­dards [for behav­iour, social respon­si­bil­i­ty or inclu­sive prac­tices] then it’s gone.”

A basic ver­sion of one­zone is free to use, but users can upgrade to the pre­mi­um ver­sion for £3.99 a month. Pre­mi­um sub­scribers can redeem a range of perks, includ­ing free dish­es and drinks, at many of the one­zone venues. Zone points out: “If you redeem one cock­tail, you’ve already more than made your mon­ey back.” 

Nev­er­the­less, it seems curi­ous, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the con­text of the cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, that young peo­ple would be so will­ing to sign up for a sub­scrip­tion of advice on where to go out. “Peo­ple have a finite amount of mon­ey,” Zone says. “I don’t think they nec­es­sar­i­ly see it as pay­ing for the advice but rather pay­ing for peace of mind. Peo­ple might not be going out as much as they used to, so, when they do, they want to be sure that where they’re going is excel­lent. Peo­ple are con­sid­ered and selec­tive now, rather than tak­ing the risk of get­ting it wrong.”

Women tech entrepreneurs

Six of onezone’s eight staff are women, which Zone says was a con­scious deci­sion. As a female “techno­pre­neur” she urges more women to “take the leap” and pur­sue their ideas.

“Too many women prob­a­bly doubt them­selves,” she says. “I’m look­ing for women to join our board and it’s hard to find them. I don’t meet that many women in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor and tech­nol­o­gy, which is why I am real­ly keen to spot­light them [on the app]. I am deter­mined to have a strong female team and find those men­tors and lead­ers to show the next gen­er­a­tion what is pos­si­ble.” 

Zone says that a lack of prece­dent can make for ner­vous investors. “It’s not that I think that they [poten­tial busi­ness part­ners] lack faith in women. It’s more that they just don’t see women [in the tech indus­try] as often. It is real­ly impor­tant that we start to nor­malise that sight,” she adds. 

As an ambi­tious founder, Zone says her “obses­sion and pas­sion” are key dri­vers for the busi­ness. “The idea is that you should be able to land in any city in the world and the app will have you cov­ered,” she says. “Ams­ter­dam is our next city. We’re hop­ing to launch our US oper­a­tion lat­er this year.”

For Zone, a good 2023 “looks like the scale of the one­zone com­mu­ni­ty and the com­pa­ny con­tin­u­ing to dri­ve pro­gres­sion via the curat­ed dis­cov­ery of inde­pen­dent and minor­i­ty-owned busi­ness­es in cities around the world. We are rais­ing £1.5m in fund­ing to do just that.”

This arti­cle is part of our Going Against the Grain series, which tells the sto­ries of com­pa­nies bold enough to break busi­ness norms and try out new ideas. To explore the rest of the series, click here.

Natasha Zone is the CEO and founder of onezone, a “curated discovery app”, which puts together lists of the best bars and restaurants in different major cities across the globe. Increasingly, the 30-year-old entrepreneur says: “Young people care about where they are spending their money and what kind of brands and businesses they are supporting.”

Environmental and social governance (ESG) credentials have become a key consideration for consumers. A survey by YouGov found that 69% of gen Z consumers in the UK would be willing to pay more for food and drink products that are environmentally friendly, compared with 53% of baby boomers. A global survey of millennials and gen Z by Glassdoor, meanwhile, found that 76% feel that a diverse workforce is an important factor when shaping their opinion of a company.

Young people care about where they are spending their money and what kind of brands and businesses they are supporting