Atmosphere
Discover hidden gem bars and restaurants
8 followers
Discover hidden gem bars and restaurants
8 followers
Find bars & restaurants by vibe, not stars or rankings. Think: “dimly-lit cocktail bar” or “vegan spot with a patio downtown.” Find hidden gems that fit your atmosphere. Just launched in Boston; other cities coming soon.
Hey Product Hunt! I’m Kurt, one of the co-founders of Atmosphere — an app that helps you discover Boston’s best bars and restaurants by vibe.
The idea started when a friend and I were looking for a place to grab food and a beer. We stumbled into a cozy neighborhood spot that totally matched our style — the kind of place you'd never find on a “Top 10” list, but instantly becomes your new favorite. It reminded us of our go-to restaurant that had shut down during COVID. We’d lived in Boston for years, yet had somehow missed this gem. That’s when we realized: the best places aren’t always the most obvious.
So we set out to build Atmosphere — an app that captures the feel of a place, not just the ratings. Think “cozy,” “craft beer,” and “seafood,” rather than generic categories or star counts.
This has been a bootstrapped side project (neither of us had built a mobile app before!), and while it’s still far from perfect, we're pretty proud of how it's turned out so far.
We’re launching first in Boston, with plans to expand to more cities soon.
We would love for you to try it out and share your feedback!
🔍 Select features
Search by vibe, whether it’s a dimly-lit cocktail bar in Somerville or a vegan joint with outdoor seating downtown.
Explore collections from the community. From the spiciest wings in town to cozy cafes perfect for a finals week study date, dive into picks from locals who know.
Plan your next big night out. Build custom itineraries and share with friends for the ultimate pub crawl or tasting tour.
🚀 Coming soon
Search by neighborhood
Local event discovery
👉 Download the app and let us know what you think!
This is a great idea, love it! As someone who rarely enjoys top rated places, this sounds like a great alternative.
Kudos for the well fitting name and congrats on the launch! 🎉
I love the fact that the community can add places, and that makes total sense. However, are there any guardrails in place to verify the legitimacy of those places?
@davidskr Thanks, David! For now, in the spirit of "do things that don't scale," we are manually vetting user content submissions. One of the major reasons we are starting only in Boston, a city that we live in and are personally very familiar with, is so that we can verify and vouch for the accuracy of the content and ensure it is useful for users. We even have to go to some of these places to check them out in-person—a burdensome task, I know 😝).
As we learn more about our data and our user-generated content, our goal is to build a more automated vetting process and, eventually, rely largely on the community to provide Reddit-style input. We want to develop a human-centric, democratic process, not create AI slop or an exclusive, concierge-like experience.