Exclusive Interview: Kevin Jonas Talks Food-Finding App Yood, Building Houses on 'RHONJ'

Kevin Jonas may be best known for being the heartthrob oldest brother in the teen trio The Jonas Brothers, but now the 26-year-old father and foodie is looking to branch out into the tech development world. Inspired by his time on tour with his brothers Nick and Joe, earlier this month, Jonas launched the food and venue discovery app Yood.

With a user-friendly interface and a simplistic search function, Yood looks to take "the search out of search" on Yelp when finding somewhere to dine out.

Though he's moved away from music, Jonas is still in the spotlight in the tech and social media world. Recently, he chatted with MStars News about Yood and his surprise cameo on The Real Housewives of New Jersey as a home contractor - another surprising passion of his.

So congratulations on your new app Yood. It's been pretty successful so far, its got tens of thousands of downloads in the first day, right?

Yeah, in three days, we've had over 30,000 downloads, so it is doing really well. It just keeps on trucking along, we're having a lot of fun with it. We're seeing a lot of really unique user engagement, and a lot of people are really happy. It's just been great. Even more than that, we're working hard to get the Android version out ASAP, and doing fixes as soon as possible on it, little bugs here and there, and more features added to it.

Have you been surprised at the success of Yood so far?

You know what, I actually have been. We just threw it up on the App Store on Saturday last week, and we're just like, "Have fun." I was so blown away by the response, and people were so excited about it. And we saw more than that, people discovering new places to go and enjoy a night out, food, whatever it might be, a quick meal. We're seeing a lot of different things, whether its people just being surprised by what they find or a million different things. It's very, very cool.

What's been kind of the most interesting thing that you've seen somebody discover so far?

Oh man, someone recently posted a picture -- I retweeted it -- they typed in cider mill, and it pulled in a place for them to go to look at some buildings to an actual cider mill, which was so cool. They said they spent the whole day and had no idea that it was only 20 minutes away from them, which is unbelievable, and I thought was so cool.

That's interesting and that's so cool that the app can find something so specific like that.

Yeah, there's a lot of features, what I seem to find is that people don't realize that it's not just food. That's how we're starting version one, but it's even more than that. People are finding nail salons, spa, gyms, the mall, specific stores. They're finding locations and different services that are available to them they had no idea were just readily there, and even finding local shops.

My wife uses it anytime she's in a local area just driving around to find baby boutiques, like clothing stores. Instead of googling it, all she has to hit is single one touch button, and boom, it's all there for her.

That is really nice. It's really user friendly too. Is that something you were thinking about when you were developing the app, just make it as simple as possible?

Yeah, that was the goal right out the gate. The goal from top to bottom was make this the easiest app. There's no instructions, you open the app, have no idea what it might be and you already know how to use it the minute you open the app, which is really cool.

It's pretty unique, too. Most apps kind of make you go through a little step-by-step and with this, it's there already. It's very intuitive.

Yeah, it's funny, people kind of have a user interface that's so simple and so streamline and that you don't really have to do too much to figure out how to use it, and I love that. That was kind of the goal in this and people do have questions, and there's little secrets here and there you can do to it to make it better in the searches, like in the settings, change your search radius and whether you search by distance or rating. There's little things you can do to alter what you do that allows to find something quick. But other than that it's just so easy... We're getting a lot of trust, which is good. [Users] are just going, and they're enjoying themselves.

So, what inspired you to develop Yood?

Well I had seen a couple of other apps that had been very similar in the sense that, not similar, in contextually the feel of simplifying the whole experience. And the goal for me here was to take search out of search. So anything I could do to make it easier for us to find things fast and find things quick.

Whenever I was on the road with my brothers and we were touring around the world, I always wanted to go somewhere new, see something exciting. But then asking the concierge at the hotel and Googling something -- there was always a process. With this, you can just literally one touch of a button you can find a little café down the street that you've never been to. I wish I had this when I was touring, but now I do, so hopefully I'll use it in a different main.

Do you have one specific tour memory that really sparked Yood, like a city you were really frustrated in?

Yeah, we were always in Seattle, and anytime in Seattle or Portland -- even in New York, and we know it so well. I was always trying to hunt for something new.

I remember one time, we were going to go a bar and the concierge was like, "Well this place is open and this place." He just gave us too much information and we were like, "We'll just stay here and have a drink at the bar, at the hotel." Sometimes it's just you get overwhelmed by information and this goal is to serve up one at a time, so it's easy to digest and it's simple, and it seems to be working.

You're already developing a Yood update. Can you dish on where the app is going?

There's a couple bug fixes, just some simple stuff.

And then even more than that, we are going to have a next, click to the next and back, so you can go back and forth between each find inside of categories, so you don't have to hit the back button and search again, which is just going to be a fast way to keep moving, find somewhere if you're not in love with the first place, maybe you will be with the second. That's number one.

Number two, we're hoping for some other open ACI integrations. We're working on that diligently now to actually get some integrations so that we can provide other features for our users and our users as they are now, claiming themselves. And things that will make eating, ordering out, quick, fast and easy with a single touch of a button.

Do you have any idea of when that update is going to be rolled out?

Hopefully, very soon. And of course the update would include the Android version launch. We are looking, we are crossing our fingers, it is tech world, so as long as everything goes as planned, which it never does -- but probably two, three weeks, max. That's for us to try to get this thing out and pushed out.

You also have a partnership of sorts with Snapchat. After The Jonas Brothers, what kind of made you want to get so involved in the tech world and the app world?

I know and I believe that there's a lot that you can do with your own social leverage. So I've developed a couple different companies, I've worked very hard at, I fell in love with tech early on in my life, and I just kind of dived in after The Jonas Brothers. It's where I wanted to be, so I'm just kind of focusing here. The other company is called Flashopp, and it's a way for brands to manage, the effectiveness of their Snapchat campaign. I knew I needed that for myself when I was running campaigns inside of Snapchat, not only that, but I really wanted to help out people that probably needed the same kind of information.

To that end, you interact with fans a lot on Snapchat and Twitter and Instagram. So why is that fan engagement so important to you still even after your band?

I've been very lucky that I've been able to cultivate an audience that I can take along with me for the ride and the journey of my life, wherever I decide to take it. Whether that's through tech, whether I decide to go drive cars, racecars. I'll have an audience I can speak to, so I use that to bounce off of ideas and help push out new concepts and new things and it seems to be working so far, so I'm just going to keep it up.

You were on the Real Housewives of New Jersey and they kind of recognized you. Do you find that happening a lot?

Yeah, it's kind of funny. Because if you see the name of the company, JonasWerner Homes, you might connect it here and there, but we really don't publicize it that way. It's very much a passion of ours, me and my building partner, Bill, a longtime friend, now building partner. We show up for pitch meetings all the time and they're a little confused once in a while -- it is pretty funny. But honestly, it's working. We're having so much fun. We have too many projects going on; we have nine homes being built right now as we speak, then renovations and everything. So it is not a small thing that we're doing, but it's a lot and keeping us very busy.

© 2024 Mstars News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.