Photo courtesy of Javen Goldstein
By Carla Morales
TAMPA. Fla.– It can get annoying seeing the same three dining options on Google. Students want to know what the locals eat and what places are worth trying.
Ambient Social is a new application that launched this past June that can help with this.
Ambient Social is a “restaurant discovery app that helps you find places by atmosphere, mood, and neighborhood feel – not just cuisine type or star ratings. The core feature is the Vibe Meter: a score that captures how a restaurant actually feels, described in words like Lively, Quiet, Intimate, or Electric.”
When you open the application, you will be presented with a screen that shows three cities, Tampa, Miami or New York. You will then be presented with a search bar that you can search for a specific vibe you want the place to give you, for example “upscale date night.”
When narrowing down your search you will be presented with multiple options that will describe the vibe of the dining option in one word, along with the name, location, cuisine, directions, short description and menus/reservations.
After finding your dream restaurant, there is a “I’ve been there” feature that allows you to track your personal history and map every place you’ve experienced in the city.
Ambient Social was originally developed in New York in the summer by Javen Goldstein, a student at the University of Tampa, and Justin Cleeman, a student at The Ohio State University. The app grew out of a business idea the two had wanted to begin for some time, but turning their concept into a functioning platform required a long development process.
By the start of the 2026 academic year, Goldstein had brought Ambient Social to Tampa, where the project began to take its shape to target people who are away from their hometowns for the first time.
That was when his longtime friend and app user Austin Maus, whom he had known since high school, joined the effort. Having experienced the challenges of finding new dining spots and deciding where to eat outside of campus after arriving at UTampa, both Goldstein and Maus understood the need for an easier way for students to discover restaurants.
“I was honestly just supporting my friend, who’s the founder of it, just, and all kinds of stuff. And like, I kind of just got into it,” said Maus. “And now, genuinely, one of my favorite things to do is to go out to eat at a place with my friends, and just kind of like, explore the menu and like, try all kinds of new things.”
Goldstein and Maus, now seniors, halfway through their freshman year were unable to secure on-campus housing and decided to live in a nearby apartment, which inevitably isolated them from the dormitory community built on campus. As a result, they also missed the simplicity of building relationships with upperclassmen who could have offered guidance and recommendation of where to go downtown.
“As mid-year transfers, it wasn’t super easy to meet people. We didn’t have that friend here to kind of text, like, ‘Hey, where’s a good place to bring my parents when they come down and move me in?’” said Goldstein. “We didn’t really have an easy way of understanding what the vibe was around and what places were worth our time.”
As they struggled with finding to know what places were good or not, they decided to take matters into their own hands and began crafting Ambient Social.
The goal they have for Ambient Social is not to just say one dining place is better than another, but more of getting the word out about places that people haven’t been able to find without that outlet.
In the near future Goldstein and Maus hope to gain a larger audience and get into nearby student living apartment buildings to get their name out there.