North Central College student entrepreneurs develop mobile app for foodies

Two North Central College students have developed a mobile app for friends to share pictures of food they like.

Entrepreneurs Jeremy Markham ’15 and Kyler Juckins ’15 are the creators of DinnDinn, a smart phone app for food lovers. DinnDinn works like a virtual refrigerator. Users upload photos of food, drinks and other items to their page and rate them. Their friends and followers, known as “taste buds,” can comment on the posts.

Markham and Juckins thought of the venture when they were both students at Naperville North High School. After securing funding from investors, they launched the app in August 2012.

“That’s when it finally became real,” Markham says. “Before that, our parents maintained an air of skepticism about it.”

“(Our parents) thought of it with a sort of ‘lemonade stand’ mentality,” Juckins adds.

The entrepreneurs manage their venture while sophomores at North Central, where Markham is majoring in finance and international business and Juckins is majoring in political science and plans to pursue a law degree. Staying organized is the key to managing their time commitments, they say.

“This is an experience most college students don’t have,” Markham says.

They’ve hired their first employee as chief marketing officer. North Central student Megan Barfield ’16 is a freshman marketing major from Winchester, Ill.

“Bringing on Megan is very exciting,” Juckins says. “She’s interested in taking us to the next level.”

Juckins initially enrolled at Southern Illinois University, but transferred to North Central after a year. “The classes at SIU were so large. There was no way to get to know professors like here at North Central,” he says.

Markham says he’s talked about the DinnDinn app with four of his business professors. “Four out of the four said, ‘If you need anything, let me know,’” he says.

A business writer for the Daily Herald newspaper recently profiled Markham and Juckins, and they also were the subjects of a recent report by Naperville Community Television. 

The free DinnDinn app is available in the Apple App and Google Play stores. Visit dinndinn.com to learn more.