Badges, Streaks and Your Food Year

Rate a few places and something quietly starts happening: Mosey builds a picture of what you actually eat, rather than what you meant to.

Badges are for ground covered, not volume

A badge is earned by rating different places in a category, not by rating a lot. That distinction is the whole design. Twenty visits to one Italian place is loyalty; five different Italian places is range, and only one of those is worth a badge.

The families cover the ways people genuinely explore:

• Cuisine — the food itself
• Venue type — cafés, wine bars, chippers, food trucks
• Meal and occasion — brunches, late dinners, the places you go for a birthday
• Dietary — the kitchens that handle what you need properly
• Travel — the countries and cities you have eaten in
• Contribution — the ratings, dishes and photographs you have left for other people

Most people find their real habits are not the ones they would have described. The badge screen is often the first honest audit of a year's eating.

Streaks, in two speeds

There are two, deliberately.

A daily streak rewards rating on consecutive days, and it suits a week away or a run of eating out. A weekly streak counts consecutive weeks in which you rated at least once — which is the one that fits an ordinary life, where a good week might be one meal out on Thursday.

Weekly exists because daily does not fit most people. Someone who eats out once a week and rates it every single time has a habit worth recognising, and a daily counter would show them a permanent zero.

The passport

Every place you rate, every drop you post and every trail you finish adds to a passport: the towns, cities and countries you have eaten in. It fills in behind you without being asked.

It is at its best on a trip. Rate the two places you ate in a town you passed through and that town is on your map for good — which is the sort of thing you only appreciate two years later, trying to remember the name of the café.

Why any of this exists

Not to make eating a game. It exists because a rating you leave is worth something to the next person, and the honest way to encourage more of them is to give something back that is genuinely yours: a record of where you have been and what you liked.

Everything here is built out of ratings you already left. There is nothing extra to do.

Where to go next

• How rating works — everything here is built from it
• Ireland's best food towns — where a passport fills up fastest
• Doing a self-guided food trail — several places, one afternoon
• Building your own food guide — the places you keep coming back to