An appetite for flying

Rick Rzepka, a pilot and dentist in Cleveland, Ohio, has found a way to combine two of his passions: Flying and eating.

With a lot of help from his wife, Vikki, Rick has launched Fly-n-Eat, an app that lists airport restaurants.

The couple believe once pilots start using the app, it will change how they fly — or more specifically where they fly.

“I think this app is going to change not so much the way they fly, but they’re just going to be flying in all new directions that they were not expecting,” Rick says. “Everything is a new adventure.”

“Everybody talks about the $100 hamburger, which probably now is a $300 hamburger,” he continues. “The app gives people a new place to go and to test not only their taste buds, but their piloting skills, as well, as they fly into new airports.”

The app also has the potential to introduce new people to general aviation, Vikki adds.

“It’s an adventure for anyone and everyone,” she says. “Often Rick has friends who obviously know he’s a pilot and has a plane and they’ll call and ask if they can go flying. It’s a great people connector and for those people who are a bit skittish about flying, it becomes an adventure for them.”

A pilot for 25 years, Rick says he always wanted to fly since he was a little kid.

“I still want to grow up and become an astronaut, but I don’t think they’ll take me anymore,” he jokes.

He’s the owner of a 1970 Beechcraft Bonanza V35B, which he bases at Cuyahoga County Airport (KCGF) in Cleveland.

“I was looking for a plane for quite some time before I ended up buying the Bonanza,” he says. “The engine is great. The propeller is great. The whole airplane itself is great. The avionics were terrible, so I just upgraded the avionics,” he says, noting he’s also flown a Cessna 182RG Turbo, a Cessna 172, a Piper Warrior, Piper Saratoga, and Piper Dakota.

“Our first dog was named Piper Dakota,” Vikki adds with a smile.

As much as he’s a fan of flying, Rick has had a love affair with food since he was a little boy.

“When I first started flying, I used to fly to places that had someplace to eat,” he says.

In the last few years, his flying has increased, so naturally he asked the folks at the FBO and flight school — where he is working on his instrument rating — “where’s a good place to fly and eat?”

“She handed me a piece of paper that I think was typed on a typewriter,” he laughs, noting that since it’s not the 1950s he decided to “upgrade the list” by adding the restaurants into his phone.

“Finally one day I was joking around with my staff and I said ‘I bet there’s an app for that,’” he recalls.

He couldn’t find one, so he decided to create one.

While Rick came up with the idea for the app, it was Vikki who did the heavy lifting.

“She called every single restaurant on an airport,” he says. “She has really been just outstanding with it.”

He had some non-negotiable requirements for the app, with the biggest being that it has to be 100% up to date in real time.

“There has to be feedback from users who can tell us if a place is open or closed on a certain day,” he says.

Another requirement was the ability to plot eating adventures based on that day’s flight.

“Pilots have their choice of trip planning options,” he says. “Fly, eat, back to home base for short hops or point-to-point when traveling longer distances or cross-country.”

“Let’s say you’re flying from Cleveland to Miami,” he gives as an example. “There is a line going between Cleveland to Miami and you can put in, say, 50 nautical miles on either side of that line and it will have the restaurants all the way down.”

When a pilot clicks on a restaurant, they get a wealth of information, from addresses and phone numbers to hours of operation and descriptions of décor, ambience, and other amenities. The app also features links to restaurant websites and menus.

Then Rick decided he wanted to add something else to the app: A database of CFIs.

“What happens if you’re flying and you need a CFI?” he asks.

CFIs who subscribe to the app can add their information at no extra charge so pilots will have that information handy.

The app, which is available for $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year, is available on the Apple App Store or GooglePlay.

Rick says he’s not done with the app.

“I don’t want it to stagnate,” he says, noting next he would like to add a directory of aviation museums.

“I want this app to become the app people actually need that is not for navigation,” he says. “They are going to have ForeFlight for navigation, but I hope they use this app for finding new places to fly. A lot of my friends when they see it for the first time say, ‘oh, I didn’t know these restaurants were out there.’ It’s just 50 nautical miles in the other direction, but they’ve never gone there.”

“My main goal is for the app to just keep getting better and better and better,” he concludes.

For more information: Fly-n-Eat.com