Foursquare

@foursquare find coffee shops within 500 meters of 40.7580° N, 73.9855° W and show their ratings

Found 8 coffee shops near that location. Top results: Blue Bottle Coffee (rating 8.9/10, 401 Broadway) is 120m away with 847 check-ins. Stumptown Coffee Roasters (rating 8.7/10, 18 W 29th St) is 340m away. La Colombe (rating 8.5/10, 270 Lafayette St) is 450m away. Each entry includes the venue's Foursquare ID, full address, primary category, and distance from your coordinates. This illustrative example shows typical proximity search results; actual venue availability and ratings vary by location and time.

This example demonstrates the core nearby-places search capability. Requires an API key with Places API access. Results are limited to Foursquare's venue database coverage—less populated in rural areas. Rate limits apply (typically 950 regular calls/day for free tier), so batch location queries when possible rather than making repeated single-coordinate searches.

@foursquare get user tips and reviews for venue FSQ_ID_4b5e6f8a9c1d2e3f and summarize the top 3 themes

Retrieved 47 user tips for this venue. Top themes: (1) Ambiance—12 tips praise the cozy outdoor seating and string lights, calling it 'perfect for dates.' (2) Specific menu items—9 tips recommend the truffle fries and craft cocktails, especially the Old Fashioned. (3) Service speed—8 tips note slow service during weekend brunch but efficient weeknight turnover. This illustrative summary shows how Foursquare tips surface crowd-sourced insights; actual tip volume and themes depend on venue popularity.

This example pairs Foursquare's tips endpoint with AI summarization to extract actionable patterns from user-generated content. Useful for competitive research or venue selection. Note that tip availability varies widely—popular urban venues may have hundreds of tips, while newer or niche locations may have few or none. The AI can only summarize what Foursquare users have contributed.

@foursquare search for 'ramen' in Seattle and return the top 5 results with photos if available

Found 23 ramen venues in Seattle. Top 5: Tsukushinbo (Capitol Hill, rating 9.1/10, 4 photos available), Danbo (University District, rating 8.8/10, 12 photos), Kizuki Ramen (multiple locations, rating 8.6/10, 8 photos), Ooink (Capitol Hill, rating 8.5/10, 6 photos), Yoroshiku (Wallingford, rating 8.4/10, 3 photos). Each result includes Foursquare ID for fetching full details or photo URLs. This illustrative example shows keyword-based search; actual results reflect current Foursquare database state and user activity.

This example showcases keyword search combined with photo retrieval—useful for building location-aware features or content curation. The search endpoint supports category filters and geographic bounds for precision. Photo availability depends on user contributions; not all venues have images. Consider caching photo URLs if displaying results in a UI, as fetching photos individually counts against your rate limit.

When Foursquare beats manual prospecting for local outreach

A 6-person sales team covering three metro regions needs to identify coffee shops, coworking spaces, and retail clusters for cold outreach. The Foursquare MCP pulls venue lists by category and location, surfaces user tips to gauge foot traffic, and returns photos to pre-qualify spaces before a rep drives out. This works when your ICP hangs out in physical locations and you're doing 20-40 visits per week per rep. The API key auth means anyone on the team can query without OAuth friction. If your sales motion is purely digital or you're targeting enterprise accounts in office parks, skip this—Foursquare's strength is consumer-facing POIs, not B2B venue data. For teams doing boots-on-the-ground prospecting in dense urban markets, this MCP turns location scouting into a 10-minute Switchy query instead of a half-day Google Maps rabbit hole.

Foursquare narrows the shortlist when planning team gatherings

A remote-first startup planning quarterly offsites in rotating cities uses the Foursquare MCP to compile venue options—restaurants for team dinners, bars for happy hours, parks for outdoor sessions. The search tool filters by category and radius, tips reveal whether a spot handles groups well, and photos confirm the vibe before anyone books a site visit. This is the right call when you're researching 3-5 cities per year and need to move fast without hiring a local coordinator. The 5-tool scope keeps it simple: search, details, tips, photos, nearby. If your offsite budget is under $5k and you're just picking a restaurant, you don't need an MCP—Yelp in a browser is faster. For teams spending $15k+ on multi-day events and evaluating 10+ venues per city, Foursquare's structured data beats crowdsourced review sites. Run the query in Switchy, share the shortlist, vote in Slack.

When Foursquare feeds neighborhood storytelling at scale

A 3-person content team at a travel app writes neighborhood guides for 50 US cities. They use the Foursquare MCP to pull top-rated cafes, bookstores, and parks by zip code, then scrape user tips for color commentary and pull photos for social posts. The API key setup means interns can run queries without waiting on eng to provision OAuth. This works when you're producing 10+ guides per month and need structured POI data, not just editorial opinions. If you're writing one guide per quarter or covering international cities where Foursquare's coverage is thin, the juice isn't worth the squeeze—manually curating 20 spots is faster. For teams publishing at volume in North American metros, this MCP turns research from a 4-hour slog per guide into a 20-minute data pull. Pair it with a Google Sheets MCP to auto-populate your CMS.