Greetings to all ,
I have been a part of this group for a long time now and have learnt a lot but haven’t contributed anything. So now, I am finally writing something. Cheers to that! So here I go,
How awesome would it be if YOU could book a table at YOUR favorite restaurant and get YOUR favorite dishes at YOUR price. Awesome? I know right.
So, I was thinking of making a platform where you could BID for your meal. For example, you are 4-5 friends who are deciding a place to hangout on a fine Tuesday evening. So you look for some discount on various sites .But either you do not find the deal or you are not happy with the deal they are providing. So finally you cancel the plan or settle for 0 discount. But of course, you aren’t happy. Now what if you could have got the deal you were looking for.
Image Courtesy – Google/Dreamstime (Yuck! This was the best picture I could find)
Let me tell you how it will work.
You log on to the platform, search the restaurant you are looking a deal for. Then you fill the details regarding the number of persons you are going along with, your budget- Per Person (if large group) or total, a rough detail of what kind of dishes(if possible) you are going to have – be it alcohol, Hookah or the specific kind of meal and FINALLY the discount you are expecting from the restaurant (It should be nominal only). And then you submit it. Now the detail goes to the restaurant which will then analyze the situation by taking into consideration
1. Costing – costing on booze & hookah is generally less, so he may give you some extra discount on that
2. The number of reservations at the proposed time
3. And some other things.
If the thing sets then he confirms the reservation. I don’t think there should be any problem for the restaurant because they are getting something extra only. And the customer would be happy too. However, after too many YOUs, I haven’t thought anything for ME i.e. Monetization. But surely, we can add some customized deals and charge commission for that. But woh baad ki baat hai !
So what do you guys think about the idea?
All inputs are welcome.(Writing for the first time so DO POINT OUT if there is any mistake)
Thanks
Karan
Twitter- Karan_Setiya
Sameer Agarwal
according to me ,it can work if your company is analyzing the customer requirement and if u have some kind of partnership with restaurants that will allow your company take some action of booking or discount if you allow directly restaurants have to put extra burden on manager or staff it is difficult for them whether to give discount or not it can also alter other customer behaviour if mediator is involved i think there wont be any problem its just my opinion anyways good idea keep it up do check https://zerotorrent.co
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Depends on the type of restaurants you are targeting.
The fancy, upmarket restaurants will not participate.
Can you name a few restaurants that you think will agree?
Have you met say 50 restaurant owners and asked them?
Karan
First of all, thanks for replying sir.
As far as type of restaurant is concerned, we will be targeting mostly the Bars & Cafes as they have better margins and they generally give discounts too.
I know that “most” of the fancy, upmarket restaurants won’t participate but there would be few which might be interested and having them on board would be good. Also, i think it would be easy to partner with the restaurants which are fairly NEW or yet to open.
Sir, I can not name the restaurants as such but i think partnering with the ones which are already providing discounts shouldn’t be any problem.
I haven’t progressed that far till now.I just thought about it, asked a few foodie friends and posted it here.I am in process of asking more and more people out there. I think people look for different different concepts and are willing to try that. So i think this might work.
Karan
@Sameer – thanks for replying & sorry for being a little late.Yes, we would partner in a way where we could also have some control on the discount and bookings.Also, as i said, since the discount would be nominal only so there won’t be any burden on the manager. And sorry to say but i did not understand the first line – “Analyzing the customer requirement”. Can you please elaborate on that.
Nitin
Okay, Here are 3 kind of scenarios I can think of:
1) If I am planning for a team lunch at a fancy and popular restaurant (e.g. BBQ Nation etc.) on any day, I absolutely never get any discount and even booking a table is not easy since they have so many already in queue. So, this concept doesn’t seem to work in its present form.
2) If the restaurant is not in demand or I am booking on some off days, I generally call up and negotiate for the offer. Most of the times, I get a very good discount. And I don’t know how you can further improve this with your idea?
3) If I am booking a table of 2-3 people in not-so-good restaurant, then might be, your concept will work but then, there is groupon who are doing the same thing for them with better efficiency.
Perzen Darukhanawalla
Being a person who supplies Parsi food on demand, I really don’t feel the concept as it stands is really attractive. Let me tell you why:
1. You say you will be taking a cut from the restaurant for featuring this auction. This means that the restaurant is your client and the person eating is simply the user. I wouldn’t really be happy for a 3rd party to decide my pricing for me as even besides food cost, there is a range of costs that go into preparing a meal – delivery, boxes, taxes etc. Thinking of a price range that you can sell xyz food for anywhere between say ₹ 200 – ₹ 500 is a bit tough as not all these costs would get factored plus at the restaurant end its hard to come up with this range (trust me most places don’t even have detailed costing in place!)
2. As a concept this sounds fine but I’ve found when people are hungry, they just want a simple solution that works every time. Bidding for my food sounds like a fun thing to try once or twice but if you needed me to do this every time I want to buy a sandwich I honestly wouldn’t bother.
3. When people order as a group or its a big order, price is rarely a factor and the time taken to bid, restaurant accepts bid etc is just too long a processing time in my opinion.
I could be entirely wrong but this is just my personal opinion that as your concept stands its not very valuable to your vendor which is whom you’re making money from! I also agree with Alok that you should actually pick up the phone and talk to 50 restaurants first and see if they would be keen for something like this first before developing (especially because you don’t have a clear cut revenue model in place). I remember when GroupOn launched overseas, they too had this bidding model and it didn’t last very long partly because of vendor pressure.
Karan
Hi sir, Sorry for being so late.
As i have already said, it would be quite difficult to convince the popular restaurants so going to concentrate on the average ones first.
Secondly, everyone doesn’t possess good negotiation skills so most of the times they miss out on that extra discount.
Now finally you said, Groupon is doing the same thing but won’t it be better for everyone if we could integrate table booking with the deals on a single platform itself. What say sir ?
Karan
Hi Mam,
1.The concept is only for dine-in restaurants and not for delivery/takeaway.So it doesn’t seem to work in your type of model.
2. Yes i do agree that it would be cumbersome for a customer to try it out everytime he goes out. I have thought about it but haven’t really come to a conclusion
3.I don’t agree with the third point because as far as i think. price is a factor in big orders because if the customer gets a discount he could get a better place at the same place. I think the platform is best suited for a group.
By the way didn’t know about groupon’s bidding model. Will read about that. Thanks 🙂