Home: Issue 3 2011 › Overwhelming response
Overwhelming response
14/11/2011 | Channel: Hotels - Restaurants, Catering
Some of London’s most respected, high-end restaurants have signed up to an innovative new service that aims to fill vacant tables, particularly at ‘off peak’ dining times, by offering discerning diners exclusive access to discreet, preferential pricing.
The service, called table7, is the first of its kind in the UK. It optimises the usage of excess capacity for restaurants by introducing the economic model of
variable pricing (the model adopted by airlines to fill empty seats) to the high-end restaurant sector.
table7’s members are typically offered a discount of 30 per cent off their entire bill when they book tables through the table7 website. To ensure the commitment to the booking, a fee of £7 is charged to the customer. table7’s discount is discreetly added by restaurant staff at the end of the meal, when the bill is presented. There is no set-up charge for restaurants to use the service. Instead, table7 takes its revenue directly from the customer when bookings are made. table7 has been created specifically to serve high-end restaurants who have expressed concerns about devaluing their brand through mass-market and indiscriminate voucher websites. With table7, high-end restaurants will only be listed amongst their peers. In addition to this, rather than charging restaurants, table7 has been built to take its core revenue from customers. This fee will help minimise bookings from coupon-driven ‘bargain hunters’ with whom high-end restaurants would be unlikely to build long term, repeat custom. Ashwin Jain, co-founded table7. He comments: “When applied to the high-end restaurant sector, the concept of variable pricing creates huge opportunities.
“Already, we have Michelin starred-restaurants and establishments from some of the world’s top chefs set up on table7. By connecting them with new, discerning diners, we hope to foster word-of-mouth recommendations for their businesses amongst influential peers and build greater, long-term profitability.”
www.table7.com
variable pricing (the model adopted by airlines to fill empty seats) to the high-end restaurant sector.
table7’s members are typically offered a discount of 30 per cent off their entire bill when they book tables through the table7 website. To ensure the commitment to the booking, a fee of £7 is charged to the customer. table7’s discount is discreetly added by restaurant staff at the end of the meal, when the bill is presented. There is no set-up charge for restaurants to use the service. Instead, table7 takes its revenue directly from the customer when bookings are made. table7 has been created specifically to serve high-end restaurants who have expressed concerns about devaluing their brand through mass-market and indiscriminate voucher websites. With table7, high-end restaurants will only be listed amongst their peers. In addition to this, rather than charging restaurants, table7 has been built to take its core revenue from customers. This fee will help minimise bookings from coupon-driven ‘bargain hunters’ with whom high-end restaurants would be unlikely to build long term, repeat custom. Ashwin Jain, co-founded table7. He comments: “When applied to the high-end restaurant sector, the concept of variable pricing creates huge opportunities.
“Already, we have Michelin starred-restaurants and establishments from some of the world’s top chefs set up on table7. By connecting them with new, discerning diners, we hope to foster word-of-mouth recommendations for their businesses amongst influential peers and build greater, long-term profitability.”
www.table7.com