Honest feedback - looks like you're trying to charge me for something that's free. Calling a restaurant to make a reservation is not that big of a hassle.
But consistently planning a date night with my beautiful wife is.
If I'm planning to drop $250-300/mth on a couple of great dinners, then another $10 to add an element of surprise and save me from all the research and bookings is well worth it.
I wonder where Brisbane Australia is on their roll-out schedule... We have multiple nice restaurants now, and thankfully both are now open later than 8.30pm.
Thanks Jacob. It's our dream to be able to roll it out in Brisbane, but given the size of our team and how young the project is, it won't happen quite so soon :)
Much like the concierge services (ie Magic) out there, we want The Loft Club to provide simplify people's habits of dining out. The added element of a pleasant surprise - as you mentioned - is something we want to focus on too as we build out the service.
This should be free. They're either passing up on the money restaurants would pay to bump numbers on slow nights or getting you coming and going, as it were. (There's certainly the possibility that they want to stay ethically clean, but the cynic in me says a random startup I know nothing about is, well, a cash strapped startup).
This isn't to say that they shouldn't take restaurant money, there's certainly precedent for it and people love Yelp. Being transparent (or simply keeping quality up) would be a good check.
This might seem weird- but to me, it has the same appeal as television: the selection is already made.
Choosing a restaurant to eat at is such a small barrier, but it feels huge (kinda like picking an episode on NetFlix).
I definitely see the appeal in getting an e-mail saying: "Hobotron, a table for 2 is reserved at Lait de Tétine this Thursday at 7PM." and when you show up your preferred cocktail is already on the table.
Could partner up with Uber/Limo/Whatever to provide rides to/from in the event you wish to indulge to excess.
This is the problem with ideas like loft. A lot of people think it is a good idea. They give feedback about what they would like to see in a service like this and consider pretty 'neat' at best. Then it pops off the front page and they never consider it again. Making reservations is easy. People will probably not "love" this service, because it isn't even close to essential. ITT a lot of people provide feedback about a product they will never use giving the founders a false sense of feature and product demand.
