Hello Everyone -
I hope everyone’s week is going well. I’m excited to talk about a few overlapping passion points of mine: food, tech and doing good.
I recently sat down with Bo Peabody, the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Seated. Seated is a marketplace, which connects restaurants to diners - incentivizing members to dine out, pick up or order delivery at participating restaurants by offering rewards, which can be redeemed at some of your favorite retailers, airlines, and experiences.
Seated’s value proposition is providing restaurant operators a platform to use dynamic pricing as a way to maintain consistent occupancy. Similar to hotels or airlines, a restaurant may offer a larger incentive through the Seated platform to dine on a Monday vs. a Saturday night knowing the former is a slower time of day.
75% of a restaurants’ daily costs are fixed - how can a restaurant work with its variable costs in order to maximize its profitability? That’s where Seated comes in.
Consistent occupancy rate = sustained profitability.
Seated has over 1,000 restaurants on its platform across 6 US cities - NYC, Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and Atlanta
Its mobile app (available on iOS and Android OS) makes restaurant discovery super intuitive! You can search restaurants by area, cuisine, member rating and incentive
Restaurants provide a % of the check to members for patronizing their establishment — you need to upload a receipt through the app to verify the outing — which can be redeemed at leading retailers, airlines and other experiences all listed on the Seated app
Seated is transparent with their model - 75% of the dining incentive goes to the member and 25% goes to Seated
During the pandemic, Seated lowered their commission for dining-in while eliminating their take rate completely on delivery and pick up orders at participating restaurants therefore maximizing the member incentive in order to sustain occupancy rates.
About Bo — in addition to his role at Seated — brings a wealth of restaurant operating experience to the table (pun not intended):
Venture partner at Greycroft, an early seed venture capital firm, investing in food and culinary tech
Sits on the board at Boqueria - a Spanish and tapas restaurant group that has locations in NYC, DC, Nashville & Chicago
Co-owner of Mezze Restaurant Group which is based in Western Massachusetts
Restaurants can act as our ‘3rd place,’ behind our house and office, where we spend quality time while creating memorable experiences. Bo and I talked about a few restaurants that fall into this category for him.
Which restaurants fall in this category for you? Tell us on Twitter by tagging @FastTash & @bopeabody.
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