The global restaurant industry hasn’t seen innovation since the Diners Club charge card was born in 1950. Now, a kid from Worcester is among those trying to change that.
Bentley College grad Nick Belsito founded BeeLine (beelinenow.com), a dining concierge mobile app that aims to secure hard-to-get reservations for reliable, well-heeled customers and supply restaurants with an individual profile on those diners — whether they like their wine decanted, prefer a specific drink, etc.
BeeLine recently launched in Boston and San Francisco, one of a handful of new apps aiming to put a fresh twist on restaurant reservations and disrupt the long-stagnant business of wining and dining.
“As your private concierge, we form relationships so you don’t have to,” said Belsito, 28, formerly a financial analyst at Raytheon.
Belsito’s team, funded by a group of individual angel investors in Boston and Silicon Valley, claims that its services are a win-win for customers and restaurants alike: BeeLine users spend 30 percent more than the average patron and have a 99 percent arrival rate. That, said Belsito, helps solve a giant problem for restaurants, which lose hundreds of thousands of dollars each year holding tables for no-shows. For nightclubs and lounges, that no-show rate is usually worse, which is why Belsito’s decision to integrate nightlife reservations is so savvy. Belsito says his calculations put the industry’s combined losses due to no-shows at up to $27 billion annually.
“This is a very large and hot market,” Belsito said. “There are other competitors out there such as OpenTable, which is frustrating to use as a consumer because they are often sold out during prime time.”
The restaurant reservation system is ripe for disruption, and OpenTable — the biggest online reservation system — has missed a golden opportunity to lead the way. It simply took an offline system and brought it online, with very few incentives for spending and dining in off-peak hours.
With BeeLine, which does offer those incentives, pricing ranges from free with perks (like a surprise item from the chef) to a $5 premium for prime-time access. Still, the new app faces some competition, with startups such as Reserve and Table 8 both circling the same space with varied business models.
I suspect in the next year or two you’ll see more startups follow suit: Some will allow restaurants to bid on certain VIP patrons, automate incentives for new customers or give discounts to patrons willing to keep their meals short and not linger at a table all night.
Uber has launched an interesting experiment in surge pricing, but perhaps it is restaurants that could use that model best. With apologies to fans of salad and appetizers, why shouldn’t someone who spends big on fancy food get to skip to the front of the line?
