New restaurant buying site aimed at protecting restaurant brands
A former recruiter for group buying sites such as Groupon and Living Social has decided to tackle the business himself, launching an online-buying and search engine website catering for the restaurant industry.
Fork&Spoon co-founder Neil Dundon told Mumbrella the site is not a group-buying site.
“Technically speaking a group buying site you have to have a number of people to purchase. So straight off the bat, that rules us out,” he said.
“The whole point of our site is to differentiate ourselves, and the deals on our site are heavily curated. They’re very much a curated experience, that’s actually what we are. We brand ourselves as a company different to Groupon and Living Social, we don’t want to be lumped in the same bracket as that,” Dundon explained.
Dunon said the site aims to protect restaurant brands.
“It’s a double edged sword, they need to go on the likes of Groupon because they need the cash-flow coming in because they need to pay the rent. But they also know its got a huge damaging effect on their brand, the minute they feature on a group buying site is the minute they’ve decided to give up their brand to an extent,” Dundon said.
“So we decided we’d come out with that and we’d only target the restaurant industry, we specifically wanted to protect restaurant brands.”
The site, which describes itself as a “premium dining experience website”, only covers mid-to-high end restaurants, and doesn’t ask participating restaurants to have dramatic discounts that are unsustainable.
“We’re also about maintaining a certain standard, so we only have decent restaurants up there, generally they’re chef hatted and award winning,” Dundon said.
“We don’t ask restaurants to discount by 50 per cent, we say discount by 20 per cent, something that is manageable for you.”
Fork&Spoon has signed off on corporate deals with some of the major banks including NAB and ANZ for the site to be part of the bank’s internal staff purchasing programs.
“We are trying to attract a customer with a higher disposable income,” he said.
The site is gearing up to launch in Brisbane and Canberra with a number of restaurant partners signed up already.
Dundon said: “Hopefully we’ll get those two markets launched before Christmas.”
Fork&Spoon was co-founded by Dundon, who manages the sites marketing and corporate partnerships; along with the site’s digital director, Scott Smith and the sales director, Zeb Jaffer.
The site currently employs five offshore developers.
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
Linkedin
Sorry to rain on your parade Mr Dundon, but you are the 4th person to launch one of these sites in Sunday / Australia. The first being FullSociety.com that recently was acquired by The Intermedia group… that was established in 2011.
You also are up against the entertainment book’s version – http://www.bookarestaurant.com & another one I found http://www.lunchalot.com/.
I have listed some others that tried and failed:
http://www.noblevillage.com.au
http://www.agendatables.com.au
So advice… stop wasting your money on this business!!
User ID not verified.
Great to see some coverage of F&S – I heard of this site only a month ago and in two purchases have been very pleasantly surprised with both the experiences at the other end being excellent. And AJ you need pull your head out and actually look at some of the sites you’re talking about – they’re hardly the same at all.
User ID not verified.
G’day AJ,
Always appreciate input good or bad. You do seem to assume we haven’t done our research. I should let you know we have been in contact with all of these players well in advance of our launch or at minimum have done our research on all the other players also.
We are launched now however and getting some great initial traction with very positive feedback from both restaurants and customers alike.
Cheers
Neil
User ID not verified.
restaurant directories based on user ratings have become untrustworthy, with competitors and trolls posting dishonest and unfair critiques. great to see that some guys who learned from the mistakes of the daily deals operators are going to help consumers get a genuine discount from quality places, rather than reduced menu selections at cheap ethnic ones. good luck with it gentlemen!
User ID not verified.
AJ, not to mention Australia’s largest restaurant booking site Dimmi which is doing special offers with Urbanspoon and also allows people to book from the Good Food Guide and other sites.
Basically Dimmi is the local office for Urbanspoon which is probably the most powerful restaurant site in Australia. Some of my clients get 1,000 to 2,000 visitors to their sites a month from Urbanspoon and those visitors translate into bookings and buying stuff such as vouchers.
The problem is that every other site is is just a drop in this ocean and no one as yet has been able to match the profile of Urbanspoon or web traffic of Urbanspoon.
I wish them luck but it’s a tough market to crack.
User ID not verified.
Well Done Neil!!
User ID not verified.
What a great and simple idea. Market ‘premium’ to customers who don’t want to be anything but. I agree that this is a simple idea that has NOT been done before, AJ. So long as you can keep the quality up I think it should work. It would be good to tap into the premium tourist market as well since this group struggle to know where to eat. Best of luck
User ID not verified.
It’s a compeitive market but sounds like you are in eawrly stages and if you get your customers spreading the word with great deals and add on services, it should be all good for F&S. Nice one.
User ID not verified.
We all know the top even of town in Sydney, all the premium places have rebranding their restaurants as ‘bistro’ style places, special occasion places dont last long expect Quay/Teys….
Sydney is filled iwth overpriced and ‘meh’ tasting food..why do you think your local Thai or Chinese places has been around for over 10 years..
User ID not verified.
I like the idea, however I agree with AJ.
Regardless of the slight differentiation, its just another site trying to break into an extremely saturated Group buying market in Australia. All it will take is one of the major players – a Groupon, LivingSocial or Scoopon to change the way they approach higher end restaurants, and with their large databases, they’ll put a huge squeeze on the deliverables that F&S can achieve.
Perhaps with a staffing team under 10 heads, there some money to be made. But will be tough work.
User ID not verified.
Fork &Spoon can’t be compared to other sites and we have tried them all. We enjoyed a great 3 course meal and a very decent bottle of wine last week with one of F&S’s deals. The restaurant was in a prime water side area, food was fresh, beautifully presented and great value. All the above and still under $100 for two!
User ID not verified.
Julie do you work at F&S?
Max – no one has done it? Need a fact check buddy. Have a look at savored.com for starters. Have a look at dimmi, lunchalot, FullSociety, & countless others, that have been & gone.
This is nothing new.
Here’s another for you. Less than 20% of all bookings are made online in Sydney. Factor in the “No reservations” Policy of some top restaurants plus the fact Merivale & other significant restaurant groups do ALL bookings internally.
User ID not verified.
Gary, No I do not work at F&S. I am simply contributing to a conversation. I am a ‘glass half full’ kind of person. I saw a job well done and said so. I am aware that people are more likely to vent about what has not been a good experience but I try to keep a balance.
In regard to two recent Merivale / Ivy experiences, I had lunch with friends at Palings twice in the last two weeks. The servings were extremely poor for the money paid. This was a shame because we had enjoyed several good meals there. We certainly will not be returning.
User ID not verified.
Fair enough Julie. I think the point, was that this is not an original idea.
Another site that hasn’t been mentioned – Lime & Tonic. It’s most similar to F&S. Basically showcasing curated experiences, that may already be promoted by the restaurant itself.
AJ mentioned FullSociety & they did in fact launch in 2011, with some great restaurants & the 20-30% off model. F&S are also just showcasing venues, which means they are competing with publications such as Fairfax, News.com.au & niche publications.
Either way, best of luck.
User ID not verified.