Show HN: The Loft Club – Monthly access to top restaurants in your city

[dko]

Hey everyone, this is Derrick, the creator of The Loft Club.

We noticed a common pattern when we eat out. A cursory Yelp search, perhaps a cross reference dining guides, and finally making the reservation (via OpenTable/SeatMe/phone), only to find out that there aren't any tables left. We then wish we had done all this couple weeks back, but that's hardly practical.

The Loft Club removes all that hassle. Trust us to do the research, and we'll make the reservations for you every two weeks. We've started this small project to scratch our own itch for now, and we'd love to hear your feedback!

[ironchef]

From a city perspective, Chicago should be added of course. Beyond that you should have the ability to mark restaurants, food types, and neighborhoods as no gos or desired (what if i hate chinese food, don't want to go to hyde park, or need gluten free...so basically take the different categories in yelp and add those in as well for both positive and negative). At least that's off the top of my head. Another concept would be as opposed to the current scheduling to allow me to add when i want to go in a calendaring format and let you fill it (this tuesday, next wednesday...nothing the week after, etc)

[rajacombinator]

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.

[nrubin]

This looks neat! Signed up. Question though -- is this all $$$$+ restaurants or will you guys expand to cheaper/lesser well known joints too?

[jroseattle]

I'm someone who eats out a lot, and in the price range of what you mentioned ($50/person). I've done the Yelp search/reservation two-step many times in other cities besides my own.

My honest feedback is that this service doesn't solve a problem for me. Most of the time, the key to any reservation for me is timing. My schedule can be a little volatile (not a lot), but two weeks ahead of time doesn't solve an issue for me.

Here's what would be helpful to me: based on my preferences, shoot me a message today about an opening somewhere tomorrow. Make it a push notification, and let me reply -- if yes, book it.

[avemg]

Is there a way for me to tell you which restaurants I've already been to so you don't send me there?

[mmcclure]

When I clicked the link, there was an HN special for $9.99/mo. I thought to myself "that's a little expensive for making 2 phone calls a month, but what the heck, maybe the surprise will be fun." I went to sign up, got through to the credit card phase, and now the price is $19.99.

On top of the feel of bait and switch (although I know this was certainly just a bug), that price feels insane. This is a potentially fun idea to me, or at least certainly something I'd be willing to try for a month, but to be blunt, I think that price point is ludicrous.

[dko]

Sorry you experienced that! We just discovered a bug that didn't persist the offer to the end in a minority of cases, and it's now been fixed. And thanks for your feedback about our prices. Our price at launch is actually derived from other services in the reservations space (ie Table8, TableSaavy), but we're always evaluating our price point.

[RIMR]

I love that you can specify 1 person...

TLC is going to have a nice database of very weird people who would use a service like this to make sure they get to go out to a fancy restaurant twice a month, by themselves...

[stickydink]

I wouldn't say that everybody who likes to eat at nice restaurants alone, are "very weird people".

[jacquesc]

Maybe TLC can put some of those 1person groups together.

[coolrhymes]

You're assuming that searching restaurants on yelp and then booking is a hassle. It isn't for me and for most part people I know who eat out regularly. It's almost always you go there with your friends or significant other and wait at the bar (get drinks etc) and then get the table.

To be honest, I might have booked like 3 times via Opentable in a year.

I am sure there will be a small section of people wanting to do this but I doubt you will be able to scale to make it a operational business. In addition, it is very expensive.

[oddtarball]

Is it possible to do a different frequency, like twice per week? 26 times a year isn't much.

[Retra]

That's already over $2100 for a little over one week's worth of meals.

[baby]

> Monsiuer Benjamin

It's Monsieur.

And I don't like this idea. I want to choose the restaurant I'm going to, we have amazing tools now like Trip Advisor to get an idea of the quality, it's pretty easy to find something YOU want.

[kra34]

About the only thing I can't pay somebody to do for me these days is post on Hacker News. Billion $ idea <- that one is free.

[glup]

Another crippling problem for the overclass has been solved! And here I was getting sad because I'd polished off the port.

[eclipxe]

Not to be a negative HN'er, but this just feels like something people in SF/SV will go crazy about, but will not resonate/scale outside of SF/SV. It's not solving a problem significant enough for the cost. The small subset of people that would pay for this, probably have more efficient means of achieving the same end result (personal assistant, virtual assistant, etc).