

Show HN: The Loft Club – Monthly access to top restaurants in your city - dzine
https://useloft.com/

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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!

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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.

~~~
JacobAldridge
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.

~~~
dko
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.

Happy to chat more in person, DM me @derrickko.

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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.

~~~
mmcclure
Cool! Thanks for reaching out via email, I appreciate the effort.

I'll definitely give this a shot at the discounted price. I really do like the
idea, I just don't think I'd be willing to pay the (current) full cost. Who
knows though, maybe I'll sing a different tune after a few reservations.

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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...

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

~~~
nsxwolf
As long as you bring a book along.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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).

