Very busy week at Letsgofordinner.com with discussions, presentations, company activity and restaurant news.

We had 2 experienced entrepreneurs come in and give us some tips on presenting.  The presentations to Patrick Lor of Fotolia and discussions with Jonathan Bixby of  StrangeLoop Networks went well, still work to be done.  Their feedback and observations were very helpful.  Thanks guys for the time.

Lots of finance, accounting and tech developoment this week…moving forward .. of course

Have not been following the news that closely but in the past 2 days one of our featured restaurant groups have been in the press.. no surprise  its the Glowbal Group.

First their grand opening of the new Coast was featured in this month Vancouver magazine

Then on Saturday moring Sophie Lui of Glo(w)bal Television said she went to the new Coast and enjoyed it.. I do not think she used our Letsgofordinner card, well we can try again.

Later in the day grabbed the Wine Spectator -  restaurant reviews for the best wine serving restaurants.  The link is for 2008 as the information is not posted on their website.  Now the great news Coast, Glowbal , Italian Kitchen all fetaured in this years list.  Not bad for being one of 4,000 restaurants in the world (read North America) out 250,000 full service US restaurants.

Seemed also that earlier in the week people were tweeting a fashion specal at Sanafir everyone was quite excited.  seemed to go down a treat

Congrats Glowbal group good show

In the past 3 weeks, we have signed 6 fantastic new restaurants where you can buy certificates.  We now have a restaurant in Whistler and we will have one in White Rock very shortly with 2 more restaurants coming on stream in the next 10 days.

Water St Cafe in Gastown is our latest addition, with Century, Monk’s Grill and Monk McQueens
all joining in the past week.

Just over 2 weeks ago we went live with Unwine’d and Il Nido.

The team is pushing into newly opened restaurants and pre existing favourites.

Come back to the site to see the new additions today and every week

We had a great meetimg with the dynamic team from H&L systems.  They have many POS customers but they have two great restaurants working with them and which we know as well: Stonegrill and Steamworks.

H&L appear to be the right kind of company to work with,  good customer service and good prices. They have a great customer service approach, which we have heard very good things about from customers and partners alike.   Their solution appears to give a lot of control and power to the management over food inventory while also being a much cheaper solution.  Most of the add-ons/modules are included already in the price of the base system, giving what appears to be more features at a lower price. Bottom line – restaurants get lots of additional functionallity for no extra cost.

It is obvious we have a similiar approach and are working in the same space, so it will be great to have a second meeting and explore how we can get more restaurants together.

Looking forward to meeting them again.

No Coupons, No Paper, No Hassle and better yet… No Upfront Cost

On Tuesday we went live with our Telephone Redemption service allowing us to offer our Pay for Performance-Based Marketing service to all restaurants in BC or anywhere.

Interest has been great, yesterday, we went live with Unwine’d.

Why not join us tomorrow?

Background
Our solution optimally matches hungry consumers with your empty seats.

1. Lets Go For Dinner sells your restaurant’s certificates for half price from our website to our members only.
2. We drive members to your restaurant. You pay only a small amount when a couple sits down to eat. We cannot say here because, we do not want everyone to know how low the cost is but contact us and find out.  Afterwards, we send you 60-80% of the amount collected from the consumer — that’s right, we send you customers and write you cheques!
3. The certificate is digital and is stored on our servers — no hassle in tracking, redemption and accounting. It’s all done using your  Telephone or your Point Of Sale system and best of all we increase your profitability and revenue immediately

If you need a solution where you only pay when you see customers coming through the door, then you should contact us.

The Letsgofordinner team was invited to the brand new Coast restaurant on Alberni.  The food was spot on, especially upstairs in the sushi, oyster and shrimp bar.   The highlight of the hors d’oeuvres was the grilled tuna with wasabi; the tuna had a beef taste but was balanced by the gentle sting of the wasabi.  Having great seafood in not easy to accomplish normally, let alone with hundreds of people and the scale of the restaurant, but they pulled it off.  It takes quite an organization to do this and given what the team saw when construction was underway, Emad runs a very well trained group inside the restaurant.

The restaurant is huge and can be broken down into 4/5 main areas .  Upon entering  there is a huge circular bar dominating the entrance, on your right is a lounge area called the O Lounge with separate bar and two levels discrete and tastefully laid out in browns.  Back to the bar ahead of you and up, there is a balcony overlooking all the action, which in fact looks like the key dining area, lower down almost a brassiere style  dining area where customers can gaze at the chefs.  To the left of the bar is a lounge area that acts like a way station before going to the upper area. Its said that Emad has spent 3.3 million on this new seafood faring eatery and you can really see where the money went, the place has a restrained European Club feel.

Congratulations to the Glowbal team for a great evening and an exciting addition to Vancouver and for all the punters out there go it will be worth it.