Arthur's Blog: Savored.com Can Bring You Big Discounts at Well-Known Restaurants

I'm impressed by a website called Savored.com, which takes advantage of the need of restaurants to fill their tables at unpopular times. Savored.com is such an obvious idea that other Internet entrepreneurs must be slapping their foreheads and exclaiming, "Why didn't I think of that!"

Here's the background:

If you have ever walked the streets of Miami or Miami Beach at 5:30pm, you have probably noticed the "early bird specials" that major restaurants offer to persons who will take their dinners that early. The same large discounts -- at least 30% off the bill, or even 40% -- are also offered in other cities on weekends, at restaurants that normally cater to a business clientele that isn't around on weekends. Or the discounts are offered on slow Monday evenings at restaurants mainly patronized on the weekends. Nearly all restaurants have periods of time, or whole days, when their business is slow; and they are willing to reduce the price of meals to persons who come in at that time.

Other restaurants are willing to slash the price at the last minute, when they discover that a large group has cancelled the tables that were set aside for them. They would be happy to replace that business at lower meal costs, if they could only quickly (and effectively) advertise the availability of that space within a few hours prior to the time in question.

Yet no one -- at least until now -- has created a means of permitting willing restaurant sellers and willing consumers to match up.

Enter Savored.com. For ten major cities -- New York; Philadelphia; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Miami; Chicago; Denver; Los Angeles; and San Francisco -- Savored.com lists restaurants that will make reservations for meals reduced in price by 30% and 40% at times of the day, or on particular days, when the restaurants are slow to fill up. An example? An extremely elegant and somewhat expensive restaurant located short blocks from where I live will grant a discount of 30% to persons who come in to dine as early as 6pm

And the discounts are granted without embarassment to the customer. You simply mention quietly to the maitre d' that your reservation was made through Savored.com, and the discount will be automatically applied to your bill -- without further discussion of any sort.

Savored.com is currently working to add other cities to its current list of ten. And it is always adding restaurants and various periods of cut-rate dining to its repertoire. I'm predicting a major success for Savored.com and suggest you take a look at it.