Eatigo has officially launched in Malaysia, and brings with it impressive discounts for meals. The catch is that the best discounts are for bookings made during off peak hours, a time when most people wouldn’t think of getting food.
The idea behind the service is that restaurants are generally under utilised in the hours between lunch and dinner. For the most part, this means that there is an inefficient use of resources, as the places are still incurring costs while generating very little income. Eatigo’s solution is fill these slow periods with customers by offering discounts.
Available as both a mobile app and web client, Eatigo is at its heart a service for making reservations at full-service restaurants. That said, co-founder and CEO Michael Cluzel explains that they are open to working with any place that is willing to offer reservations for tables, with no preference for upscale dining locations. In fact, Cluzel would be happy to work with Burger King if given the chance.
That in mind, Eatigo does not position itself as a service for restaurants to promote their business. Instead, it offers popular locations the opportunity to better leverage on their popularity to make a larger profit. In exchange, the company takes a fixed fee off each booking made.
Eatigo’s discounts apply to all food items on the menu, with the exception of drinks and other in-house specials. It also doesn’t allow customers to combine its offers with other coupons or discounts that might be found elsewhere. Which is rather reasonable considering that people are already getting up to 50 percent off their meals; albeit at between the hours of 3pm and 5pm.
The service was launched simultaneously in Thailand and Singapore about three years ago, and have already turned a profit. This latest expansion is aimed at both Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong at the same time, and has been made as part of a collaboration with TripAdvisor.
Interestingly, Eatigo allows users to make reservations across the countries in which it operates. Meaning that Malaysians can reserve seats at places in Hong Kong, a whole month before actually turning up to eat. Since it’s a reservation service, the user does not incur any costs until they actually sit down and order something.
Cluzel calls his company the anti-Groupon, in the sense that his customers are able to get their discounts without having to pay for it in advance. He also points out that since the discount applies to everything on the menu (except drinks), his customers will have a more pleasant experience with their restaurant of choice.
Eatigo is currently available on both Android and iOS; as well as a web based service.
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