You’ve probably noticed that your favorite restaurant probably has busy periods, which are usually dictated by when people typically get hungry. No surprise, that tends to be around lunch and dinner. But then there are other times when it’s not so busy. The thing is, restaurants have fixed costs that don’t really waver during ups and downs, like rent and employee salaries.
To deal with that, a new app called Go Dish seeks to get more eaters into restaurants during off-peak hours by offering discounts on meals picked up before or after a typical restaurant’s lunch rush.
Go Dish works like this: Once a user has signed up, she’ll get a notification every day at around 9:30 alerting her to discounts on meals being offered by nearby restaurants. Those discounts typically range from 20 percent to 35 percent, but can go as high as 50 percent for select dishes each day.
But those discounts also depend on users scheduling their lunch plans around the usual 11:30-2:00 lunch rush. Discounts get steeper the earlier someone decides to get lunch before the rush, or the later they’re willing to wait afterward.
Go Dish was founded by a couple of veterans from Wynn Hotels, Hotwire.com and Liftopia, where they worked on dynamic pricing for hospitality providers. So why not food? That’s the idea behind the app.
Currently Go Dish has about 45 restaurants on board in the Financial District and SOMA in San Francisco, and offers between 10 and 25 dishes per day as part of the apps. It’s looking to expand to more locations and into more neighborhoods to reach even more providers.