Uber style "minimum spend" restaurant booking app Dorsia launches in London

An Uber style restaurant app that allows diners to pay in advance for normally hard-to-get tables and walk away at the end of their meal without going through the hassle of settling the bill has launched in London.

The platform called Dorsia allows users to pay a minimum charge up front, ranging from around £55 a head to over £300 a head depending on the restaurant, when the booking is made. The average minimum spend is around the £100 mark.

At the end of the meal the diners just walk away and any excess spend over the minimum payment is deducted from the debit or credit card linked to the account.

Some of London’s best known venues including Chiltern Firehouse, LPM, Langan’s and Taku are already signed up.

The app is named after the impossible-to-get-a-table fictional restaurant in Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho. It already operates in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco.

Founder Marc Lotenberg, who is also CEO of Surface Media, said the minimum spend requirement would help prevent restaurants having their most sought after sittings - typical mid evening on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights - filled by low spending diners who booked a long way in advance and sometimes even fail to turn up.

He said: ”At the moment there is no way to differentiate who gets the best slots. The ones you want are the customers who really intend to spend. If diners don't make a minimum investment in the best slots then the restaurant is going to lose money.

“By committing to a minimum spend of £50 or £100 you help the restaurants with their problems with their best inventory and with no shows and cancellations, the spend is higher, and you help the servers because they will get better tips. Currently there is no accountability and no penalty for no shows. We’ve cracked the code.”.

“Waiting for the bill can be a bad moment in an otherwise positive experience. With the app it is just like Uber, you get up an leave.”

He said the minimum spend and absence of bill at the end of the meal encouraged users to spend more, typically by at least 20% to 30% but sometimes far more. Participating restaurants in New York allocate as much as 30% to 50% of their prime time slots to people using the app.

Mr Lotenberg said there are currently 32 restaurants signed up in London with 15 more on the way.