Another OpenTable Competitor Launches – And Its Mobile

Up until now, Sosh has functioned as a recommendations app focused on helping users enjoy the city they find themselves in through general recommendations.  The service is now refining its offering with the launch of Sosh Concierge, which is squarely focusing its attention on restaurants.

Sosh Concierge will hardly be alone in the space—though OpenTable is the most well known player, app stores are becoming increasingly crowded with mobile services want to help users book reservations, hold barstools, pay for meals, pre-order items for pick-up—so no one with a smartphone should ever have a hard time finding a meal.

Sosh’s unique corner of the market will be a focus on exclusive and hard-to book reservations and exclusive or generally call-ahead wary establishments.  This new service builds upon providing ticketing and payments Sosh already offers to many of its non-restaurant customers. Users who book through Sosh can pre-pay for a dinner, usually from a pre-set meu, and then show up to eat.

Concierge extracts the payment at the time of table booking.  There are no mark-ups as the price is identical to what would be charged at the restaurant.

“While airlines or hotels are comfortable price discriminating, restaurants are often very personal reflections of a chef or restaurateur, so they are not. We understand that a restaurant isn’t simply trying to blindly maximize its profits, but is instead a hospitality business,” said Sosh founder Rishi Mandal, reportsTechCrunch. “Companies that sell reservations so fundamentally misunderstand this.”

The service is launching in San Francisco only, though plans for a New York launch are underway.

This service follows the launch of Sosh Marketplace, which is a self-service model where vendors set up their own events and Sosh handles the ticketing and other logistics. That self-serve model won’t extend to booking reservations at restaurants and hot bars.