Meet Dineout, the startup that’s making restaurant booking in Manila easy

Lenard Pascual agrees when people say Filipinos are certified foodies. “Filipinos love dining out for any and no occasion at all,” he says. This is, of course, a boon not just for restaurants, but also online reservation platforms like Dineout, which Pascual co-founded.

Dineout eliminates the pain of making phone calls or queuing for a spot at popular, crowded, and top-tier restaurants in Manila.

The platform’s appeal is pretty straightforward: if you have a restaurant in mind, just identify the date and time you’d like to pay a visit, and Dineout will get you a table. But in case you don’t know a good place to eat, Dineout also gives you restaurant choices depending on the cuisine you’re craving, your mood, or location.

Dineout’s biggest come-on is its reward system. Users who reserve through the platform are given freebies such as drinks or discounts at affiliated restaurants. They also earn points after every consumed reservation. These points are convertible into gift certificates. “Our goal is to make reservations easy, accessible, and rewarding,” notes Pascual.

Reservations through Dineout are free for customers. However, the startup charges restaurants in their network a fee per seat or a flat rate per month. Pascual assures restaurants of no risk for lost revenue in case reservations lead to empty tables: if customers don’t show up, the restaurants don’t have to pay.

Dineout was founded by Pascual, Dalvin Lim, Andrew Wu, and Jarvin Gabitan – all of whom have years of experience in IT.

Pascual says he got the idea for the startup after trying out OpenTable in the US. “I looked it up and experienced how convenient it was to make reservations. Being a techie and foodie, I wanted to have a similar service back home.”

Dineout isn’t just about the reservation itself. It also provides a reservation management system (RMS) that helps make restaurants’ day-to-day operations efficient. Using Dineout, restaurant managers are able to confirm customers’ reservations instantly, manage the wait list, receive real-time notifications, and generate reports on market trends anytime, anywhere.

“Most of the restaurants here still do things manually. Things can get a little confusing for the staff during peak hours. With the RMS, they’ll always know who’s next in line,” he explains.

Pascual says their challenges include resources and client acquisition. “We have bootstrapped our operations from the beginning and it is hard to compete with companies with large funds.”

Dineout is battling it out to win clients and users, and earn the distinction of being the preferred reservation platform in the Philippines. It has only 21 restaurants in its network at the moment, much smaller than the figures for at least two established players in Manila – Eat Out Manila and Residiary, both of which have backing from overseas.

What makes Dineout unique, however, are two things – aside from being an all-in-one solution for restaurant management, reservation and customer rewards, it’s also a platform “created and developed by Filipinos for Filipinos,” notes Pascual. “We can argue that we know more about what users want than our competition do.”

Dineout has over 1,000 active users. Pascual says he aims to have at least 3,000 active users by the end of the year.