Connoisseur Club combines Open Table with Groupon

After being at SGE for about seven months now, I’ve noticed something about Singapore entrepreneurs: We’re pretty adept at taking a business concept from overseas and applying it locally.

Which is fine by the way — as long as it isn’t blind copying.

The latest to follow in this fine tradition is Singapore-based Connoisseur Club, which is essentially an online restaurant reservation site combined with a group buying site. Think Open Table and Groupon‘s love child.

Connoisseur Club was started by Bel Hwang and a partner this year. It is inspired by Savored, a discount dining site for high-end restaurants that is gaining traction in the United States. Savored was on track to generate US$25M in sales last year.

I’m curious to see if Connoisseur Club will take off in Singapore.

An interesting feature of this site is that customers must pay a fully-refundable S$3 to S$5 reservation fee. The fee is supposed to serve as a confirmation of your attendance. If you want to cancel and retrieve the fee, you need to do so before 24 hours from the date of reservation.

I’m not quite buying it. Why bother troubling the consumer with a fee that is refundable, when practically no other restaurant I know of does this?

Savored, on the other hand, has a non-refundable reservation fee, which makes more sense. I certainly won’t mind paying a fee in exchange for curation of the best restaurants in town, especially if the fee is offset by a steep discount from a posh restaurant.

Another intriguing feature of the service is that discounts are charged discreetly to your bill — which I like.

Trust me, I’ve dined at a restaurant after purchasing a deal from a group buying site once, and the process is unpleasant. The waiter looked confused when we showed her the discount coupon on the iPhone.

The manager then swooped in, requesting that my girlfriend and I present a physical copy of the deal receipt.

We ended up using the hotel’s business center to do the printing — how ludicrous is that?

So I like the fact that Connoisseur Club promises to make the whole process seamless and fuss-free.