Offpeak wants to turn a restaurant’s lull period into a cash cow

There is a popular myth that says that eating six smaller meals a day will help with weight-loss, as compared to eating the usual three square meals. The medical world doesn’t have a consensus on this, though it won’t come as a surprise that restaurateurs and cafe owners would throw their weight behind it. After all, more meals mean more visits, which equals more revenue for them.

However, most people tend to stick to the regular three-meal eating pattern, which is bad news for the F&B industry – restaurants and cafes end up languishing customer-less during these off-peak hours. This problem led Malaysians Tan Ban Eu and Lau Ngee Keong to start up an online restaurant deals and reservations platform, aptly named Offpeak. Tan was formerly an angel investor and co-founder of Carlist – now known as iCar Asia – which publicly listed on the ASX.

“The idea for Offpeak was mooted from the hotel and airline industry where they often give discounts during off-peak season, so why not for the restaurants too?” recalls Lau. “Especially since Malaysians have a healthy social food culture – we love to meet up over a good meal, and are always looking out for the best or new restaurants in town.”

Lau brought this idea to Tan in early-2014, who immediately fancied it. “We believe that the recipe to any great business is to provide a solution to an unfulfilled need. In this case, we found a gap in providing restaurateurs a platform to get in more customers during their less peak hours,” Tan explains.

Not your run-of-the-mill daily deals website

Offpeak offers dining discounts of up to 50 percent daily to its users – not only during off-peak hours, but throughout the day at designated timings. The duo describes these discounts as “sustainable” for restaurateurs, meaning that they shouldn’t affect the bottom-line.

Advance bookings aren’t necessary either, which gives it a leg up against the traditional deal websites – bookings can be made up to 10 minutes before arrival time. Tan enumerates the other points that set Offpeak apart from the daily deals pack:

Well, firstly we don’t sell coupons. Secondly, our offers are not one-offs – hello today, gone tomorrow. Our restaurant partners share and believe our vision […] we will run our campaigns for the long haul. Finally, Offpeak is available to both restaurateurs and hungry customers at no cost.

On that last point, Tan emphasizes that 100 percent of the discount is passed down to the customer. For the store owner, both registration and reservations are completely free-of-charge.

This is an unusual strategy, as most similar platforms will require a fee from either end of the transaction. For example, fellow Malaysian reservations site TableApp charges the restaurant owner a monthly maintenance fee of MYR 300 (US$94), with an extra charge of MYR 1 (US$0.30) per person for successful bookings made.