We all know the struggle and irritation of going out on a Friday night in Atlanta and being met with a wait at our favorite eateries amid empty seats next to customers already dining.
But the wait for a solution is over with SeatCheck, the latest table sharing app that connects local diners with open seats at a table. Think OpenTable, but you have a spare seat or two at your table and you're looking for some company.
"SeatCheck is the first of its kind table sharing apps, where someone is already sitting in a restaurant can share their empty seat at the table through the app," co-founder Shahzeen Rehman said.
Someone dining at a restaurant can simply list that they have a table available, which will be viewable to people in the area, Rehman said. Those looking for a table send a request to the person already dining, who can view their profile and either accept or deny the request, she said. Following the dinner, users can review and rate one another, much like drivers and clients rate each other on Uber and Lyft.
"When the request is accepted, the other party joins them at the table," she said. "So it eliminates the wait time for the person who’s joining them and allows them to socialize."
Rehman said she and her husband, Akber Gilani, were perusing one of their favorite spots in Atlanta for dinner one night when they were told the wait was 45 minutes for a table for two. Looking around the restaurant, Rehman said they noticed several couples at four-top tables and asked the host if they could sit with one of the couples.
"So my husband asked someone if we could join them at the table and they were like ‘Yeah, sure,’" she said. "So we sat with them, had our meal, had a good time and in fact met a good friend."
Two weeks following the couples experience, Rehman said they began to work on a business plan to hook up diners with empty seats at popular restaurants. They won a pitch competition with the idea for SeatCheck and moved forward implementing the app.
SeatCheck has been available on iOS since January and recently launched for Android in July. The app currently has more than 2,500 users and signage advertising their presence in 70 different restaurants in Atlanta, Rehman said. The founders are currently raising a round of $500,000 in funding, she said.
For singles who typically face eating alone without a date or a friend to accompany them, SeatCheck has been a particular favorite, Rehman said.
"That’s the feedback that we got from a lot of people, that we’re not comfortable sitting alone, we don’t want to really date someone, so just sit with them have a good time, and…there’s no pressure," she said.
But SeatCheck has even gone beyond its intended purpose of cutting down wait times and forming friendships; many users are starting to use the app to date, Rehman said.
"Our initial idea was to eliminate wait time for people who are waiting in line at a restaurant and for a little bit more socializing," she said. "The dating aspect we did not have in mind at first, but as we started developing this and mentioning it to people, (we realized) this is what people want."
