OWN OR MANAGE A RESTAURANT?

If you have ever done a deal with Groupon, pulsd, or LivingSocial, you know that a campaign with them can be hit-or-miss, and the cost/benefit ratio is often terrible. We are different.

The above websites:

• require restaurants to heavily discount their meals, which weakens the brand
• take half the already discounted revenue generated
• attract mostly discount seekers who are extremely unlikely to return to the restaurant for a full-price meal

Host a dinner with The Single Gourmet, and we will:

• NOT ask you to heavily discount the dinner
• Ask for ZERO percent of the revenue
• Deliver affluent diners who go to upscale restaurants on a regular basis (and if they have a good experience at your restaurant, are very likely to return)
• Market your restaurant to well-qualified, affluent diners, who pay to be a member of our club

The Single Gourmet is a members-only club which has dined weekly at upscale restaurants in Manhattan since its founding in 1982. Our members are affluent singles who pay $99 per year to belong to the club, most of whom — before the COVID-19 pandemic — ate at upscale restaurants from once a month to several times a week, often returning to restaurants that they first discovered with The Single Gourmet.

Many of our members belong to the group solely to try new restaurants. From 1982-2019, we visited 60+ restaurants per year, with an average of 13 new restaurants per year — and now that outdoor and indoor dining are allowed again, our members are eager to return to fine dining.

How our events work:

• We feature your restaurant in our monthly newsletter which we email to over 400 members (you can see an archive of our newsletters here: http://singlegourmet.org/newsletters/), and physically mail to another 100 members.
• We work with owners and managers to find a time for us to dine when business is typically a slow time for the restaurant, for example Sunday at 6:30 PM; but any other day of the week works for us as well.
• Together, we then plan a meal and agree on a price which includes:
  • 3-4 courses with 3 selections for each course from the restaurant’s menu (or off-menu selections if that is easier for the restaurant).
  • 1 glass of wine (house red or white; some restaurants also offer rose, Prosecco, or a cocktail as an option).
  • 1 cup of tea or coffee (served with dessert, potted American coffee, not espresso or cappuccino).

If you already have a prix fixe dinner menu, that is often a good starting point for our customized menu.

• The restaurant prints a customized menu for that evening that shows no prices on it. The members will have prepaid The Single Gourmet for this dinner, and The Single Gourmet pays for dinner on one check.
• Our group typically leaves 1.5 hours after they are seated, depending on how quickly the food is served, almost never more than 2 hours.
• After the dinner, we invite our guests to rate the restaurant on 3 vectors: food, service, and ambience. Two weeks after the dinner, the results are aggregated and published on The Single Gourmet website.
• Pre-pandemic, attendees used to arrive at the restaurant 60 minutes early for a mix-and-mingle cocktail hour, where they paid for their own drinks, and typically resulting in $200-$300 extra in revenue for the restaurant for the evening.

Before COVID-19, the average dinner had 16-24 people, sometimes as many as 30. During this difficult time, we work with restaurants to determine their comfort level in terms of the minimum and maximum number of dinner guests.

Members who do not attend a given event still read the description of your restaurant and the event; this is free marketing for your restaurant. We rarely repeat restaurants during the course of a year, and as a result members who cannot attend a dinner at a restaurant that they see in our newsletter in often go on their own.

If you would like to host The Single Gourmet for dinner, we would love to hear from you. To contact us, please use the form below, email us at info@thesinglegourmet.net, or call us at 646-825-0268.

Many upscale restaurants in Manhattan have become valued partners where we organize dinners 2-4 times a year. We plan to expand significantly this year, and if we have a good experience at your restaurant, we will plan more dinners there.

We look forward to working with you to create a great menu, a great experience, and start a profitable business relationship.