Inspiration
We’re passionate about building strong connections and meeting new friends. We believe that the best way to facilitate this is at a dinner table breaking bread. The Covid pandemic has only accelerated loneliness and negatively impacted independent restaurants.
What it does
We allow friends to book a reservation for specific days and times, and invite their party. By default, we fill the rest of the table with other users looking to meet people, but this can be turned off. Our AI engine books the optimal restaurant reservation based on the assigned group, and notifies users with confirmation details. Banquette also offers in-app icebreakers and questions for the dinner experience. Finally, banquette offers rewards accrual for adding friends, attending dinners, and leaving reviews.
How we built it
We used React Native and a typescript backend.
Challenges we ran into
Making a seamless UI design that gets across the mission and experience in an understandable way. Also, designing a comprehensive friend flow that includes adding friends inside or outside of the app, adding friends to reservations, invite approvals and notifications.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Delivering a powerful experience in a simple UI. Adding critical features that we believe are crucial for success. Committing to Banquette full time and seeing the culmination of our work.
What we learned
Loneliness is not a new problem, but it is a very difficult problem to solve. We are committed to solving this problem in an elegant way, that truly adds value to user’s lives and incentivizes daily active usage.
What's next for Banquette
Banquette is launching in February 2023 in San Francisco. We are excited to expose our idea to the market and receive real user feedback. We have a detailed product roadmap that offers enhancements on both the user experience and restaurant experience.
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