Groupon Buys Restaurant Yield Site Savored

Savored is more like Hotel Tonight than Groupon. It’s really a yield management site for fine dining establishments that have last-minute available tables. Diners get 40% off the ticket including alcohol. Another program Savored Signatures offers unique dining experiences that have limited availability.

Groupon has acquired Savored to create a speciality channel for both consumers and restaurants. It’s a higher-end brand and orientation vs. Groupon Now or traditional Groupon. And its part of Groupon’s continuing diversification program, although this acquisition is closer to the original model than something like mobile payments.

Savored is more restaurant-friendly than conventional Groupon. Savored said the following about its future with Groupon in a blog post:

The Savored product will remain sophisticated and elegant, enabling diners to make reservations at the very best restaurants and receive discounts of up to 40% seamlessly taken off their bill. Our commitment to style remains unwavering. Our innovative and unique dynamic pricing model will remain the crux of our value proposition, and the entire team at both Groupon and Savored cannot wait to deliver this value to even more diners and restaurants alike.

Here’s my earlier post about the company: Savored – Another Flavor of Daily Deals.

Update: Copilot had some interesting thoughts on its blog. Here are a couple of points from that post:

For all the restaurants that use Copilot, Savored checks are consistently more profitable than any other deal service because the check averages are significantly higher (10-25% per guest). Since the guest is guaranteed 30% off on the entire check, they tend to spend more than with a Groupon-style $x for $y voucher . . .

This is a big positive for the industry. It means Groupon is making a play for fine dining restaurants with non-Groupon brands, threatening Opentable ($OPEN). Earlier this year, Groupon launched a scheduling product for salons and spas called Groupon Scheduler, and purchased the iPad point-of-sale company Breadcrumb. It’s clear they want to be a significant partner to every local business, and going after Opentable is a big part of that strategy . . .

Copilot says the acquisition ultimately targets OpenTable. My view is that if Groupon were to go “all in” and commit to competing with OpenTable it could potentially do so. However Groupon is unlikely to go directly after OpenTable with sufficient energy and resources to displace it.

Copilot says that the value in such a strategy is consistent with Groupon’s “local operating system” approach. I would agree. However execution is another matter. IAC/Urbanspoon had an OpenTable competitor (Rez) that it launched in 2010 but I believe the product was shuttered for lack of traction.

Update 2: I stand corrected; Rez still exits and Seatme is another OpenTable competitor (thanks Eli Chait).