The Dealer App is launching in Leeds on the 25th February, with the mission to connect the foodies of Leeds with the city’s best restaurants.

The app through two main features. The first is offers and discounts that restaurants will put on to encourage people to try new places within the city. The second is a replacement for existing restaurant loyalty programs. Fed up of forgetting or losing your loyalty cards? The Dealer App may well be the answer…

The Dealer App uses card-linking technology: a user inputs their card details when they sign up, which automatically onboards them onto every restaurant loyalty scheme in the city. This means they will never miss out on points and yet don’t have to carry around numerous different cards around for multiple different loyalty programs.

Their story:

The Dealer App was born in Oxford, a city blessed with an incredibly vibrant independent food scene. However, it is often the case that the big chains bombard city dwellers with a constant stream of offers, which ensure that the vast majority of us spend too much time playing it safe and not enough time exploring what’s out there.

The Dealer creatives sat down with Oxford’s restaurant owners to really flesh out the main points of being a food operator in the city and likewise sought some input from prospective foodies.

Their needs matched each other perfectly. Restaurant owners were having trouble being discovered without big marketing budgets and customers couldn’t find the best places without trawling through endless reviews. Customers also didn’t feel like they were properly rewarded for their custom, as all the offers come from big chains, and independent restaurants didn’t feel like they had the technical capabilities to implement proper reward schemes and offers.

They teamed up with some computer science graduates to create an application that could serve as everyone’s food passport. They showcase the very best food experiences that each city has to give, irrelevant of price, bringing exclusive offers to our users to help introduce them to new places and reconnect with those they haven’t visited in a while.

Every time you visit one of the participating restaurants you are rewarded with free food and bonus experiences.

Since then they noticed that many other city dwellers suffer the same culinary monotony. They set up in Manchester, Liverpool, Cambridge and are now launching in Leeds on the 25th February. They have since brought over 100,000 customers into 300 different restaurants, ensuring that we do our bit to keep every cities’ food scene thriving.

Their three core values are as follows:

1. Food is for everyone: They try to make our venues accessible to everyone. Whether you are lucky enough to eat out once a week, once a month, or once a year, they want to show you places that are accessible to everyone. What’s more, if you’re on a budget, they’ll try and use their offers to bring the price down and ensure that everyone can explore what their cities’ food scene has to offer.

2. Connection: Relationships between restaurants and customers should be treasured. They give both sides the tools to give and receive value.

3. Quality: They personally vet every single one of our venues and if they wouldn’t eat there ourselves, they don’t include them on the app – simple as that!

All the venues are offering a huge 50% off for their launch week from the 25th February – 3rd March.

The full list of the participating restaurants in Leeds so far is:

Wapentake

Byron

Simpatico

Stage Espresso

Hook & Line

Lazy Lounge

Pizzafella

Shabab

Friends of Ham

Chicago Rib Shack

Brunswick

Eat Your Greens

Bundobust

Smak!

Caitlin Tilley