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Top City Bites: New app helps foodies discover some of London’s best restaurants

Mac&Bun is one of the many mouth-watering options on offer: Top City Bites
Mac&Bun is one of the many mouth-watering options on offer: Top City Bites

A brand new app is offering foodies the chance to discover some of the best restaurants in London at bargain prices.

Top City Bites offers deals and reward schemes for restaurants as a way to connect customers with delicious dining experiences.

The app, which launched on Monday, already has 54 restaurants on its books and counting, from The Good Egg Co and The Halal Guys to PittaBuns and Japes.

It has already had thousands of downloads as customers flocked to select Soho restaurants this week with a 50 per cent off deal. Next week the half-price discount will move on to haunts in Shoreditch.

Mac&Bun is one of the many mouth-watering options on offer. (Top City Bites)
Mac&Bun is one of the many mouth-watering options on offer. (Top City Bites)

Top City Bites directors Henry Hayes and Edward Alun-Jones said they never envisioned how quickly the app would take off.

“The customers who are using it already are loving the food on the app," Mr Hayes said. "It's been amazing working with top food brands and be able to give customers a great food experience.

"And the restaurants also love being part of a platform that is quite exclusive and quite valued."

The app offers deals and reward schemes (Top City Bites)
The app offers deals and reward schemes (Top City Bites)

Mr Hayes said their restaurants are carefully selected for the platform, which itself is an offshoot from Top London Restaurants - the city's largest social media channel dedicated to eating out.

The Instagram channel, followed by 247,000 people, showcases a kaleidoscopic array of London's most delectable dishes sourced by food bloggers.

While the social media brand now boasts channels in other global food hubs like New York, Tokyo and Sydney, London's is the flagship platform and brainchild of foodie, Nick Rowden-Jones.

From Bernadis with agreement on photos from Top City Bites Permission yes from Top City Bites 20092019 (Top City Bites)
From Bernadis with agreement on photos from Top City Bites Permission yes from Top City Bites 20092019 (Top City Bites)

After growing the Instagram channels, the businessman realised there was a gap in the market for directly linking customers to the restaurants themselves.

So in came Mr Hayes and Mr Alun-Jones, who were already doing just that with The Dealer: an app they launched in 2014, which currently finds food deals in Oxford, Manchester and Leeds.

Mr Rowden-Jones recruited the pair to curate some of the most unparalleled dining experiences in the capital and the duo jumped at the chance to work with a brand that has racked up a big London following.

The Good Egg with Top City Bites (Top City Bites)
The Good Egg with Top City Bites (Top City Bites)

"With The Dealer, we have already built up relationships with some really good brands and have got a lot of success stories with our technology," Mr Hayes said.

"We were driving lots of customers into our restaurants because our platform could easily connect the customer with the restaurant itself."

With Top City Bites, the co-directors continue to approach businesses and use the Instagram brand name to get their foot in the door with some of the most well-regarded establishments.

"It's a discovery platform," said Mr Alun-Jones. "Food bloggers have gone around collecting London’s best food offers for the Instagram channel, and now we are harnessing that information to put it on an app.

“All our restaurants are very nice because Top London Restaurants only shares the best."

The restaurants equally like the idea of being able to attract new customers, Mr Hayes added.

Restaurants also struggle often to profile their customers, so Top City Bites can help them with the huge data capture issues that high street businesses face in the digital age.

So the app works by driving in new customers for restaurants with price reduction offers but more importantly aims to retain those customers with the app’s rewards scheme.

Users create an account and then link up their card details which automatically enrols them onto one digital loyalty scheme for all its partners.

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"It's like carrying one loyalty card for all the restaurants in one place rather than carrying many different ones in your wallet," Mr Alun-Jones explained.

"It allows you to get points every time you spend, so you're constantly collecting offers and rewards like discounts and free food."

Mr Hayes added that the app is very easy to use, saying: “Any time a customer wants to use a reward, they can just reserve it on the app, and rock up to the restaurant and show a member of staff."

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