Diners are familiar with restaurants that utilize large, communal tables, and even restaurants that require a membership. Dinner Lab, a startup company focused on serving food made by up and coming chefs, has been gaining fans in cities across the nation by remixing the ideas of high quality food and communal dining into something new. While the company's first attempts started off a little unsteadily two years ago, they have no amassed a loyal following in metropolis from New York City, to Miami, to San Francisco. The startup has grown largely through word of mouth marketing, and is known for it's quirky, urban style and great food.
The idea of Dinner Lab is that foodies sign up for a membership, costing up to
$175 per year, depending on the city. Once they join, members can purchase tickets for Dinner Lab events, which occur about once per week in the cities covered by the program. The dinners are held in unusual, one time locations such as factories, motorcycle dealerships, and even
helipads. Members are only notified of the location a day before hand, assumedly to enhance the exoticness. Each event features a different, talented up and coming chef, and features a minimum of a 5 course meal, including paired cocktails, wines and beer. Individual event prices range from $50-$95, depending on the offerings.
One of Dinner Lab's unique characteristics - one that seems to draw the interest of quite a few urban dwelling food fans - are the chef driven menus. Dinner Lab claims that the chefs it hires for events, usually up and coming cooks from well known restaurants around the country, are in charge of c
reating the menu for each event. With this model, chefs are able to show off their best dishes, and have a lot of creative freedom. After each meal, diners provide feedback to the chefs, who can use the information to perfect their offerings.
Dinner Lab's latest endeavor? As
Mashable reports, the start-up is in the beginning phases of planning a permanent restaurant. The location, type of cuisine, target market and size are all currently
up in the air. The unique part about Dinning Lab's potential brick and mortar location is that the start-up will be using feedback from its members to determine the restaurant's content. Rather than starting internally and hoping the idea catches on, Dinner Lab plans to use all the data it has amassed to create a restaurant it knows members will crave.
What do you think, is Dinner Lab's idea set to fill a big void in the restaurant industry, or have the current restaurants of America already filled the niches? Let us know what you think via Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Source:
Mashable,
Dinner Lab,
Image Credit (Flickr)
Tablebases.com
