Groupon's Restaurant Reservation Service Goes Mobile

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By Todd Wasserman2013-07-30 12:31:53 UTC

Groupon Reserve, the company's pivot away from daily deals and into restaurant reservations, is going mobile.

Groupon Reserve functionality is coming to Groupon's existing iPhone app on Tuesday. Groupon promises the Reserve tab will give users discounts of up to 40% in some 600 restaurants in Groupon's top 10 markets — Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. In the near future, Groupon hopes to let users make reservations at spas, hotels and salons as well.

Reps from Groupon declined to say how much Reserve has added to the company's bottom line except to say it's "significant."

Groupon claims that 40 million people have downloaded its app — 7 million in last year. The company plans to bring the Reserve functionality to Android- and iPad versions of the app in the near future.

The company introduced restaurant reservations to Reserve earlier this month. The reservation service is based on Savored.com, the New York startup that Groupon acquired in September. Savored partners with more than 1,000 upscale restaurants to give consumers a significant discount on their final bill, as long as they make the reservation online in advance. In this way, Savored helps restaurant owners manage the flow of people eating at their establishments and gives consumers another option to save on dining out at nice places.

Since the daily deals business for which Groupon is best known has been saturated, the company is viewing restaurant reservations as a new source of revenues along with mobile payments. However, when the move was announced, it was desktop-only. A Groupon rep says that the company was waiting to add the mobile functionality to a previously scheduled app update at the end of July.

Images: Getty, Scott Olson; and Groupon, respectively

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