I built LocalFeed because I watched good NZ restaurants pay commission on every booking and wondered why nobody had built the obvious alternative. The platform does one thing that the existing options don’t: it takes zero commission on food revenue. Here’s exactly how it works, what it costs, and why the model is structured the way it is.
The Basic Mechanics
A venue joins LocalFeed and creates a profile. They set their own availability — what times they want to fill, what offers they want to run. Diners browse LocalFeed, find the venue, and book. The booking confirmation goes to the venue. The diner’s contact details go to the venue. The booking data is the venue’s, not the platform’s.
This sounds like how booking should always work. It often isn’t. The dominant booking platforms in New Zealand retain customer data, control the relationship, and charge commission on every cover — typically 15-25% of the cover value, which at a $50 average spend is $7.50-$12.50 per person, every time.
“Commission on every booking means the more successful you get, the more you pay. That’s backwards. It should cost less to acquire customers as your reputation grows, not more.”
STAT: A 40-seat NZ restaurant turning 100 covers per week at a 15% commission rate pays approximately $75,000-$90,000 per year to the booking platform. That’s a chef’s salary. Or a significant reinvestment in the product.
The Pricing Structure
LocalFeed is free until a venue reaches 20 bookings. After that, it’s $10 per week — flat, regardless of how many bookings come through. No percentage, no per-booking fee, no commission on the food. A venue doing 200 covers a week through LocalFeed pays the same $10 as one doing 20.
The logic: we want venues to grow. A platform that charges more as venues succeed is misaligned with venue interests. A flat fee means LocalFeed’s revenue comes from having more venues using the platform well, not from taking a bigger slice of each venue’s success.
NOTE: The $10/week after 20 bookings figure is designed to be easy to justify. A single additional booking from LocalFeed covers the weekly fee. Everything beyond that is margin the venue keeps instead of paying to the platform.
The No-Show Fee Structure
No-shows cost NZ restaurants real money. A table of four that doesn’t arrive is a thousand dollars in potential revenue gone, the prep that was done for those covers, the staff time allocated to that service. LocalFeed supports venues that want to implement no-show fees.
The structure: 75% of any no-show fee goes directly to the venue. The remaining 25% covers platform processing. This is unusually venue-friendly — the dominant alternative is platforms that take 50-100% of no-show fees as “insurance” or administrative cost, leaving the venue that did the actual work with nothing.
“A no-show fee that mostly goes to the platform isn’t protecting the venue. It’s another revenue line for the platform built on the venue’s problem.”
STAT: NZ restaurants lose an estimated $400-$800 per no-show event accounting for lost revenue, prep cost, and staff allocation. A no-show fee structure that returns 75% of charges to the venue is one of the few tools that partially offsets this.
Venue-Designed Offers, Not Platform-Forced Discounts
The part of LocalFeed that matters most, and the part that’s most different from the alternatives: venues design their own offers. They decide what they want to fill, when they want to fill it, what they’re willing to offer to diners who book that slot.
This is not the same as a platform saying “offer 30% off on Tuesdays or we’ll deprioritise your listing.” That model forces venues to discount in ways that damage their brand and attract price-sensitive customers who don’t return at full price. LocalFeed’s model is the venue saying “I have eight tables available on Wednesday at 6pm and I’d like to run a set menu to fill them.”
The distinction seems subtle. It isn’t. One model puts the venue in control of its own offer and its own brand. The other treats the venue as inventory to be optimised for platform traffic.
What Venues Actually Experience
The feedback from LocalFeed venues has been consistent: the platform fills off-peak slots without requiring venues to discount their prime-time covers. The commission-free structure means that when a venue does fill a table through LocalFeed, the economics work. They’re not net-negative on the booking after accounting for platform cost.
The direct relationship with the diner — no platform intermediary between the booking and the venue — means venues can build their own customer data and their own communication channels from every LocalFeed booking.
Why I Built It This Way
I’ve worked in hospitality for 20 years. I understand what commission does to a venue’s economics. I understand the pressure to discount just to stay visible on platforms that have made discovery their leverage point. I built LocalFeed to be the platform I would have wanted when I was operating — one that’s genuinely on the venue’s side, not extracting value from every interaction.
FACT: Zero commission on food revenue. $10/week after 20 bookings. 75% of no-show fees go to the venue.
If you’re running a NZ venue and you’re paying commission on every booking, the maths on switching are straightforward. LocalFeed is free to try and the fee structure only starts after it’s already proven its value.