With HeyDiner you can have a proper sit-down lunch in less than 30 minutes.
You might’ve seen their relentless flyer distribution teams outside Shoreditch’s transport hubs wondering what HeyDiner is all about – a new burger joint? The tenth food delivery app? We went ahead and tested Shoreditch’s latest food tech startup.
HeyDiner (www.heydiner.com, refreshingly not an app!) lets you order & pay in advance at local restaurants so you get served on arrival and never have to wait for the bill again. Finally you can have a proper sit-down meal without overrunning your lunch break. And you don’t have to spend more either – most Shoreditch restaurants have amazing lunch deals that will set you back less than a tenner.
Testing HeyDiner at The Breakfast Club – Hoxton
We tried HeyDiner for lunch at The Breakfast Club with a group friends. If you’ve ever ordered food or booked a table online, you’ll quickly find your way round HeyDiner. As the table organiser you start by picking the restaurant, table size, date & time. Next, you go straight to ordering your own food & drinks. No big surprises so far. However, before checking out, you’ll get to one of the features that make HeyDiner different – you can invite your friends so they can add their own orders to the table and also decide who’s gonna pay for it. You can charge everything to your card (generous expense policy, anyone?) or everyone pays for themselves which is what we did. We really liked that feature as you don’t have to worry about bill splitting and the girl who only had a salad doesn’t pay for the guy who ordered the starter-main-dessert extravaganza.
Your friends receive their invites via email (no text invites, yet) and are taken straight to ordering and paying for their own stuff. Pretty smooth.
When we got to The Breakfast Club, they already expected us with the drinks being served right away and as promised by HeyDiner within a couple of minutes our food orders rolled in. As always, The Breakfast Club delivered – everything was delicious. Once we had finished, we hung around for a few minutes and kept chatting and just when one of us wanted to ask for the bill we realized, we didn’t have to. We simply got up and left – felt a bit weird but also quite cool; reminded us a bit of taking our first UBER when you just get out of the car ‘without paying’.
Overall, we had a really nice meal which didn’t feel rushed at all but still only took 35 minutes. Plenty of time left for everyone to get back to the office.
HeyDiner is still early-stages and only available around Shoreditch. Give it a shot – with code FOODITCH you get 50% off your first order (expires 31 Oct). www.heydiner.com
