Seated review: The must-have app for anyone who eats or drinks in NYC
What is Seated and how does it work?
Seated app is a must-have for anyone who goes out to eat & drink in the city. It’s a restaurant reservation app that gives you 20-45% back on your entire pre-tip bill in gift cards of your choice like Amazon, Uber, Southwest, etc.
Given how expensive it is to go out in NYC, Seated is godsend for your wallet. I’ve used it to make five reservations so far and have gotten $149 back in rewards! To be completely candid with you, I’ve made a concerted effort to tone down how much I’m raving about Seated in this review, but it’s really such a great app that it was quite hard to do so.
Here’s how it works:
- Make a reservation on Seated (at the time of writing, there’s over 450 bars & restaurants in NYC)
- Have a good time at your meal
- Snap a picture of your itemized receipt, and submit it
- Redeem your gift cards
But wait… what’s the catch? How does Seated make money?
I know it almost sounds too good to be true. I kept thinking that there had to he some catch, but I can’t find one. You don’t pay for your bill through the app and rewards are in the form of gift card codes, so you never need to give up any payment information. The only data you give up are your login info, phone number, and the searches/reservations you make in the app.
I suspect that Seated makes their money by either charging a listing fee or earning a commission on each reservation. Like most other apps, they’re proooobably also selling your data.
So how do they give you so much back on your dinner bill? I’ll bet that most of the reward is paid for by the restaurant, but Seated might also be supplementing the rewards to grow their user base. In the end, I don’t care about how they’re able to give 45% back on restaurants. It’s very rare that we get wins like this as consumers, so take advantage while you can!
Why I love Seated, beyond the rewards
Besides the fact that I’ve gotten $150 back from making five reservations, there’s a ton more to love.
In-app Chat Support
Seated has an excellent in-app chat support that you can message to help make any adjustments to your reservations. You can also shoot them a message and ask for restaurant recommendations, which is super awesome.
Sugersurged Mondays (and many other promos)
Every Monday, a list of ~60 gets supersurged and the rewards all hover around 45%. You’ll see restaurants with 45% rewards every day, but Monday is when you’ll see the most! Just go to filters –> Seated Scoop –> Supersurged Mondays.
Group bookings
I also love the group booking service they provide. If you email [email protected], they’ll help you make large group reservations and you also earn an extra $50 for parties 10 .
Drinks
I said this earlier, but the fact that you can use Seated to save on happy hours or other drinking activities is just so awesome. It’s great to find happy hour deals. It’s even better to stack the 25% Seated reward on top!
Finding new restaurants
Seated is great for finding new restaurants. Just throw on any necessary filters, and scroll around on the map view to find a restaurant in your desired area.
Random Rewards
I keep my notifications/email subscription on for Seated because they send random rewards very often. I probably get at least one a week, such as the one below for an extra $8.
What I don’t like about Seated
There’s so much to love, but I do think that there are improvements that can be made:
- They need better filters! I mean, brunch isn’t a filter
- It’s pretty hard to find your current location in the map view
- You can’t stack the list filters. It would be really cool to be able to list by nearest highest rewards!
How are the restaurants on Seated?
Before I downloaded, I assumed most of the restaurants on the app would be bad ones desperate for more business, but there’s actually a surprisingly good selection! You won’t find spots with lines out the door like Sugarfish or Au Cheval, but you will see fairly popular restaurants/bars like: Clinton Hall, Meadowsweet (Michelin starred!), Gogi 37, and El Born, to name a few.
It’s absolutely nuts that you can dine at Meadowsweet and get essentially 45% off the entire menu!
Are there any spend minimums? Anything to be worried about?
I’ve heard that people have encountered spend minimums in the past, but I haven’t ran into any since I started using it. I’ve had a $20 bill that I received $5 back from, so I wouldn’t be worried about a minimum unless it’s explicitly stated on the reservation.
Seated promo code: Get an extra $15 on your first reservation with code WILL322
I hope you’ve found my Seated review helpful. If you did, please consider using my referral link or promo code WILL322 when you sign up! I get a little something back, and you get $5 on your first reservation.
