VillageVines, a six-month old startup, aims to help upscale restaurants fill tables and claims to have generated more than $500,000 in sales for restaurant partners in December 2010. The startup will use its newly acquired funds to expand operations, launch in new cities and ramp up marketing efforts.
VillageVines offers members 30% discounts at fine dining establishments in cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Members must pay an up-front fee of $10 per discounted offer and book their reservation through VillageVines to take advantage of deals.
The VillageVines model of filling empty tables closely resembles travel discount sites more than it does the daily deal model pioneered by Groupon. Still, given the startup's restaurant clientele, it will be forced to compete with companies in the saturated daily deals space, including Yelp and OpenTable, which have their own daily deal offshoot businesses.
VillageVines previously raised $750,000 from angel investors in its seed round. Lead investor Hearst Interactive Media recently participated in entertainment checkin startup Miso's $1.5 million Series A.