Quick Pitch: Social planning website that offers restaurant suggestions, organizes plans and allows friends to vote on where they want to go.
Genius Idea: Lunchwalla takes the best Yelp, OpenTable and Evite and mashes it up into one tool for planning group get togethers at restaurants or bars.
Signing up for Lunchwalla is a simple process -- you can use Facebook Connect to easily create an account (just verify your e-mail) and then import people into your address book from multiple web services (like Gmail, LinkedIn, Yahoo mail) to invite them to join.
From there, you can select your participants, choose a selection of restaurants and then have people vote on places they want to eat. This makes planning lunch with co-workers much easier than playing e-mail tag. People can accept or decline invites, which also makes this a good option for non-work related gatherings.
Because it integrates with OpenTable at participating restaurants, it's easy to make reservations at sit-down places. We also really like that Lunchwalla displays coupons for restaurants nearby. That's slick, and a nice feature that other eatery based services lack.
Check out this video that explains how Lunchwalla works:
We'd love to see Lunchwalla create an iPhone app or a mobile optimized site that would make sending and creating invitations from the go really, really easy. As it stands, I look forward to trying Lunchwalla with some of my local friends.
How do you plan where to eat with friends or coworkers? Let us know!
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