Garret Camp, the co-founder of increasingly popular (if you love taxis) or unpopular (if you drive taxis) app Uber is working on a new startup that could develop an app for reserving restaurant tables.
In what could be a new player in the already buzzing online reservation space, the project, called Reserve, has been flaunted by Camp all over Twitter and Facebook recently.
Camp promises a ‘better dining experience’ with Reserve, just like a better cab experience was promised, and delivered, with Uber.
Online reservation apps tend to cater for different functions, and offer different pricing terms and costs if booked through the services.
If the app goes ahead, and it acts like Uber, it could mean a whole new phase of cabbie-like protests across cities, but with protesting restaurateurs instead. Just like uncertified cab drivers can sign up to Uber, can uncertified restaurants use Reserve? Could I set up a restaurant in my own kitchen, bypass food safety laws, and serve cheap grub to London’s hungry, app-obsessed youths?
However it’ll work, Camp is serious about it. Reserve is just one of the projects being aided by Expa, a company which has raised $50 million in funding to work on startups just like this. Alongside Camp on the funding project is Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai. The Wall Street Journal said that Expa Capital, the investment arm of Expa, wants to take a 20% stake in companies that it has funded, and will pump in $500,000 to $1m in seed investment in return.
