Our first experience with the Booky App for foodies!
I normally use restaurant review and rating apps like Looloo or Zomato to leave comments about the food and place, or to find out if the restaurant is worth trying out by checking the ratings. That all changed when I came across Marie Kondo’s book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” and decluttered most apps that don’t spark “joy”
Today I just rely on Google search.
One Friday, my cousin made reservations for 5 from choosing among the most loved restaurants near the area through Booky. If our bill reached P1,000 we would get a P500 discount at Vitto’s Wine Bar and Restaurant.
Making a reservation was surprisingly quick and easy compared to the usual way of getting the contact information, dialing the phone number, waiting for someone to answer, and finally confirming your reservation.
When using the Booky Food App, we got a confirmation within 3 minutes through SMS for our preferred time and also informing us that grace period is only 15 minutes.
After our meal, we got a link to answer a quick survey about the food, service, price, and to leave comments about our experience. Just for answering, we get to have a free dessert – a big chocolate chip oatmeal cookie for all of us.
Food was superb! I recommend their beef salpicao made with US Angus beef.
We were enjoying the food so much that it slipped our minds to take a photo of each dish.
How does Booky work?
Booky is a local restaurant reservation platform that helps you make a reservation with over top 500 restaurants in Metro Manila.
How to use the Booky app
1.Search for the restaurant you like with the Prime badge – means the restaurant is tied up with Booky and may have discounts available. Otherwise you will get a phone number instead of a booking form.
or choose from the trending Filipino restaurants from most booked, top 100 best restaurants, newly added, restaurants near me, and featured restaurant deals like EATSale promotion.
2. Pick the date and time once you choose the restaurant .
Tip: Some time slots offer bigger discounts between P100 to P500 off.
3. Set the number of people
Tip: Be sure you have the right number of people set as some restaurants may not accommodate last-minute changes to additional persons to your reservation when you arrive and may cancel it to accommodate the next booking in line.
When you cancel and re-create the booking for the same time slot, the restaurant will prioritize the reservation based on what time the booking was made and may accommodate someone else’s booking
4. Send your reservation. The app will send an SMS to the restaurant.
5. Receive confirmation
What I like about it
- Quick and simple. Contacting the restaurant in Manila, Philippines for a reservation is easier and more convenient with the app. The entire process just takes around 3-5 minutes.
- Hassle free discounts. No need to purchase vouchers online, print it out, look up the phone number, call and wait for someone to answer then reserve, then wait again for confirmation just to be able to use the vouchers.
- What’s in it for restaurants? – According to Eric Dee of Foodee Global Concepts, He likes that he gets a weekly summary of the feedback about the food, service, ambiance, value for money, and other suggestions of his restaurants from customers who actually dined. This eliminates trolls who produce fake comments in Facebook. His aim is to keep producing Philippines’ best food in Manila and a variety of Pinoy healthy foods
Things that may improve the experience
- Because of Facebook, I’ve gotten used to seeing what’s new on the first tab (Newsfeed button). Personally I would’ve preferred the featured tab be switched to where the List tab is.
- The settings button might be better within the List tab where it is implied that this tab is for you to personalize and create your own top restaurant list and also access your settings.
- UI could be improved, it wasn’t a straight forward experience compared to other apps like Uber or Google. For new users, maybe it needs a short slideshow intro upfront or overlays where to start when opening the app like how Google does it when you first use their Inbox app.
- I also kept switching between Restaurants tab and Lists Tab just to look for my profile settings and finally found it in the Featured tab.
- It wasn’t clear how the referral system works. I couldn’t find it not until Anna from Booky helped me where to find the referral link.
Hey, both of us get P100 discount credit at over 300 restaurants if you input my mobile number as the referral code when you sign up to Booky Prime http://bky.ph/download
It says that I have to type in the mobile number of the friend who referred me, I tried signing up for a new account to look for the part to put in the referral code but all it asked is for your Name, Email and your own phone number. I tried typing in the mobile number in the activation code area and it just says invalid.
Promotion idea – I see interesting possibilities with Booky!
Booky and Google can work together to have the Booky reserve option appear in search results when people google restaurants names. Like how Grab and Uber have a link to their app appear in search when people google map routes.
When typing in restaurants that are partnered with Booky in the search results, a link would appear to reserve linking to get the app or open the app for those who already have it installed.
or tie up with Google Trips app adding a link to reserve with Booky.
Who started Booky?
Booky is a local app founded by Filipino-British entrepreneur Ben Wintle. 100,000 booked seats was achieved on September 21, 2016 with 45% increase in bookings each month.
The company is set to hit 1,000,000 booked seats by 2017.
Promotion: New users of Booky get P1000 worth of discount credits. Once you consume the credits, Subscription is only P199 per month.
For more information and FAQ’s visit
Booky Manila in the Press
Booky app helps you find the best resto
Booky: Free, Offline App For Food Lovers
Booky Manila Reviews from netizens
Used @bookymanila for the first time to eat at Your Local 👌🏻 Super worth it! I even Got a free desert! WOW! TILL NEX TIME! pic.twitter.com/o69Mv36D1w
— Denise Ang (@lovedeniseang) November 12, 2016
Thanks for this! P300 off at tuan tuan and a free dessert!! #bookymanila pic.twitter.com/HwI57AGYYC
— Toby Almero (@TobyAlmero) October 30, 2016
