Executive Summary

First Table is a hospitality technology platform with a mission to connect restaurants and food lovers. Since its founding in 2014, First Table has delivered ~65% revenue CAGR and is on track to generate $2.2m this financial year. Growth to date has been cashflow funded.

With proven demand and resilience through Covid, First Table is raising external capital for the first time to accelerate growth.  

The current core business is the First Table booking platform. Integrated into seven of the leading reservation systems, First Table provides restaurants with an effective way to turn their empty tables into their best marketing tool. 

First Table incentivises diners to book the first table at a time decided by the restaurant, usually 5 pm or 6 pm. Guests pay $10 to reserve this table and in exchange for their booking, their group of up to four people receive a 50% discount to dine in. This excludes drinks which are sold at full price.

First Table is positioned as a restaurant discovery, rather than a discount platform. Customers are invited to discover new and exciting restaurants and be rewarded for dining early. First Table prides itself on looking after a restaurant’s best interests and is a cheerleader for the hospitality industry. A core part of the brand is championing independent restaurants.

This proposition has proven extremely popular with both restaurants and diners. This year, we're on track to facilitate over 240,000 bookings across our 1,400 restaurants in 6 countries.  

With a large user base, extensive restaurant footprint and unified API into the major reservation systems, First Table is now accelerating its global expansion and seeking to raise up to $4m to support a three-pronged growth strategy.

1. Accelerate growth in existing cities.
2. Expand into new cities. 
3. Grow Regular Table and Frequent Foodies to become the “go-to” app for restaurant bookings.

Successful execution of this strategy is likely to provide further growth opportunities to support restaurants, in particular by providing scalable marketing technology. 

With new capital, we are projecting to generate revenue of $5.6m in FY24, $15.7m in FY25 and $23.5m in FY26 with a 54% gross margin and a 49% EBITDA margin in FY26.

First Table has enabled us to reach over 1,000 new diners in the first two years! I’ve tried a few different discounting options but none have worked this well. It’s now the only platform we use... The integration with ResDiary is a huge bonus too! — Acapulco, General Manage

— Acapulco, General Manager

The Opportunity

First Table has delivered strong growth since inception and is on track to achieve $2.2m revenue in FY23. By investing in additional sales and marketing resources, we expect to rapidly grow restaurants and diners on the platform. We expect this will grow revenues significantly in the coming years, from an estimated $5.6m in FY24 to $23m in FY26.

Profitable and cash generative from the outset, we have proven our resilience throughout Covid and taken advantage of the disruption to focus development resources on building additional product features to the platform.

As Covid headwinds ease globally and hospitality trends normalise, we are already seeing annualised revenue for FY23 in our target markets ahead of pre-covid levels and we are achieving gross margins approaching 70% in more established cities.

We are raising up to $4m to deepen our presence in existing markets, enter into new markets and roll out additional products to our restaurants and diners. New capital will support our sales and marketing efforts to increase the number of restaurants and diners on the First Table platform. With more diners booking more tables at more restaurants we expect to achieve 54% gross margins and 49% EBITDA margins by FY26.

Having established a strong foothold in 18 key cities across 6 countries, we see a significant opportunity to grow in existing markets by increasing the number of restaurants and diners on the platform. We believe we can grow from our existing 1,000 restaurants in these target markets to over 4,000 in the next three years.

Growth in existing markets is expected to add $8m in revenue from our First Table offering. In addition to growth in existing markets, we have identified a further 8 cities in Australia, the UK and Canada that we will be entering in the next two years as we look to leverage our existing infrastructure in those countries.

We believe this could add a further 1,500 restaurants to the platform, adding an additional $2m in revenue.

Revenue growth in existing and new cities will be amplified through the rollout of our new Regular Table offer while user engagement and loyalty are set to be enhanced by our new App and Frequent Foodies loyalty program. We believe this will generate an extra $10m in additional revenue in the coming years. 

Such revenue growth will support First Table in further regional and product expansion, as well as provide the potential for substantial capital returns to investors.

We’ve laid the foundation for success, with a proven product loved by diners and restaurants, a scalable technology platform and established infrastructure across 6 countries.

With our new products and growing network effects, I believe now is the perfect time to accelerate growth.

— Mat Weir, Founder