It is one of the 15 startups that was selected last spring at the StartupsVsCovid19 hackathon. Five months later, the application is now officially available to the public. Here’s a throwback to CheckQ’s journey.
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Tell us more about your app.
CheckQ is the new application for eating out in restaurants in Luxembourg. It offers the possibility to check in into the available tables around you in real time. If a table is available, you access the “Eat Now” feature and your table is reserved for 15 minutes. If there is no table available, you access the “Join the queue” feature and you will be informed as soon as your table is ready.
From your initial idea to the actual launch, what were the key steps in the development process?
The initial idea with Covid-19 was to manage queues at restaurants. So, in May, we won the StartupsVsCovid19 contest and launched the first test version on July 1st. We then quickly realized that queues are rare in restaurants in Luxembourg. The problem we had identified at the beginning was the following: “social distancing reduces the number of tables in restaurants”. In fact, we need to increase their visibility and attract customers without reservations. In mid-July, we decided to develop the instant reservation functionality and launched the tagline “Check in real time the available tables around you”.
We took advantage of this to improve the restaurant interface by making it extremely simple. Indeed, the restaurant owner only has to declare the number of unreserved tables at the beginning of the service and then indicate when the customer is sitting in the restaurant. Boom! Restaurateurs liked the concept and local users were seduced by the simplicity of the app.
The month of September was dedicated to meeting with restaurant owners to launch the official public version. On October 5th, the app was launched with 25 restaurants in Luxembourg city and Bertrange!
“Our mission is to bring people back to the restaurants”.
What support did you receive following your selection at the StartupsVsCovid hackathon?
Being a winner of the StartupsVsCovid19 contest gave us a legitimacy towards the market. The Luxembourg Ministry of Economy supports us as an innovative startup with a concept that brings its plus to the damage caused by the health and economic crisis that local restaurants are suffering.
The financial aid obviously allows us to support the investments required to bring our app to market.
What was the first concrete feedback you have obtained?
The restaurants are extremely understanding and receive us positively. They understand the concept immediately and see it as a real possibility to attract new customers around their restaurant. They also support us in the process of creating a community of “fooders”!
The first users appreciate the simplicity and the added value of not being penalized for not having booked in advance. They want even more restaurant choices and we are working on this every day.
What are the next steps for you?
We are collecting a lot of data on user behaviors in relation to the application and are focusing our efforts on making sure that our added value is right. Our mission is to bring people back to the restaurants.
At the same time, we are working on a version 2 that will further expand the offer. But, we prefer to keep that a surprise.
