Funded by Cute Media and founded by serial entrepreneur Andrew Fisher and former accountant Beatrice Genin-Lomier, Tabl is a peer-to-peer social dining platform that turns private houses, apartments and other spaces into informal, pop-up eating establishments.

This is a seriously disruptive idea: to unleash a whole new dining category and challenge the traditional hospitality industry. Supper clubs, pop-up and underground restaurants will come together, as part of the Tabl movement, in an organised community, offering safety, support and infrastructure and making hosting and “guesting” accessible to a broad audience.

Tabl’s role is to look after payment handling, reservation management and messaging systems, social media and marketing. This leaves the community to focus on their culinary skills without the overheads and commitments of a permanent restaurant.

For guests, the Tabl revolution offers a personal and sociable eating experience, richer and more rewarding – and usually less expensive – than a bog-standard restaurant.

People have been offering hospitality in their own homes for millennia. In France, the model is known as table d’hote. In Cuba, locals feed visiting tourists in private “paladares”. In Latin America, the sector is known as restaurante de puertas cerradas (literally “locked door restaurants”). In the UK, a new breed of “underground restaurant” or “supper club” has been growing over the past five years. In the US, these are known as “home bistros”, “guerrilla diner”, “secret restaurant”, “guestaurants”, “speakeasy” and “anti-restaurants”.

Using digital technology to bring this existing trend together is collaborative consumption at its best. We’ll be looking forward to our invitations!

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