[agotterer]

A friend and I host a monthly dinner club for people interested in ethnic cuisine. We work with a single restaurant each month to create an 8-12 course all inclusive price fixe menu. The food is served family style and is authentic to the region we are hosting. We typically host the dinners on a Tues or Wed when the restaurants in our region aren’t too busy and could use the extra business.

Since 2023 we’ve been to 44 restaurants. In 2025 we served 1,099 guests and generated $126k in revenue.

https://www.deadchefssociety.com/

[bot347851834]

This is so cool! As someone who loves trying out new restaurants I need to ask: why would I go with you guys instead of going to the restaurants myself with a friend or partner? Looking around your website it seems to me that there's very large attendance, which in my mind means generally less focus on the food itself. Do you think one of the main factors is meeting new people/the sense of community? Anyway good job! I'm not sure what your margins are but it's probably more than 500/month! Congrats!

[agotterer]

I think there’s quite a few reasons people come. I’m just going to bullet some of them out in no particular order:

- We do the work to find the restaurant and curate a menu, story, and theme. E.g., we might go to an Indian restaurant and focus the event on only the southern regional dishes.

- Many times we have dishes that are off menu specially for our event.

- Sense of community. We have quite a few regulars who have gotten to know each other. In 2025, 45 people reached their 20th or 30th event with us. Since we take over the whole restaurant there’s a little more freedom in how the space is used. Lots of new friendships have been forged.

- When you go to a restaurant with a friend or small group, you can only order so much. We’ve had events with upwards of 25 different bites. There’s really no better way to sample everything the restaurant has to offer.

- There’s a few people who say their partner are picky eaters, so they come to our event each month to have the opportunity to be a bit more adventurous. It’s an incredibly diverse group with a lot of different reasons to attend.

[suranyami]

Just to add my own observation here: some cuisines are really optimized for sharing in larger groups… certainly a lot of the regional Chinese cuisines assume many people at a table, with large (i.e. higher priced) servings. If it’s just 2 or 3 of you, you end up getting only 1 or 2 dishes, often with a lot left over.

So, this is a genius way of optimizing for that!

I totally want something like this here in Sydney.

[VoidWhisperer]

Out of curiosity, if you don't mind sharing, what is the sort of profit you see on that 126,000 as i'm assuming alot of that goes to paying the restaurants?

[agotterer]

Most of it goes to paying for the meal. We make around a 20% margin. Our cost to operate the business is quite low, but we do invest a lot of our personal time into it. It’s a labor of love.

Our biggest cost center is when we guarantee a minimum number of seats and come up a little short. Doesn’t happen often, but when it does it eats into the margin fast.

[gaws]

> we do invest a lot of our personal time into it

What's the process like?

[agotterer]

My partner and I divide and conquer. He focuses on front of house and I handle the backoffice.

The process starts ~3 months before the event. We start by picking a theme or region. Then contact some restaurants that fit the criteria and pitch them the event. That kicks off the back and forth on cost and menu.

Around 4 weeks before the event we send a save the date + previous event recap email. We summarize the last event and tease the next event, without giving away the actual resturant or type of food.

Over the next week we prep the invite email and payment forms. This requires putting the dishes on our menu template, research and writing about the history of the dishes, the region, and the resturant. Some of this content also goes onto our website.

Three weeks out we send the invite, which is a lottery system. Members have 5 days to request a seat and place a credit card hold. 5 days later we run the lottery (I wrote some basic software to randomize assignment, conver the card auth to capture and release any cards that didn't get assigned a ticket). Then we send an email to everyone who got in with which night they recieved and another email to anyone who was waitlisted. Everyone is added to a spreadsheet to track.

1 week before the event we send a reminder email and a last chance to cancel before the ticket is non refundable.

At the event we play host and check each guest in and say hi to everyone. Then we give a prepared ~5 min intro about the food, restaurant, celebrate any milestone members, and make any general house keeping accounments. Our 20 club members get a branded apron.

At the event we take video and pictures. Over the course of the next 4 weeks we post dish pictures with descriptions and history of the dish on our instagram. We also make a 1-2 min recap video of the event which also goes on our instagram and website.

Separate from the actual event related work we have to manage the books, handle members emails, and review membership requests. More recently we started selling shirts, so there's a little work in managing that as well.

[browningstreet]

Great idea. One note: I had to hunt around on the website for a while to find out what geographical area you were operating in.

[thefolks]

Love the communal aspect. Curious about the economics of this, how do you typically split revenue with the restaurant, and what’s the average ticket price per guest?

[agotterer]

We negotiate a per seat all in cost with the restaurant inclusive of food, one drink, tip, and tax. We sell the tickets directly to our members and add some margin on top. Average ticket is $115.

5 days before the event we lock the head count with the restaurant. At this point the ticket is non refundable (we allow transfers). Then we pay the restaurant one lump sum. At the event the guests are only responsible for their bar tab (outside the one included drink), we don’t get a cut of that.

Sometimes we have seat minimums we need to hit and eat the cost if we are short (that rarely happens). We don’t allow ordering any other food outside of what’s on our menu.

[nefrix]

I am also curious on that

[kilroy123]

Wow! I've thought so long about doing the same thing in London. I wouldn't do it to make money persay, but to meet amazing people and connect folks. Would love to chat sometime.

[agotterer]

We never intended to make money. The first dinner was with 13 of our friends. We just organized the location and menu.

From there people started to tell their friends, who told others, then the local newspaper wrote about us, and people started talking about us on Facebook food groups and posting on Instagram. The community grew very organically, we never spent a penny on marketing. Most of the original 13 don’t come anymore, and we have grown into an incredibly diverse community.

Happy to chat, email is in my profile.

[12ian34]

I host Supper Clubs in London :)

[brazukadev]

This is a great project! I'm thinking about doing something similar. Do you have any bad experiences, things you would have done different, or are thinking about improving now?

[agotterer]

Honestly, I can’t think of anything I would have done differently. Each stage of our growth came with some challenges and lessons. I think we did a pretty good job of internalizing and adapting. We definitely made some mistakes along the way, but nothing I regret doing and wouldn’t do again. Every mistake and lesson taught us something.

Feel free to email me if you run into any challenges. We might have already been through it!

[brazukadev]

great to hear! I'm getting a bit worried about possible legal issues - although that is because I might not be involved in every meeting so I'm worried about possible risks.

I sent you an email, my email handler is alanmeira. If you are too busy and can't waste time on this there is no problem tho, your post was quite motivating already.

[agotterer]

I’m a little behind on email, I’ll reply later today.

I’ll answer some of the legal right now. First, we are at every event. Not sure how much it matters legally, but we are there as hosts and to drive the feeling of community. Without us, I don’t think the community has the same feel.

We also have an unbelievably respectful and mature community. After over 70 seatings we’ve never had an incident. We also have a code of conduct document we send all new members.

Second, we setup an LLC to shield us personally from legal liability.

Third, not to say that it shields us, but the restaurants also have insurance and are a better target for a lawsuit.

We are in the US, and at the end of the day anyone can sue anyone for anything. It’s just the reality and risk of the times. It hasn’t been a problem for us yet.

[brazukadev]

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer!

[1_over_epsilon]

This is awesome, how did you get the word out and market/advertise?

[agotterer]

We’ve never paid for marketing or advertising.

- We are lucky to have a passionate community who tell others about us.

- Sometimes we do shared reels with the restaurant, which helps drive some of their traffic to our social pages and website.

- There’s a few large local Facebook food groups which have driven membership.

- The largest driver of new membership came from coverage in the region newspaper. We credit that with the transition from 1 or 2 degrees of separation to people we had no connection to.

- There’s been a few influencers who have shown up and documented their experience. We didn’t pay for it. It drove a few members, but the quality of the newspaper and Facebook group members was higher.

[KellyCriterion]

this actually is a great idea!