Frequently asked questions

The Private Dining Room (TPDR) is a curated discovery and enquiry platform for private dining rooms in Australia. We list the rooms worth booking — from hatted cellar rooms to harbourside chef's tables — make them findable in one place, and let you send a structured enquiry to one venue or a shortlist, with a single form. Sydney first; other Australian cities and international markets to follow.

Groups looking for a private space to gather. Corporate event managers, executive assistants, and field marketing managers organising client dinners, board dinners, EOFY parties, Christmas events. People planning milestone celebrations — engagements, significant birthdays, anniversaries, hens' nights, wakes. And anyone who has tried to find a good private room and ended up in three weekends of research.

Yes. Browsing, shortlisting, and sending enquiries are all free, with no commission and no booking fees. Venues pay a subscription to be on the platform; diners pay nothing to TPDR, ever.

No. You can search, filter, view venues, and explore the map without signing up.

Effectively no — we create an account for you the moment you submit your first enquiry, with a magic link sent to your email. No password. No "sign up first" page. Future returning visits, you click the magic link in your email and you're in.

Three structural differences. First, we're built specifically for private dining — not regular reservations with private events bolted on. Second, we share full diner contact details with venues when they're subscribed; OpenTable and Resy hide them. Third, we don't take a commission on bookings — venues pay a flat monthly fee per space. The economics work for the venue, and the relationship between the diner and the venue stays direct.

You pick the venues you're interested in, fill in a single form once (date, group size, occasion, budget band, response-needed-by), and submit. The venues you've selected receive your enquiry with your contact details, and reply to you directly. If a venue you've selected isn't yet on TPDR as a subscriber, we contact them on your behalf; if they don't reply in time, we send you three similar alternatives.

Most subscribed venues reply within hours; the platform tracks average response times and we publish them on each venue's page. You set your own deadline when you submit ("by Friday", "within the week", or a specific date), and we hold venues to it.

Yes. You can build a shortlist of any number of venues and submit a single enquiry to all of them. Each venue replies to you independently. The shortlist is the cleanest way to compare options without writing the same email six times.

If a venue hasn't replied by your stated deadline, we email you three similar alternatives in the same suburb or category — venues that we know can respond quickly and have capacity for your party size. You decide whether to enquire with any of them. We never auto-create enquiries with venues you haven't chosen.

The venue still receives the enquiry, with the metadata (date, group size, budget band, occasion, your first name). They can claim their listing and respond to you directly within minutes. If they don't respond by your deadline, you receive the alternatives email described above. Either way, your enquiry is never lost — it just flows through to the venue most likely to host you well.

You can reply directly to the venue with updates — the conversation thread lives with you and them, not with us. If you want to broaden your search again, send a new enquiry to a fresh shortlist.

No. An enquiry is a request to start a conversation, not a booking. You're not charged, you're not committed to a deposit, and you can decide not to proceed for any reason. Venues understand this.

You can stop the conversation at any point. If the venue has already sent a proposal, courtesy suggests letting them know — but there's no obligation on TPDR's side.

Yes. Once you've submitted an enquiry, the venue you've selected has your contact details and may email, call, or text you to discuss your booking. They may also add you to their own marketing list. You can unsubscribe from their marketing any time, but the introduction itself is direct.

In this order: editorial credibility (Good Food Guide hats, Gourmet Traveller awards, World's 50 Best, and similar), then profile completeness and responsiveness, then featured-slot placements. Hatted and award-winning venues always rank above featured-but-uncredentialed ones. You can't buy your way to the top of an organic page on TPDR.

No — not in the search ranking sense. Venues can pay to win a featured slot, which gives them additional visibility in a dedicated band on a page, but a featured slot never moves a venue above a more credentialed competitor in the main organic list. The hierarchy is editorial first, paid second.

In Australia, "hats" refers to the Good Food Guide's restaurant ranking — one hat, two hats, or three hats. Hats are independently awarded by food critics, refreshed annually, and the most recognised marker of dining quality in the country. We use hats (alongside other editorial awards) as one of the inputs into our ranking algorithm.

We weight a hat or award by how recently it was earned. A hat won this year contributes more to a venue's score than a hat won in 2018. A venue that hasn't been hatted for ten years no longer benefits from that decade-old credential. The aim is to show diners what's good now, not what was good then.

No. A featured venue appears in a dedicated "Featured" band on city, suburb, cuisine, or category pages — extra visibility, but a separate slot. Organic rankings (the main list of venues) are driven by editorial credibility and profile signals, not by who has paid. The two systems are kept structurally apart.

At launch, yes — every venue is hand-picked and verified personally by the founder. As TPDR scales, we'll add more venues through claimed-listing flows and qualified discovery, with quality controls maintained. We don't auto-import or mass-scrape.

Because we list fewer of them. The launch list is curated from a working hospitality CRM — no automated imports, no generic function rooms, no chain venues unless they earn it. If a venue is on TPDR, we've done at least a basic editorial check.

Not at MVP launch. Reviews are an open question on the product roadmap — done carefully, they reinforce the editorial credibility position; done lazily, they erode it. We'll have more to say in 2026 / 2027.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

You can unsubscribe from any venue's marketing list at any time via the unsubscribe link in their emails. You can't generally prevent the venue from contacting you about an enquiry you specifically sent them; that contact is the point of the enquiry.

Yes, anytime, via the unsubscribe link in any TPDR email. Transactional emails (enquiry confirmations, status updates from venues you've contacted) continue regardless — they're how the platform functions.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Sydney at launch. Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide will follow as we sequence the Australian rollout. International markets — New Zealand, the UK, the US — are the year-three horizon.

Sign up to the waitlist on the homepage and we'll let you know when we open in your city. The order is Sydney first; then Melbourne and Brisbane in parallel; then Perth and Adelaide; then international.

Corporate events (client dinners, board dinners, EOFY parties, Christmas functions, product launches), milestone celebrations (significant birthdays, engagements, anniversaries, wedding-related dinners that aren't the wedding itself), hens' and bucks' nights, intimate group dinners, and wakes. Anything where a group needs a private space to gather.

We cover private dining around weddings — rehearsal dinners, post-wedding lunches, smaller wedding ceremonies in private rooms. We're not the right platform for large wedding receptions in dedicated wedding venues; The Knot and similar are better there.

Most TPDR venues comfortably handle groups from eight to sixty. The full range varies by venue — some chef's tables seat as few as four; some exclusive-hire venues can host hundreds. Filter by group size on any search page.

No. Payments, deposits, and booking confirmations happen directly between you and the venue. TPDR is the introduction and conversation layer; the commercial relationship is theirs.

That's between you and the venue. Most are happy to arrange a site visit for serious enquiries. Mention it in your enquiry form if you'd like one.

Create an account (or use the one created on your first enquiry), then use the "Events" view to manage each separately. Each event has its own shortlist, enquiries, and venue conversations.

Yes. Click "Save" on any space and it appears in your shortlist. Send the whole shortlist to multiple venues with one form, or save it for later.

Email hello@theprivatediningroom.com. At launch, support is direct from the founder; we'd rather know about a problem in the first hour than not know at all.

hello@theprivatediningroom.com for general enquiries. For press, see the About TPDR section below. For venue listing, head to /list-your-venue.

Two paths. The first: we may already have you. TPDR's launch list is curated from the founder's hospitality CRM, which means many premium private dining rooms in Sydney are already pre-populated as draft listings. The second: head to /list-your-venue, type your venue name, and our Google Places integration auto-fills your address, phone, and website. Add your spaces, photos, pricing, and you're live.

Possibly. We have a curated list of around 100 Sydney venues seeded as draft listings (including most hatted restaurants and major hospitality groups). If you're listed, you can claim the listing and receive enquiries directly. Search your venue name on the homepage to check.

Search for your venue, click "Claim this listing", and verify ownership via a confirmation email to the venue's listed business address or via a phone call from our team. The claim flow takes a few minutes.

The first twenty venues per city to come onto TPDR are designated Launch Partners. Launch Partners receive six months without subscription, featured-slot placement during the launch window, and named recognition on TPDR's launch communications.

Six months from your activation date. You'll receive a re-confirmation email at month five so there are no surprises when billing begins.

You move to standard subscription pricing — $149 per space per month — or you can cancel with no penalty. After Launch Partner status, what you keep are the relationships you've already built with diners; the platform doesn't withhold them.

Not necessarily. Your existing photography is a starting point. If your imagery isn't up to TPDR's standard, we'll let you know and can connect you with a hospitality photographer. Editorial credibility lives in the photography, and we'd rather help you fix imagery than list a venue at a lower quality bar.

For a single-space venue with existing photography and good content, around fifteen minutes. For a multi-space hospitality group with full photo and copy refresh, allow a few days across multiple sessions. The platform saves your progress and you can finish later.

$149 per space per month. Flat. No tiers, no peak/off-peak pricing, no commission on bookings. A venue with three private dining spaces pays 3 × $149 = $447 per month.

A "space" is a discrete bookable private dining room. The Cellar Room at Bert's Bar & Brasserie is one space. If your venue has two private dining rooms upstairs and a chef's table downstairs, that's three spaces.

Per-space pricing applies regardless of how many spaces a venue has. The model is deliberately flat — easier to communicate and aligned with how diners search (they want a space that fits 24 guests in Surry Hills, not "any room at Bert's").

Not at MVP launch. We'll review based on early Launch Partner feedback; if a discount is introduced, it'll be communicated in advance.

Yes — 10% off if you pay annually upfront. $1,608 per space per year instead of $1,788.

No. Never. The subscription is the entirety of what venues pay TPDR. Bookings, deposits, and revenue stay 100% with the venue.

Because the commission model — used by OpenTable, Resy, and most reservation platforms — creates a structural tension between the platform and the venue. The platform makes more when the venue charges more, which pushes the platform toward booking volume regardless of fit. Our model rewards us for delivering relevant enquiries, full stop. The cleaner alignment is good for both sides.

Listing on TPDR (browsable, searchable, mappable), photo gallery (up to 15 images per space), direct enquiry routing with full diner contact details, a basic ROI dashboard (enquiries received, response time, conversion to bookings), and eligibility for relevant marketing audience segments.

The Launch Partner program gives you six months without subscription — long enough to see whether the platform delivers for you. If it doesn't, you walk away with no penalty and no contract. We don't believe in lock-in.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Your listing reverts to the non-subscribed state — you remain discoverable on TPDR, but enquiries flow through the held-enquiry pathway instead of arriving directly. If you'd like to reactivate, the next enquiry that lands for your venue triggers a one-click reactivate flow.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Direct to the email address you've nominated. Each enquiry includes the diner's name, email, phone, date, group size, budget band, occasion, response-needed-by, and any free-text notes. You reply to the diner; we keep a copy of the thread on your dashboard for ROI reporting.

Yes. Name, email, phone, and any business information they've provided. This is structurally enforced by the platform, not a feature we might quietly remove later.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Either. Most venues respond to the diner via their existing email client. The dashboard exists for managing multiple enquiries, tracking conversion, and updating venue / space details.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

If your venue isn't yet subscribed and a diner enquires with you, you see metadata only — date, group size, budget band, occasion, response-needed-by, the diner's first name. Full contact details are released once your first subscription payment confirms.

When a diner enquiries with your venue and you're not yet subscribed, we email you with the enquiry metadata and a one-click subscribe-to-claim link. Click it, complete the Stripe Checkout, and the full enquiry — with the diner's contact details — arrives in your inbox. The first subscription payment activates your listing immediately.

A "held enquiry" is one that came in for a venue that isn't yet subscribed. Held enquiries are kept on the diner's side of the platform; the venue sees metadata only until they subscribe. If no venue claims the enquiry by the diner's stated deadline, the diner receives three alternative venue suggestions, and the original held enquiry is treated as expired.

Date blocks are on the post-launch roadmap. At MVP, the cleanest path is to mark an enquiry as "Not available" in your dashboard and the diner sees that response, with alternative suggestions offered. Calendar / availability integration is a Year-1 build.

Not at MVP launch. Integrations with major reservation platforms are on the roadmap. For Launch Partners, your TPDR listing is the source of truth for private dining enquiries specifically; your other system continues to handle regular reservations.

Same as above — roadmapped, not at MVP.

Editorial credibility first (hats, awards), then profile completeness and responsiveness, then featured-slot placement. Hatted venues always rank above featured-but-uncredentialed venues. The ranking algorithm is documented openly on /how-rankings-work so venues and diners alike can audit it.

You can pay to win a featured slot — a dedicated visibility band on city, suburb, cuisine, or category pages — but a featured slot never moves your venue above a more credentialed competitor in the main organic list. Editorial credibility outranks paid placement, every time.

A featured slot is a dedicated card placement at the top of a city, suburb, cuisine, category, or size-band page. It's additional visibility, separately allocated from organic rankings. Featured slots are won by monthly auction (Smart Bid).

Each month, we run a Vickrey sealed-bid auction for every featured slot. You submit a single maximum bid for the slot you want to win. At close, the highest bidder wins the slot but pays only the second-highest bid plus a $25 increment (or the reserve, if they were the only bidder). The auction is called "Smart Bid" because the bidding strategy is straightforward: bid the most this slot is worth to you, and the auction handles the rest.

Because featured-slot value varies — Christmas season is more competitive than February, Bondi is busier than Penrith. Flat pricing leaves money on the table during high-demand months and creates churn during low-demand months. The auction lets the market set the price each month. Reserve prices ($250 for standard slots, $500 for City Hero) floor our revenue; clearing prices reflect what the market will actually pay.

The minimum bid we accept. $250 for standard slots (suburb, cuisine, category, size-band) and $500 for City Hero slots (the premium homepage placement). Bids below reserve don't win, even if they're the only bid in.

Three premium placements on the city homepage — the most-trafficked surface on TPDR. Sydney's City Hero slots open monthly, with a $500 reserve and competitive bidding from venues who want broad visibility across the whole city.

No. One slot per venue per row. We enforce diversity in the featured band so a well-funded venue can't dominate every position on a single page. You can win multiple slots across different rows (e.g., Suburb featured AND Cuisine featured) simultaneously.

No. Never. The ranking algorithm is structurally arranged so that editorial credibility ranks first, and a featured slot is its own placement band, not a way to move a venue above a more credentialed competitor in the main list.

Hats contribute to your award score, which is a factor in organic ranking. A three-hat venue ranks above a two-hat venue, which ranks above an unrated venue (assuming all else equal). If you don't have hats, profile completeness, response time, and other signals still matter — there's plenty of room to win on the platform without them.

Your award score decreases. Award scores decay annually if not re-won; losing a hat is a more immediate drop, and we adjust your score within the next monthly refresh.

Send us the announcement and we'll update your record within the next refresh cycle. Award sources we currently track include the Good Food Guide, Gourmet Traveller, World's 50 Best, Michelin (where relevant), and major Australian food critic awards.

Yes. Each venue is owned by an organisation; group operations directors can manage every venue, space, billing record, and enquiry pipeline from a single organisation dashboard. The schema supports it natively.

A hospitality group can consolidate billing across all its venues into a single Stripe subscription with line items per space, or hold separate subscriptions per venue. Group dashboards aggregate ROI reporting across the portfolio.

Yes. Organisation-level dashboards show aggregated metrics (total enquiries across the portfolio, response times, conversion, attributed revenue), with the ability to drill into individual venues or spaces.

Brand sponsorship slots — homepage and city-page brand panels, sponsored editorial content, newsletter sponsorship — open to direct-sold partners from Year 2 onwards. Eligible categories are aligned to the TPDR audience: premium hospitality groups, luxury hotels, premium spirits, watch brands, private banks, and similar. Reach out at hello@theprivatediningroom.com if interested in early conversations.

Enquiries received, response time, conversion to confirmed bookings, estimated minimum revenue based on your pricing, attribution back to acquisition source (organic search, featured slot, alternatives email), historical auction clearing prices for slots you could bid on, and audience segment eligibility.

Hire fee + (minimum spend × confirmed party size) per venue's stated pricing, summed across booked enquiries in the reporting window. Venues can optionally report actual booking values for accurate ROI — the dashboard shows both estimated and actual where available.

Every enquiry that arrives via a featured slot impression-and-click chain is tagged with the originating slot ID. The attribution carries through to the booking (when you mark it Won). Your dashboard shows impression → click → enquiry → booking funnels per featured slot, with full ROI calculation.

No. Stay listed wherever else you are. We're not territorial; we win on quality and customer relationship, not on contractual lock-in.

No. Monthly billing, cancel anytime, no minimum term, no exit penalty.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Browse the platform; the launch list includes most major hatted venues in Sydney and a growing number of hospitality groups. We don't publish a separate "competitor list" — the platform itself is the answer.

No. The auction is sealed — you see your own bid history and the clearing prices for slots you've participated in, but never other venues' specific bids. You see clearing-price trends (last six months, average, current bid density band) on every slot you could bid on.

TPDR was founded by Stuart Smith in 2026. Stu is a Sydney-based, fourth-time founder with fourteen years of business ownership and deep relationships across the Australian hospitality industry.

Sydney, Australia. The team is small and remote-friendly; the platform and data are hosted in Sydney (Supabase ap-southeast-2 region).

Yes. TPDR Pty Ltd is an Australian-registered company with Australian ownership.

Four revenue lines. First, per-space monthly subscription from venues ($149/space/month). Second, featured-slot auctions (Smart Bid), where venues bid for additional visibility. Third, held-enquiry conversion — venues subscribe to claim a live diner enquiry. Fourth, premium brand sponsorship from direct-sold partners (Year 2 onwards). Diners pay nothing, ever.

Not yet. TPDR is bootstrapped through MVP launch. A raise window opens after MVP launch (mid-2026); we're talking to investors who get hospitality, who get marketplaces, and who get the value of editorial integrity.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Yes. No subscriptions, no booking fees, no commissions on bookings, no charges of any kind for browsing, shortlisting, or enquiring.

Because nobody else has built a platform purpose-built for it. Generalist directories treat private events as an afterthought; reservation platforms optimise for covers and turn private dining into a side concern. Private dining is structurally different — higher value per booking, more relationship-driven, more occasion-led — and it deserves a platform that respects the difference.

We use their published award lists as inputs to our ranking algorithm. We're not affiliated with either; we don't pay them, and they don't pay us. The lists are public and we credit them transparently on every venue page that carries an award.

No. TPDR has no equity, financial, or governance relationship with any venue listed on the platform. Editorial decisions about ranking, featured-slot algorithms, and venue inclusion are made independently of any commercial relationship beyond the standard subscription.

No. TPDR isn't a review platform — we don't publish star ratings or written reviews on venues at MVP. Editorial content (city guides, venue features, behind-the-scenes interviews) starts post-launch as part of our content strategy, but it's distinct from a reviews function.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Sydney first, then Melbourne and Brisbane in parallel, then Perth and Adelaide, then international (NZ, UK, US). Each city's rollout is sequenced based on supply readiness (curated hatted-venue list) and demand signals (waitlist numbers).

stuart@theprivatediningroom.com. We're happy to talk to journalists covering hospitality, food, lifestyle, marketplace and startup beats. The most current angle list is in our launch communications package; ask and we'll send it.

hello@theprivatediningroom.com. Partnership categories we're actively interested in: hospitality groups, premium brand sponsors (Year 2+), industry associations, and complementary marketplaces (corporate concierge networks, wedding planners, milestone-event services).

stuart@theprivatediningroom.com. Raise window opens mid-2026 after MVP launch; investor materials available on request to qualified contacts.

Roles currently open or being scoped: fractional or full-time CMO; sales lead; product / design; fractional CFO. If your background fits and TPDR's positioning resonates, send a note to hello@theprivatediningroom.com.