First Table's off-peak bet: $10M to take discount dining across Australia

First Table, the New Zealand restaurant booking platform that trades discounts for diners willing to eat early or late, has raised $10M to push further into Australia.

The company's proposition is simple enough. Diners book a table at an off-peak time and get up to 50% off their food bill. Restaurants, in return, get bodies in seats during the hours that would otherwise sit empty. It is a model built on the gap between peak demand and fixed costs — the 5pm and 9pm sittings that venues still have to staff.

That pitch has already travelled. First Table now operates in 22 Australian cities, carries more than 1,500 restaurants on the platform and claims one million-plus Australian users.

The round was backed by existing investors Altered Capital, Invest South, Mainland Angels and Snowball Effect shareholders, alongside new backers K1W1 and Icehouse Ventures.

Chief executive Alex Cappy, who previously worked at Uber and Deliveroo in the UK, said the new capital would be focused on expanding in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

"We are ambitious and expect to double in size in Australia in the next 12 months, just as we have in the past year," she said.

Cappy runs the business alongside founder Mat Weir. Her delivery-platform background is a telling hire for a company whose economics depend on filling capacity rather than simply processing bookings — the same supply-side problem that Uber and Deliveroo spent years optimising, albeit with cars, couriers and restaurants instead of tables.

First Table is not alone in chasing the restaurant discount dollar in Australia. The category has attracted sizeable cheques from offshore, with restaurant deals app backed by Marco Pierre White raising a $27 million Series B earlier this year, and EatClub securing $18.2M in a Series A to fund UK expansion in 2025. Me&u founder Stevan Premutico has also re-entered the space with a startup targeting restaurant phone calls.

What separates First Table's approach is its focus on time rather than cuisine or loyalty points. The discount is the product — a lever restaurants can pull to smooth out the demand curve without permanently repricing their menu.

The company has not disclosed the round's structure, valuation or how the capital breaks down between hiring, marketing and venue acquisition. What it has said is where the money goes geographically: the four largest Australian capitals, and a stated ambition to double the local business within a year.