A packed restaurant on Saturday night is great.
Tuesday afternoon? That can be a slightly different story.
For restaurants, cafes and bars, one of the constant challenges is finding ways to bring people through the door during those quieter periods when the staff are there, the kitchen is open and the tables would otherwise be sitting empty.
That’s exactly the problem EatClub is designed to tackle.
The dining app allows restaurants to offer targeted discounts at selected times, encouraging diners to move away from peak periods or try somewhere they may not have visited before.
EatClub launched in the Illawarra in April 2026 and says there are now 60 participating local venues. Since launch, more than 11,000 EatClub offers have been redeemed, bringing close to 25,000 diners into participating Illawarra businesses.
Those are pretty decent numbers.
But we wanted to know what it actually looks like from the restaurant side.
So we spoke to two Wollongong venues already using it: His Boy Elroy and BASTA Trattoria.
How does EatClub work for restaurants?
EatClub isn’t simply a permanent discount attached to a restaurant.
The venue decides when it wants to make an offer available.
Participating restaurants can control:
- the percentage discount
- the times the offer is available
- how many offers are released
- and when to pause an offer.
If a restaurant suddenly gets busy, the venue can pause its EatClub offers through the Partner Portal rather than continuing to discount tables it could fill at full price.
That’s an important distinction.
For a restaurant owner, the idea isn’t necessarily to discount the meals you were going to sell anyway.
It’s about using an offer to encourage someone into a table that may otherwise have remained empty.
His Boy Elroy: meeting diners where they are
His Boy Elroy has been using EatClub for several months, and owner Lachlan Stevens says it fits with a broader change he’s seeing in how people choose to eat out.
“Customers are more strategic about when and how they dine out. If people are willing to move off a peak sitting for better value, we need to meet them there.”
That really gets to the heart of it.
Cost-of-living pressure doesn’t necessarily mean people have stopped wanting to go out.
It can mean they’re looking harder at when they go, what they spend and whether they can get better value.
For HBE, EatClub has helped the venue reach a more price-conscious group during quieter periods.
But Lachie says the discount is only the introduction.
Once someone comes through the door, the restaurant still has to do the important bit.
Give them a reason to come back.
“Once they’re through the door, the job is to give them the full HBE experience: food, service, atmosphere, community; and turn that first visit into a regular.”
In Wollongong, repeat customers matter
One of Lachie’s comments particularly stood out to us because it’s very specific to running a hospitality business in a regional city like Wollongong.
“In Wollongong you live on repeat visitation, not CBD density, so that relationship piece matters as much as the discount.”
That’s a very different equation from operating somewhere with a constant stream of new customers walking past every day.
For many Illawarra hospitality businesses, regular customers are everything.
If an EatClub offer gets someone through the door for the first time and they then return for lunch next month, bring friends for dinner or become a regular takeaway customer, the value of that original visit becomes much bigger than the discounted meal.
As Lachie puts it, this means there can be a “compounding effect” if the customer comes back.
BASTA Trattoria: using EatClub to launch a new dining period
EatClub has served a slightly different purpose for BASTA Trattoria at Hotel TOTTO Wollongong.
BASTA began using EatClub in May 2026, around the same time the restaurant launched its All-Day Dining Menu.
Previously, BASTA hadn’t been offering lunch.
Ian Castillo says EatClub has helped the restaurant build traffic during those newer and quieter parts of the day.
“It has been an amazing and reliable tool to fill in the gaps in my venue, driving foot traffic especially for those quieter afternoon and mid-week windows.”
That makes EatClub interesting beyond simply rescuing a traditionally quiet Tuesday night.
For a venue expanding its trading hours, introducing lunch or testing a new dining period, it can potentially help put the business in front of customers who didn’t previously have a reason to visit at that time.
Ian says it has also helped introduce BASTA to people who hadn’t tried the restaurant before.
“It definitely helps attract both locals looking for a great spontaneous meal and first-time diners who end up becoming regulars.”
And we can vouch for the first-time diner bit.
The List recently tried EatClub ourselves at BASTA, after spotting the restaurant on the app.
We had already wanted to visit, but seeing the offer gave us the nudge to actually book ourselves in for breakfast.
Read what happened when we tried EatClub in Wollongong
Do EatClub customers actually come back and pay full price?
This is probably the question most restaurant owners will want answered.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a neat percentage yet.
EatClub told The List that it can only track a customer’s later full-price visit when that diner pays through the app without an active offer.
At this stage, it says there isn’t enough data to draw a definitive conclusion about how many discounted customers later return and pay full price.
That’s worth being clear about.
But both of the Wollongong operators we spoke to say they are seeing customers introduced through EatClub become repeat diners.
So while the platform can get somebody through the door, it’s still the restaurant experience that determines what happens next.
Are Wollongong diners becoming more price conscious?
Apparently so.
And that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re eating out less.
EatClub CEO and Co-Founder Pan Koutlakis says consumers are becoming more deliberate about how they spend their hospitality dollars.
Restaurant spending across Wollongong increased 17% in the year to December 2025, while spending at restaurants within the Wollongong CBD increased 19.3%.
Over the same period, cafe spending across Wollongong fell 7.5%.
EatClub’s view is that diners still value going out, but increasingly look for value, timing and experience when deciding where to spend.
That shift potentially creates an opportunity for restaurants willing to encourage customers into different dining times rather than competing exclusively for the same busy Friday and Saturday night crowd.
The value of an otherwise empty table
Of course, discounting only makes sense if the numbers work.
Every restaurant has different food costs, margins, staffing levels and overheads.
A 40% offer that makes sense for one venue at 3pm on Wednesday may be completely wrong for another.
But the basic question is pretty simple:
If a table was going to sit empty anyway, could offering an incentive to fill it create more value for the business?
For HBE, the answer is about looking beyond that single transaction.
Lachie says the business may “give a bit on the front end”, but if that person discovers the venue, enjoys the experience and comes back again, the relationship becomes much more valuable.
It also helps get people physically into the venue.
“Getting people in store rather than just ordering takeaway at home is still the goal for us.”
That matters.
You can deliver a burger to somebody’s lounge room.
It’s much harder to deliver the atmosphere, service and connection that might actually turn them into a loyal customer.
Restaurants are still in control
One thing that may reassure businesses considering EatClub is that restaurants aren’t handing complete control of their pricing over to the app.
EatClub says venues choose the offer percentage, available times and number of deals released.
They can also pause offers immediately if demand changes.
That could allow a business to use EatClub quite strategically.
For example:
- filling an early dinner period before the main rush
- encouraging people into a midweek lunch
- creating interest around newly extended trading hours
- filling unexpected gaps in bookings
- or introducing new customers to the venue during quieter periods.
The discount doesn’t necessarily have to become the business model.
It can simply be a tool.
Local hospitality has a bigger impact than one meal
There’s another side to getting customers through local restaurant doors that can be easy to overlook.
Hospitality businesses are often deeply connected to the communities around them.
His Boy Elroy is one example.
The business helps support philanthropic work through the Raising the Bar Foundation, including its Walk With Us Kokoda program.
In November 2026, the program will take a group of 16 people to walk the Kokoda Track with veterans, and Lachie says around 45 veterans have participated in the broader program to date.
So when locals choose a Wollongong restaurant, bar or cafe, the impact can stretch well beyond the meal itself.
Discover more Wollongong and Illawarra restaurants
So, does EatClub work for Wollongong restaurants?
There probably isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.
Restaurants still need to understand their margins, know when they genuinely have spare capacity and decide what level of discount makes financial sense.
But the Illawarra figures suggest diners are certainly using it.
Since EatClub launched locally in April, it says more than 11,000 offers have been redeemed and close to 25,000 diners have been seated through participating venues.
For both His Boy Elroy and BASTA Trattoria, the real value seems to go beyond simply filling one discounted table.
It’s the opportunity to introduce someone new to the business.
After that, the app has done its job.
The food, service and experience have to do the rest.