Not long ago, we introduced you to Village Vines, a new-ish site that partnered back in the fall with our sister site, MenuPages. By offering a percentage (usually 30 percent) off your total dining bill, the Village Vines model reminded us of our favorite deals site, Blackboard Eats — only BBE was free and the Vines charged $10. Yet today comes word that the year-old Blackboard Eats has begun charging: one dollar per discount passcode, or twenty bucks for an annual membership.
We can almost picture the fuming that went on at BBE HQ when Vines rolled out, and now the older company has deliberately set its price point much lower. Village Vines’ model is slightly different in that users make a reservation in the process of buying their discount code, and though we’re still loathe to pay $10 for that (it frankly whiffs to us of resy scalping), others must feel differently since the company raked in half a million dollars in December. Blackboard Eats codes expire in a month, so whether we’ll pay $1 for a passcode we might or might not end up using is uncertain. The first deals under the new system just went up; will you be buying?
