The Scene's new app helps New Yorkers find dining and nightlife spots

Choosing between New York City’s nearly 25,000 restaurants can be overwhelming. The pressure is especially high when you’re trying to impress a first date (or investor) or entertain family from out of town. A new app launched over the weekend to address precisely that.

The Scene, an iOS-only “pocket concierge service,” uses machine learning to match users with dining, drinking and dancing spots in NYC.

The Scene pulls recommendations for users based on various factors, including the type of event they’re planning for (dinner, brunch, drinks, etc.), the type of outing (date, birthday, anniversary, or other special occasions), cuisine preferences, size of the party, budget, date, time and neighborhood.

One standout feature is The Scene’s “Vibe” setting, which allows users to discover highly specific suggestions like “Instagrammable” clubs, rooftop restaurants, or bars with good music, letting users curate their preferred ambience.

The app then lists options, along with descriptions, reservation times, hours of operation, a link to the menu or website and more. The Scene is integrated with Instagram and Google to provide reviews and other information. 

The Scene launched as a web platform in 2021 and has since gained around 12,800 users. Its creators hope to reach more NYC-based users in app form.

The service was founded by Ridhima Kalani, a former personal concierge who assisted clients in India, Singapore, Dubai, and London for a decade. When she arrived in NYC, Kalani noticed there was a “serious gap in the market when it came to the social planning process,” she told TechCrunch. 

“[P]eople love finding lesser-known spots, [so] a large point of The Scene is about democratizing the demand for restaurants overall in NYC and creating more long-term inconsistent demand for [unfamiliar] spots … Maybe you want to check out a new place, but you also don’t want to be embarrassed if it’s ‘sus,’” she says. “The Scene rules that out because you’re plugging in your vibe preferences, and then you’re being matched with those exact vibes. There’s no question mark around it.”

The app offers 550 spots located around Manhattan and Brooklyn, ranging from popular places like Hearsay, Little Sister, Le Bain, Somewhere Nowhere, and Jack’s Wife Freda to “underrated” gems such as Arte Cafe, Mémé, Pastai and more. About 100 restaurants in Queens will also be offered. 

The Scene plans to launch in 22 additional cities over the next five years.

Kalani believes The Scene differentiates itself from direct competitors Bucket Listers and Secret NYC — as well as restaurant reservation apps OpenTable and Resy — with its hyper-personalization. The Scene also offers a broader selection than restaurant reservation apps, as it includes custom recommendations for clubs and other nightlife activities. 

“No other app is going to ask you what your favorite vibes are for the outing, and it’s a better algorithm that’s more focused on democratizing demand rather than always having the same top locations,” Kalani added, explaining that she created her own training data for the machine learning model based on her experiences, fine-tuning it so the model provides results that meet her standards. 

The app is currently limited in features but will gradually introduce AI-powered capabilities. For instance, The Scene is building a recommendation search engine that is trained to understand natural language, such as “Dinner in Soho at 7 pm on Saturday for 4 ppl.” The model comprehends that “ppl” means people. It’s also developing an AI concierge chatbot that can act as a private assistant for users, offering a personalized conversational experience. Kalani recently hired Arneesh Aima (Chief Technology Officer) and iOS Developer Anagha Jayaprakah to help with app development.

The Scene is currently bootstrapped but wants to raise funding in the near future.