Jailer

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find not one, not two, but 44 new RN eateries within 10 miles of my NW Orange County, CA office (Some were retreads, but the clear majority were newbies): maybe an over-achieving new sales rep or maybe a more generalized RN expansion.

sdsearch

I have a search set up for central Orange County, and I just clicked New Locations and it only shows 23 within 30 miles (which includes places as far away as Torrance and Upland, so it should have included anything you found in NW Orange County).

So did those new ones disappear already, or are they only showing up in your regular search but not when you click New Locations?

And, in case it matters, which subprogram did these show up under? (They used to have some restaurants only in certain subprograms in some cities.)

Jailer

I dunno, I merely hit the button on AA/RN to launch restaurants near me on my android and then gleefully scrolled down counting until I hit a 10-mile radius. Maybe you ought to slide under the Orange Curtain sometime and we'll have lunch and I'll show you the new world order?

Be advised that 10 miles from my office encompasses Long Beach and even beyond.

sdsearch

This is strange. I was doing searches without logging in, because that doesn't seem to have ever mattered before. But while it showed only 23 new restaurants within 30 miles before logging in, it shows 106 new restaurants after I log in!

Among totally new ones here and there, in my central OC search area I see several that used to belong but dropped out (including one that shows "coming soon" rather than "new"), and several that are new locations of local chains (such as Z Pizza or Panini Cafe) which had other locations before.

And it's much more than just the OC. I see the same thing searching around my home in West LA: 2 Coming Soon, then one that was there before, then another Coming Soon and 2 New, then a bunch that were there before.

And on a whim I tried San Francisco, and see a similar onslaught of new / coming soon places there too.

But it's not everywhere (or at least not yet everywhere). For example, I search Tuscon, and I see not a single new or coming soon restaurant in whole area there.

So I wonder if they changed their whole approach to singing up places? Maybe they started to do it electronically rather in person, or with one traveling super-rep instead of complacent permanent ones?

Jailer

Prowling around my recent circuit, there are some gains in most places: New Orleans, Phoenix, Tampa, San Diego, and Palm Desert. Nothing in Flagstaff and while Yuma is flat, an hour west El Centro has five where historically there was one. My sense is that there was been a focus on small regional chains, but my sampling is too small to have any meaningful insight.

Well, so much for trying to get down to the 170's.

sdsearch

Another example of that: There was a WhichWich already participating in the Anaheim area (plus some other locations elsewhere in the country), but for example the WhichWich location in West Los Angeles (which opened a year or two ago) didn't join until this latest binge.

So perhaps they shifted from signing up only individual locations to (also) signing up entire chains at once, like they did a few times before for national chains but haven't appeared to have done for a long time for local chains (ever since Daphne's came and then went in SoCal, quite a few years ago)?

nineworldseries

Very few new locations in Columbus, unfortunately. RN is sliding into Restaurant.com territory, it seems, where only terrible or soon-to-be-closing places at which you'd never otherwise spend money appear.

rasheed

RN is now running a Plenti dining program.
https://localdining.plenti.com/ (3%)

For a minute, I thought perhaps RN brought in Mogl locations to get a quick expansion.

Does anyone have a way to get on Dinova without MC business?

Rasheed

KathyWdrf

I'm seeing a bunch of new places (and some retreads) being added in San Francisco. Unfortunately, none in my neighborhood (zip code).

There is currently only ONE RN restaurant in my zip code, which has a population of over 40,000 and lots of restaurants.

Points Scrounger

Several new ones in Seattle, although many are bars/clubs that I'm unlikely to visit.

Jailer

The influx of new RN partners has somewhat invigorated me and all of the five newbies visited have been pretty alright.

Some of new and pending look promising: maybe my imagination, but it seems like it's taking longer to activate so perhaps the RN infrastructure is being stretched.

CMK10

Doesn't seem like there's much new in the Raleigh area either, but I am glad to hear some areas are getting new RN properties.

sdsearch

Within a mile or two of my home, there were three (3) "Coming Soon" restaurants (including one which was part of a national chain which had some participating locations elsewhere before), which appeared back then, and remained "Coming Soon", until this week they just disappeared from the list. So are the coming eventually or is it all evaporated?

The "coming soon" restaurants looked very interesting to me. The actual "new" restaurants, not so much. So now it "feels" like there's actually nothing new close to my home, even though on this lists there still are some that are "new" (plus there were a couple restaurants I do like added in the months just before this "unprecedented expansion".

Jailer

Well, shoot, same thing: the pending place closest to my office never perked and has now disappeared. There are other strange perturbations with this recent intake: one place only takes Visa cards; menus and photos aren't shown for a number of newbies; and a place near LAX shows up in El Centro.

Likely RN had some kind of enticement that restaurants signed up for and didn't follow through. Pity there's no RN lurker. Pity that there's no "try a new place" bonus to drive business to RN's newest partners.

Yet, liking 7 out of 8 of these new guys, I have to say the RN feeding trough is half full, not half empty.

sdsearch

Well, one of those "Coming Soon" restaurants that appeared when this thread started and then disappeared a couple weeks ago has just finally shown up as actually New (and with check boxes in the Rewards calendar for every day going forward already).

That only took about a month. (And it's just one, so far at least, of several that were showing "Coming Soon" before.)