Why We Built Cashback Around Off-Peak Hours

June 22, 2026

Most restaurant marketing tools are built to drive traffic in general. TableAura is built to drive traffic specifically when a restaurant needs it — which is almost never during a Friday dinner rush.

The problem with blanket discounts

A flat 10%-off promotion discounts every table, including the ones that would have shown up anyway on a busy Saturday night. That's margin given away for free, not covers gained.

Targeting the actual slow hours

TableAura lets a restaurant configure cashback by day and time — for example, a higher rate on a slow Tuesday 3–6pm shift, and little or no extra incentive during a Friday dinner rush that's already full. The restaurant only pays out cashback (and TableAura's 4.5% platform fee) when someone actually redeems it, so there's no cost to having the offer configured — only to it working.

What this means for diners

In practice, this means the best cashback rates tend to show up exactly when you'd want a reason to try somewhere new: an early dinner, a weekday lunch, a slow midweek night.