Restaurants serve up private membership clubs with NFTs

Future. High-end restaurants and celebrity chefs are putting NFTs on the menu in order to attract high-rolling clientele. The NFT collections currently act as tokens for holders to access exclusive elements of each restaurant’s experience, and over time they could become a way for diners to try the most cutting-edge or hard-to-source dishes that their respective chefs have ever created.

DeFi dining
If you want a reservation at some restaurants, you better be ready to show your NFT.

• Chefs Tom Colicchio and Spike Mendelsohn launched the collection CHFTY Pizzas — 8,888 pizza-themed NFTs that give users access to exclusive events and merch, with part of the proceeds going to support food justice initiatives.
• Chef Josh Capon teamed up with entrepreneurs David Rodolitz and Gary Vaynerchuk to start the upcoming Flyfish Club — the “first-ever NFT restaurant.” Holders will get unlimited access to a private dining room in NYC when it opens next year.
• The upscale Chotto Matte restaurant chain is launching a 1/1 NFT called “The Founder” next month that gives the holder access to future restaurant openings around the world, vineyard or distillery visits, private time with the executive chef, New Year’s Eve reservations for six, and even sports tickets.
• The Brooklyn Chop House is also getting in on the NFT action for its new Times Square location — its “intimate cellar area” will only be accessible to NFT holders.

Check, please
Everyone loves an exclusive dining experience, so the NFT collections are meant to bring a sort of velvet-rope country club access to the restaurant business. Granted, you have to be rich in order to sit at these rarified tables. The Flyfish Club and Brooklyn Chop House NFTs start at $8,000 (with tiers exponentially more expensive than that), and Chotto Matte’s The Founder NFT comes in at a cool $1 million. Only CHFTY Pizzas are an affordable $200 each.

While these NFTs are mostly about what gets you into the door (of the restaurants and events), it’s not hard to imagine that smaller NFTs or more expensive tiers could give diners access to dishes or drinks made from rare ingredients or that are in short supply… giving diners bragging rights that they had that meal. In the new crypto world, it’s all about controlling supply and demand.