Lot of you guys are blaming the merchant for agreeing to such a deal. While I agree that the cafe owner should have worked out the economics of the deal, but you seem to be ignoring the merchant perspective across all these Groupon deals.
The biggest goal of merchants signing up with these group buying sites is to get customers and hope that a big chunk of these turn into repeat customers. Unless the merchant is selling distressed inventory (eg: slow business hours etc.) the merchant is not making money on these deals.
And thats the number one thing we strive to accomplish at BloomSpot (shameless plug here). After all, if there's no value for the merchant in such deals, eventually, they'll just stop participating. We want to make this a win-win for both the merchant as well as the end user.
The biggest goal of merchants signing up with these group buying sites is to get customers and hope that a big chunk of these turn into repeat customers. Unless the merchant is selling distressed inventory (eg: slow business hours etc.) the merchant is not making money on these deals.
And thats the number one thing we strive to accomplish at BloomSpot (shameless plug here). After all, if there's no value for the merchant in such deals, eventually, they'll just stop participating. We want to make this a win-win for both the merchant as well as the end user.