When world-traveler and entrepreneur Alex Zhardanovsky wanted to go to nice restaurants with his wife during their travels, he experienced the same problem time after time: relying on the hotel’s concierge to try and book restaurant reservations for them.
Often, the booking would fall through due to the amount of time that had elapsed since his request and the confirmation, resulting in him and his wife scrambling to find another restaurant. “The whole model is full of friction,” said Zhardanovsky [pictured above].
He created PRIMA to help high-end hotel guests reserve tables at high-end restaurants, while also helping restaurants fill in reservation gaps. For hotels, this is an added amenity to offer their guests, he said: “Everybody wins.”
Zhardanovsky co-founded AzoogleAds in 2000 and served as its CEO for 10 years. After that, he co-founded the online pet food retailer, PetFlow.com, and ran that for five years. From there, he co-founded the media company, LittleThings.com.
He “retired” in 2016 before founding PRIMA in 2024. He officially launched it in January of this year in Miami, making its headquarters here, followed by its launch in Ibiza.
Over 70 Miami restaurants are featured on PRIMA, with 30 more launching in the next two months. Some of the Miami restaurants featured on PRIMA include MILA, Catch, L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, Sparrow and Estiatorio Milos.
“I wanted to create something so simple that it’s silly that it doesn’t exist to this day,” said Zhardanovsky.
Executives from the reservation and tech spaces and well-known restaurant groups helped him develop it. A real-time availability live calendar lets users pick and choose which restaurants they wish to dine at.
“You check into your hotel and you get greeted in your hotel room with a beautiful looking QR code, made out of acrylic, but eventually it’ll be a digital screen, where you can scroll a live inventory of the best restaurants in the city,” said Zhardanovsky.
Restaurants featured on PRIMA pay a per-cover fee “for any bookings they receive from us during non-prime times, when they have empty tables,” he said. “What we offer them is completely performance based,” he said of restaurants. “You only pay when somebody sits down to eat. These are guests that are being steered to you.”
If someone wants to go to a restaurant with close to no availability, they pay a fee for the management to open a table, which can range from $100 to $300 depending on the amount of people. PRIMA gives the restaurant 60% of that fee.
Hotels can promote their in-house restaurants free of charge on the platform if they offer PRIMA to their guests.
Influencers and food bloggers can also earn revenue for seated bookings through sharing direct booking links.
In addition to Miami and Ibiza, PRIMA is currently live in New York and London and is set to debut in Chicago, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Paris, Dubai, and Mexico City soon.
PRIMA will begin launching in hotels within the next 30 days, with the acrylic QR codes, called touch points, placed in arrival areas and in guests’ rooms.
Though the featured restaurants tend to be high-end, Zhardanovsky’s team is onboarding V&E Hospitality’s venues, “which are more casual restaurants,” he said.
PRIMA eventually plans to use AI on the platform. “You’ll be able to speak to it and say, ‘Next Thursday I want to go to a great steakhouse at 7:00 p.m.’ and it’ll respond to you and say, ‘Here are the recommendations and here the time slots that are available’.”
PRIMA has a team of 14 and is looking to grow to 20 in the coming weeks.
Patrick Venn serves as PRIMA’s COO. He served as the Head of Enterprise for Tock, a reservation, table, and event management system used by restaurants, wineries, and bars. Alex Julian, PRIMA’s founding partner, serves as the company’s Director of Strategic Partnerships. He held leadership roles at EMM Group, The Dream Downtown with TAO Group, and consulted for Airbnb’s luxury division. Daniel Solomon, of E11even nightclub, is also a partner.
Zhardanovsky says the model serves everyone, from restaurants struggling with no-shows, cancellations and empty tables, to hotel guests, often with no kitchen in their rooms who need to go out to eat. “There’s no reason why, in a place like Miami, you should have restaurants that are suffering,” said Zhardanovsky.
Zhardanovsky’s future goal is to build out PRIMA’s lifestyle division to include breakfast places, meditation and nightclubs.
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