No, you’re not greasing up your hair to take out your date in your old man’s ’56 Chevy Belair. This is 2013, and dinner and a movie constitutes downloading a free (Canadian) app of course.
Toronto-based mobile app Groovie has launched in its home city as well as San Francisco. It’s a a new take on the classic dinner and a movie, a fun and easy way to go out to the movies with friends and family. It’s a relatively simple app, but one that can be a nice companion to make life easier before scrambling to a night out.
Users simply sign up, they can select different movies playing at different theatres (with a lot of selection in the GTA and San Francisco areas), they can select a restaurant in the area and finally invite friends (think Flixster meets Yelp).
The launch in Toronto follows TIFF 2013, where stars from the big screen graced the Big Smoke for the annual film festival. “We couldn’t compete with Jennifer Aniston or George Clooney, but we think we’ve built an app that’ll make going to see their movies easier and more fun,” said CEO Josh Hudson.
Hudson says the app will be especially useful during next year’s TIFF, and currently the startup is rolling its app out to 25 other cities.
In terms of usefulness, the founder built the app based on a personal need.“We got tired of sending a million emails and texts back and forth trying to decide what to see and where to eat, only to wind up staying home on the couch, downloading a movie and ordering a pizza.”
Instead of using one app to find movie show-times, another app to find nearby restaurants and then trying to text and email friends to organize your night out, Groovie lets you do it all with a few taps. The Groovie app is currently available for iPhone, while Android and BlackBerry versions are coming soon.