7 SA startups that’ll help get your party started

Ever had that moment when you look at your calendar, thinking there’s something familiar about the date, only to realise that it’s your birthday? It’s understandable, you’re too busy trying conquer the world to think about anything as trivial as the anniversary of your birth. But your family and friends still expect you to have a party so you set about getting yourself organised. Of course, that’s not easy when you’ve got deadlines breathing down your neck.

Fortunately there are a number of startups that, with just a few clicks, can help make sure yours will be the party everyone talks about for the next year. We’ve selected a handful that should help you get on the road to party success.

Beverages

If you’re going to have your event at your home, then ordering in beverages might be a good idea. Depending on where you live, you’ve got a couple of options. eBooze is great if you live in Cape Town and struggle a little bit with organisation. The online liquor store offers full party service and consignment facilities guarantees that your order will arrive within 60 minutes of you placing it. It also offers soft drinks, hot drinks and snacks in its packages, meaning you can cater for pretty much anyone.

Bottleshop operates on a similar principle and also offers mobile bar services, wedding bar services and event bar services. Like eBooze, it offers same day delivery in Cape Town and 24 to 28 hour delivery in the rest of South Africa. It also sells drinking games, so that’s the entertainment taken care of.

Food

If party snacks don’t cut it and you’re looking for gourmet food at slightly less than gourmet prices, you could try out flash sales site 5ounces. Although primarily a wine sales site, it also offers food from the likes of NOMU and Valrhona Chocolate. The downside is you’ll have to plate the food yourself, but hey you’d have to try really hard to screw food like that up right?

Venue

If you decide you’d rather not have a load of people invade your home and leave it in a mess, you might want to consider booking a restaurant. Until recently, this would’ve meant picking up the phone or, if the restaurant was a little more tech-savvy, sending an email. Now though there are a couple of services that can do this for you.

First up is Cape-Town based Table Magic. A little like the US’ Open Table, the service allows you to view a variety of restaurants by category and price range as well make bookings. You can also rate the establishments, earning you loyalty points called “star rewards” which can be redeemed at participating restaurants for freebie bottles of wine and meals.

ComeDine offers much of the same booking functionality as Table Magic, giving you the ability to make reservations across South Africa. While it doesn’t have the same rewards system as Table Magic, it does show special offers, meaning that if you’re footing the bill you can at least ensure the dent in your wallet is a little smaller than it might have been.

Getting the guests home

Once you’ve partied into the early hours of the morning, there’s a good chance your guests (and possibly you) will be in no shape to drive. Now you could crawl the streets looking for a taxi or you could use Taxi Rank to get one to pick them up and drop them off at their destination. You’ll also soon be able to use Zapacab, a high-tech taxi-hailing service that allows passengers to request a ride and track the cab’s progress towards their location in real-time all from one smartphone app.

If you feel we’ve locked any statups out of the party, please let us know in the comments below.