Going to events on Tenseats

Tenseats is a marketplace for the food experiences locals already know about. Pop-ups, supper clubs, chef's tables, mixology nights. We're live in cities across the US.

Joining is free.

When you buy a ticket, you pay the ticket price plus one service fee. It scales with the ticket and stops at $4.99, so a cheaper ticket costs you less.

Other platforms price tickets as a percentage, which means the fee grows as the night does. Ours steps with the ticket price, and once a ticket passes $99.00 it holds at $4.99 however well an event sells. Stripe's standard processing fee applies on top.

The service fee is $0 when you're an Insider, or when your organizer is an Insider (chef, mixologist, venue host, or creator). The ticket price always goes to the organizer.

Three things:

1. Organizers keep every dollar of the ticket price. The guest fee steps with the ticket price rather than scaling as a percentage, so it stays the same however well a night sells.
2. It's food experiences, start to finish. Every night here is a dinner, a tasting or a cocktail night.
3. The Insider waiver works either way. Member guest or member organizer, and the service fee disappears.

Three tiers:

• Early Bird: $49 lifetime
• Founding Member: $79 lifetime
• Insider: $99 a year

Membership is invite-based. You join the queue for your city and persona (guest, chef, mixologist, venue host, or creator) and we invite you when a slot opens. Each city has a fixed cap per persona, so spots are limited.

The mechanic: while either side of a transaction is a member, the service fee (up to $4.99) is waived. The two lifetime tiers are available while the launch offer is open; after that, only the annual tier remains.

Thirty-two US metros total, Orlando first and the rest opening city by city. If yours isn't on the list, tell us and we'll keep track.

Payments run through Stripe. We don't store your card. Logins are email-verified, account data sits on encrypted-at-rest infrastructure, and we don't sell your data.

Email [email protected]. We get back inside one business day. Full detail in Getting help.

Everything you have booked on Tenseats lives in one place, split into three pages that each do one job.

My Tickets is where every ticket you have bought shows up, soonest experience first. Open one and the entry QR code is front and center, along with the date, time, and address. That is the code the door scans, so it is worth knowing where this page is before you are standing outside looking for it.

Orders is your receipt drawer. Every purchase you have made shows up here: what it cost, how many tickets were in it, and whether it went through, is still processing, or was refunded.

Bookings is for venue requests: if you have used Tenseats to book a space to run your own event, this is where you track whether the venue host approved it, declined it, or is still deciding.

You will find all three from your profile. It is worth opening My Tickets once before an event so you know exactly where your QR code is when you are at the door.

Your home feed shows events and posts from every Tenseats city, not just yours. Newest posts lead, upcoming events are sorted soonest to latest, and past events never show up.

Save events you want to come back to. Follow organizers whose work you like, and you'll find everyone you follow listed on your profile.

Open the event, choose your ticket, check out with your card. Confirmation is instant.

Your service fee, up to $4.99, is waived if you're an Insider, or if the organizer is one.

Depends on the event. Organizers set their own ticket types: single tickets, pairs, tables, whatever they've configured. If a multi-ticket option doesn't show at checkout, the organizer has capped it at one per person.

To ask, message the organizer through their profile before you book. See Messaging an organizer.

By default, refunds are available up to 72 hours before the event starts. Organizers can set their own window, so check the event page.

• More than the window before the event: you get everything back except the service fee.
• Inside the window: refunds are up to the organizer, and the service fee is not refundable.

To ask, use Request a refund on your order, or message the organizer from their profile. Full details in How refunds work.

No. Tickets are sold to anyone, member or not. Insider just waives the service fee, up to $4.99, on every ticket. Worth the cost if you go to more than a handful of events a year.

Your ticket is refunded in full automatically, including the service fee and Stripe's fee. We'll email you within minutes. The money lands back on your card on Stripe's standard timing.

Two places. Save them once in your profile settings and they fill in for you at checkout, or type them straight into the allergy field when you buy. The note reaches the organizer with your order and appears on their guest list.

Some events say up front that the menu is not prepared to accommodate food allergies. Where an organizer has said that, you'll see it on the event page and on your ticket, and you'll be asked to tick a box before you can check out. Tenseats does not inspect kitchens or verify ingredients, so if the details matter, message the organizer through their profile before you book.

Yes, a few ways:

• Save events you want to come back to. Group them into Collections.
• Comment on the event itself. Tag friends who'd want to come.
• Post about an event you attended. Tag the event and the organizer so it shows up on their profile.
• Follow organizers whose work you like and their next listing shows up in your feed.

Standing at the door and the scanner isn't taking your code. Before anything else, work through this in order:

1. Check you're showing the right ticket. If you have more than one upcoming ticket, it's easy to pull up the wrong event's QR code out of habit. Open My Tickets, find tonight's event specifically, and open that ticket, not just whatever was last on your screen.
2. Turn your brightness all the way up and stop pinching to zoom. A dim screen or a code that's too small or too cropped is the single most common reason a scan fails. Full brightness, code centered, phone held steady.
3. Still not scanning? Tell whoever is checking you in. Every event has a manual lookup as a backup, they can find you by name and check you in without the code at all. That's a normal part of the night, not a sign anything is wrong with your ticket.

If they check and it shows as already used, and you haven't been in yet, someone else may have scanned a saved screenshot of your code before you did. Flag it to the organizer on-site so they can sort it in the moment, and open a case afterward so there's a record of it.

If it shows as refunded, that ticket was refunded, on purpose or by mistake. That's exactly what a case is for. Open one once you're sorted for the night, referencing tonight's date and event.

None of this should cost you the night. Worst case, the organizer checks you in by hand at the door and the rest gets sorted afterward.