Live From LivingSocial

LivingSocial employees test-drive its new facility at 918 F Street, where pop-up restaurants, sushi-making classes, and more will be available to those who purchase vouchers.

Image: LivingSocial

Sure, you can get a daily deal on LivingSocial online, but the company is now testing a new concept in its Washington, D.C., hometown: its own activity facility where members can go to interact with local merchants firsthand after they buy the deals.

“We believe this is the next step in the evolution of local commerce and complements our existing offerings,” Doug Miller, senior vice president of new initiatives for LivingSocial, said in a release Monday.

And if the concept goes well in D.C., the company will scale it to other markets, Maire Griffin, LivingSocial’s communications director, told Portfolio.com.

The historic 918 F Street building, which is 28,000 square feet and includes six floors plus a basement, will allow local LivingSocial users to try new pop-up restaurants, take a yoga or painting class, learn to make sushi, or participate in other social activities. It's also designed to remove deal headaches for local merchants who will be able to "get the resources, space, and audience they need to scale their businesses and reach new customers," the company said.

The venue, which will be managed by hospitality and consulting firm Vucurevich Simons Advisory Group, features a state-of-the-art culinary kitchen for visiting chefs to host pop-up restaurants; a 36-person demonstration kitchen for cooking and baking classes with live automated video feeds of the chef; a basement bar where consumers can learn mixology or taste local brews, and three flexible spaces that can be used for dining, dancing, classes, workshops, or other activities.

Its inaugural event will be a sneak peek of Bandolero, a much anticipated restaurant that Mike Isabella, chef and owner of Graffiato and a Top Chef All-Stars runner-up, is scheduled to open in Georgetown this spring. It will feature modern Mexican small plates with a large, tequila-infused cocktail menu.

LivingSocial executives could probably use a stiff one themselves. Earlier this month, Amazon, which owns part of the daily deal site, revealed that the private company lost $558 million on $245 million in revenue in 2011, which puts it quite a bit behind Groupon, which lost $238 million on revenues of $1.1 billion last year.

This move will give the brand a more diversified presence, and at least for Washingtonians, it ought to bolster’s the brand’s image. The venue is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and occupies a place in history by adjoining the alley John Wilkes Booth used to escape after assassinating President Lincoln.

The initiative also means that LivingSocial can’t be accused of being a Groupon clone. Its Chicago-based rival just revealed plans that are quite the opposite: Rather than an offline initiative, it plans to bolster its technology with a new thumbs-up or thumbs-down feature that will better personalize the user experience by letting consumers indicate whether a deal is or is not something they are interested in.