Placemat was born from a simple idea: bring the experience of a restaurant-quality meal into the comfort of your own home. Founder Ryan Reisdorf combined his passion for hospitality and entrepreneurship to create a platform that connects restaurants and private culinary talent with customers seeking elevated dining experiences in their own homes or Airbnb rentals. What started in Nashville in 2017 has since expanded across the country, establishing Placemat as a destination for exceptional food, private chefs, and hospitality brought directly to the guest.
Tell us about yourself, your background, and the inspiration behind Placemat!
I’m originally from Madison, Wisconsin, and moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University, where I studied nursing. I’ve always been fascinated by the way food brings people together, but my background in healthcare also made me think differently about hospitality. To me, it was the same: how people were cared for and how meaningful an experience should be when someone is taking care of you. Placemat grew out of this intersection. I started wondering why restaurant experiences were great and others were not. What if you could take the food, people, and hospitality you love from a restaurant and bring that entire experience directly into your home? That question became Placemat.
How did your interest in health, food and hospitality come together to inspire Placemat?
Healthcare and hospitality are surprisingly similar. Both are ultimately about taking care of people. In nursing, you’re thinking about the entire experience of the patient in front of you—not just one task—and great restaurants operate the same way. I became really interested in how food could be a vehicle for connection, community, and well-being. Placemat became a way to combine those ideas: incredible food, unforgettable hospitality, and the ability to bring people together around a table in a setting that feels completely personal.
Was there a particular moment when you realized this could actually become a business?
The moment when I realized this could be something great is when the first customer said ‘yes.’ The second dinner came the very next night across town because someone at that dinner wanted it again! Ideas are easy to romanticize until somebody is willing to pay for them—once we started seeing guests book experiences and restaurants recognize that they could create an entirely new revenue stream without opening another dining room, it clicked. We weren’t just creating private dinners—we were creating a new way for restaurants to reach people. Since the beginning, the business has evolved, but that basic idea has stayed the same: take something people already love and give them a completely new way to experience it.
How would you describe Placemat to someone who has never experienced it?
The easiest way to describe Placemat is restaurant reservations at home. You choose a restaurant or culinary partner, select a date, and their team comes to you. They arrive, finish and prepare the meal in your kitchen, serve it, create the atmosphere, and clean up afterward all within three hours. It feels less like catering because it is tied to an experience. There is a story behind the food being made in your very own kitchen—the private dining room happens to be your own home.
How would you describe the experience you wanted to create?
I wanted it to feel effortless for the host and unforgettable for the guests. And most importantly, seamless for our partners. There’s something special about a meal at home, and it seems we have gotten away from that. At home, people linger longer—they pour another glass of wine, conversations move from the kitchen to the table to the couch. There isn’t another reservation waiting for your table. Placemat is designed to preserve everything people love about being at home while removing the stressful parts of hosting. You get to actually enjoy your own party instead of spending the night cooking, cleaning, or wondering whether everyone has what they need.
What is it about Nashville’s culinary scene that makes this model work so well here?
Nashville has become an incredibly sophisticated food city, but what makes it especially interesting is that the hospitality is collaborative. There are chefs and restaurant owners here who have national recognition, but many of them are still deeply connected to their neighborhoods, their regulars, and the people who support their restaurants. Placemat gives them another way to deepen those relationships. It also fits the way people live in Nashville—we entertain at home, we have porches and backyards, we gather around football games, birthdays, dinner parties, showers, business dinners… there’s already a culture of bringing people together.
Tell us about your Nashville partners and how you went about choosing which restaurants to include.
We’ve been very intentional about building a group of restaurants and culinary partners that people genuinely get excited about and understand what we are after. Our Nashville partners include restaurants and chefs with very different personalities, styles, and backgrounds—which is important because no two gatherings are the same. The very first restaurant that said yes to this concept was Margot in East Nashville. We now have Nicky's Coal Fired, Present Tense, International Market, Lyra, Butcher and Bee, and Fancypants. The list is slowly growing because this business is heavily tied to relationships and referrals rather than sending emails or text messages hoping someone says yes. What matters most to us isn’t simply how popular a restaurant is—we look for partners who care deeply about food and hospitality, and understand this experience is an extension of their restaurant. When someone books through Placemat, we
want them to feel the same attention to detail they would feel walking through that restaurant’s front door.
What is it about Nashville that makes it such a special place to build a company centered around food, hospitality, and bringing people together?
Nashville is still a city where relationships matter. For all of the growth happening here, people still want introductions, conversations, dinners, and genuine connection. Food has always been one of the easiest ways to create that. It’s also a city full of creative people—artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, chefs, hospitality professionals—and there is a willingness here to experiment with ideas that feel a little different. Nashville gave us the combination of incredible culinary talent and a community willing to invite something new into their homes.
What sets the Placemat experience apart?
With Placemat, you can invite the people you actually want around the table, choose a restaurant you already love—or discover a new one, and then let someone else take care of the experience. Your next dinner doesn’t have to feel like an event you’re managing. There’s no crowded dining room, no splitting the group between tables, no rushing through dinner because another reservation is coming in, and no host disappearing into the kitchen all night. Not to mention, you shouldn't have to pay for parking at someone's home. You get three hours in your own space with great food, real hospitality, and the people you care about most. And to me, that’s the luxury: the ability to be completely present at your own table.
What if dinner could be more than just dinner?
Book @eatplacemat for a new kind of experience—one created for gathering the people you love most around the table.
At PlaceMat, the table becomes the setting for something memorable: beautiful food, thoughtful details, good conversation, and the kind of moments that make you want to linger a little longer. It’s less about catering and more about creating an experience that feels personal, intentional, and worth gathering for.
Whether you’re celebrating something big, hosting friends, bringing family together, or simply looking for an excuse to make an ordinary night feel special, PlaceMat brings a little more meaning to the meal.
Gather your people. Pull up a chair. Stay awhile.
Book your next experience with @eatplacemat at notcatering.com.