What Sortie is
Sortie answers a single question: what's on here tonight?
Not next week, not at the weekend — tonight. For people in a place they don't know well, with an evening ahead that isn't planned yet. Business travellers, guests in an unfamiliar region, locals with an unexpectedly free evening.
Sortie is not a travel guide and not a booking platform. It's a tool for the moment you're standing outside and don't know where to go.
Four areas
Bars and restaurants — places to eat and drink nearby, with distance, opening hours and directions.
Spa and beauty — sauna, thermal baths, massage, cosmetics, hairdressing. Including appointments that have just become free.
Culture and events — what's happening this evening. Sortie picks up announcements from the venues' own public channels — visible even if you don't follow them anywhere. Including the small things: the band in the back room, the reading, the concert almost nobody outside knows about.
Coworking and cafés — places to work and linger, for anyone whose evening hasn't quite started.
How it works
Open it. Sortie shows what's nearby. No sign-up, no account, no password.
Choose. Distance, opening hours, what's on there tonight.
Go. Sortie shows the way — on foot, by public transport, by scooter or, where available, by ride service.
When something opens up
Some evenings offer more than the calendar knew. A restaurant releases tables for tonight, a studio an appointment that was just cancelled. Sortie shows both the moment they appear — and can notify you when something opens up nearby. Take one and you receive a confirmation with a short code that the venue sees too. This is binding: the place is held for you. If you can't make it after all, please release it again.
The open seat
At bars and cafés you can open a seat: a signal that someone is heading there tonight and would welcome company. Others see it and can join. The exchange runs anonymously through a group chat that belongs to the place and ends with the evening.
Three things matter to us here:
Always at least three people. A conversation between two is deliberately not possible. This is about a table you sit at — not about a date.
No private messages. The group chat in the app is the only channel. That's not a missing feature, it's a decision.
Nobody has to. Sortie works entirely for anyone who wants the evening to themselves. The open seat is an option, not the point.
Safety by structure
Sortie verifies no identities — and doesn't need to. There is no private channel: the exchange happens only in the public group chat, three people minimum, and it ends with the evening. Afterwards there is nobody left to message — no profiles exist. Plus a report function that takes effect immediately. Safety here comes from how it's built, not from an ID check.
Why nothing is stored
Sortie creates no lasting user profiles. There's no sign-up to explore, no history, no behavioural analysis, no sharing of data with third parties.
What arises during an evening — presence signals, group chats — is deleted the following night. Not archived, not anonymised and reused. Deleted.
This has a practical side effect: if you travel for a company whose IT policies govern the use of private apps, Sortie raises far fewer obstacles than applications that build profiles and movement data.