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. 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.
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.
The Sortie Special
Some venues add a small courtesy for Sortie guests — an espresso, a bowl of nachos, something from the kitchen. What it is, and whether there is one at all, is up to each venue.
There are two kinds. A basic special is open to everyone. A Pro special belongs to a seat you've taken and applies exclusively to Sortie Pro.
Either way: you have to ask the staff for it. It isn't brought automatically or unrequested.
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.