Lifestyle App Offers Curated Weekend Guides & Plans

Hyper-local discovery platform targets rising demand for short-duration, low-commitment leisure plans

SAN FRANCISCO – November 28, 2025 – Wkndr, a San Francisco–based lifestyle-technology startup, today announced the nationwide rollout of its subscription app that delivers personalized, ready-to-use weekend itineraries built around real-time inventory from neighborhood restaurants, pop-ups, and micro-events. The launch coincides with an inflection point in the in-app subscription economy, which is projected to reach USD 170 billion in 2025 as consumers shift toward flexible, week-to-week plans that require minimal upfront commitment.

Market data from Adapty’s 2025 benchmark report—drawn from USD 1.9 billion in verified revenue across 11,000-plus apps—shows that weekly subscriptions, once dismissed as low-margin, now capture nearly half of all sign-ups, with lifestyle categories leading adoption.

“People still crave spontaneity, but they’re exhausted by the paradox of choice,” said Wkndr co-founder & CEO Dana Liu. “Our promise is simple: open the app on Thursday, tap your vibe—foodie, art seeker, outdoor junkie—and receive a friction-free game plan for Saturday that can be booked in under three minutes.”

According to Rio SEO’s 2025 Local Search Consumer Behavior Study, 84 percent of U.S. consumers now search for local businesses every day, and 59 percent expect brands to respond within 24 hours, underscoring the need for real-time, hyper-relevant content that Wkndr says its proprietary curation engine delivers.

The company’s algorithm weighs more than 50 variables—weather APIs, ticketing-site inventory, traffic forecasts, and social-media buzz—to recommend three curated tracks each Friday: “Taste,” “Explore,” and “Unwind.” Subscribers can sync plans directly to mobile wallets or share them via ephemeral QR codes, eliminating the need for printed confirmations.

The subscription tier, priced at USD 6.99 weekly or USD 49 annually, unlocks priority booking, dynamic wait-list swapping, and a 10 percent rebate in “Wkndr Wallet” credits redeemable at partner merchants. A free, ad-supported tier offers a single static guide per city. Early beta data collected in Sacramento and Austin show average session length of 7.2 minutes, 48-hour retention of 62 percent, and a net promoter score of 71, metrics the firm believes position it favorably against larger discovery portals that rely on keyword search rather than proactive curation.

Wkndr enters a competitive but fragmented landscape that includes everything from review-centric behemoths like Yelp to experience brokers such as Airbnb Experiences. Yet analysts note that venture funding for “local leisure” verticals remains under-allocated relative to travel tech, creating white space for nimble entrants. “If Wkndr can maintain content quality while scaling its partner pipeline, the weekly-subscription model should yield faster payback periods than the annual commitments travel incumbents prefer,” said Jefferies digital-leisure analyst Maya Shah in a pre-release research note.

The company, incorporated in Delaware and seed-funded with USD 3.2 million from Precursor Ventures and angel investors, plans to be live in 25 U.S. metropolitan markets by Q2 2026. Revenue assumptions shared with investors forecast USD 14 million in annual recurring revenue and 650,000 paid subscribers within 24 months, predicated on a blended customer-acquisition cost of USD 4.10 and 36 percent year-one retention—benchmarks aligned with top-quartile lifestyle apps tracked by RevenueCat.

About Wkndr

Wkndr is a lifestyle-technology company on a mission to rescue weekends from default scrolling. By combining machine-learning recommendations with human curators on the ground, the app delivers hyper-local, bookable itineraries that help urban millennials and Gen-Zers discover their cities in less time than it takes to stream a sitcom episode. Headquartered in San Francisco, Wkndr was founded in 2024 by Dana Liu (ex-Google Maps) and Marco Patel (ex-Eventbrite).