Hold onto your wallets. Now there are two more group buying sites in the Twin Cities to compete with Groupon.com, deals.livingsocial.com and dealstork.com.

Today I just learned about crowdcut.com, a site run by Minneapolis-based Internet company KASA Capital. Their pre-launch special (good until April 2nd, as far as I can tell) is for $80 worth of dinner and drinks for $35 at Mission American Kitchen in Minneapolis.

Then Carrie at pocketyourdollars.com mentioned adilitydeals.com.

If you're not familiar with the concept, check out my column on Groupon, the grandaddy of these sites. Groupon now claims to have saved its consumers close to $104 million.

I've purchased several of these offers and have been satisfied so far. But the growth in this area makes me wonder:

  1. How sick are these restaurants and other businesses of being approached by these companies?
  2. How are the sites going to differentiate themselves?
  3. What is up with all of the sites looking suspiciously identical? Copycats hoping for Groupon's success? Secretly owned by the same company? They all hired the same web designer? What gives?
  4. How many cheap pilates classes can one person take?
  5. Who is benefiting the most? Are restaurants giving away tons of free food, but gaining a lot of customers? Are consumers saving loads of money for upscale experiences, but spending more on eating out and entertainment than they would have otherwise? Are these web sites raking it in?

Coincidentally, Star Tribune Your Voices contributor Lenny Russo, chef of Heartland in St. Paul, wrote an epic post about this very topic on Tuesday.

One observation in that piece is about how coupons users take pains to spend very little money above and beyond the price of the deal.

My reaction: Guilty. The good news for the restaurant is that one person in the dining party is apt to purchase a $15 Tom Collins and thwart my penny pinching efforts.