We’re not sure what it’ll be called, but we do know that Apple has signed on with Seattle-based Pirq to offer food and drink daily deals to Bay-area employees. As far as beta testing projects go, it doesn’t get much more exciting than this.

Here are the details via TechCrunch:

The deal with Apple being announced today will see discounts of between 20 percent and 50 percent at nearly 50 venues in Cupertino, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and Mountain View, and it is Pirq’s jumping-off point for offering a wider service in San Francisco further down the line — within the next 12 months, according to Pirq. To date, the company’s service has only been available in Seattle, where it launched in September 2011.

Pirq’s deal with Apple is partly the result of an existing relationship that both companies have with Passport Unlimited, which has been working with Apple for the past six years offering eating discounts to its employees. Pirq’s chairman, Roger Blier, is the founder and CEO of Passport Unlimited.

Although Pirq was getting ready to announce this news itself today, we actually heard about it first from a tipster at Apple, who got in touch, enthusiastically, to say how great the service was.

As the tipster pointed out, the difference between what Pirq does and what, say, Groupon offers is that Pirq pre-sets the discounts with restaurants and doesn’t require users to pay for the service upfront before redeeming it.

“I just think it’s really cool that our family gets deals like 50% without ever having to buy them like Groupon,” the anonymous tipster noted to me. (A screen shot of how the Apple offering looks is the illustration for this post.)