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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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These New Products Make Resy More Than Just a Restaurant Reservation App

Amid a slew of other announcements yesterday, restaurant tech company Resy announced two new products, ResyFly, a table inventory management system, and a new loyalty program, ResySelect.

Resy is already known for its reservations and waitlist system, which streamlines the process of booking a table for both customers and restauranteurs. Right now, the company works with over 10,000 restaurants in 160 cities worldwide, and is definitely giving the likes of Yelp Reservations and Open Table a run for their money.

But these new products also suggest Resy doesn’t want to be pinned into the “restaurant reservations” category, and plans to offer a considerably more robust solution for businesses.

ResyFly solves an issue that’s been plaguing restaurants for years: how to book reservations. As of today, restaurants have two options: “slots-based” reservations, where diners can pick pre-determined times (8 p.m., 10 p.m.) and “inputs-based” reservations, where restaurants build the night’s reservations out on a first-call, first-serve basis.

Neither is optimal. “Restaurants have historically been shackled to imperfect inventory management systems like ‘slots,’ where restaurateurs have complete control over tables, and ‘flex mode,’ taking control out of the equation,” Mike Montero, one of Resy’s business partners, said in a press statement. “But there’s no reason these should be the only options.”

ResyFly, then, is a cloud-based product combining slots and inputs to allow for greater flexibility in scheduling reservations, which could ultimately lead to less confusion, fewer cancellations, and more revenue for restaurants. The product is set for release on May 15.

Another notable announcement was for ResySelect, a new loyalty program Resy will launch in late April. Program perks include exclusive booking windows for tables at popular and/or hard-to-get restaurants, waitlist priority, early access to event tickets, and special events like getting to meet a favorite chef or touring the kitchen. The program will launch as an invite-only beta-version at the end of April, with a broader expansion planned for later on—though the company didn’t indicate exactly when.

Along with those products, Resy also announced ResySurveys, a dynamic survey product that lets restaurants customize private post-meal customer surveys. In doing so, businesses get insights into all aspects of their operation, from quality of service to customer preference for seating and meals.

Meanwhile, Resy’s global expansion efforts are now gathered under Resy Global Service (RGS). With this network, Resy partners with technology companies worldwide to grow the number of restaurants in its portfolio. Partnerships come in different forms. For example, Resy is integrated into the Airbnb app, so users can book a table and even talk to a restaurant without ever having to leave the Airbnb app. (Airbnb led Resy’s $13 million funding round last year). In some cases, Resy has acquired companies with technology that would benefit the overall business, as was the case with Club Kviar, who will be rebranded as Revy Spain in the near future.

And if all that weren’t enough, Resy’s recent integration with Upserve will provide restauranteurs the chance to get more granular insights about their customers.

It will be interesting to see where these offerings land Resy in terms of its place in the overall restaurant industry. It clearly wants to be more than just another reservation system. Which could be a very smart move, considering the telephone is still the preferred choice for customers when it comes to booking reservations. Resy broadening the ways it can help restaurants better personalize their diners’ experiences seems like a much sturdier path to tread over the long term.

Even With a Goliath, Competitors Abound in the Online Reservation Space

If the restaurant savants at Zagat are correct, more than half of diners make their reservations over the internet. Folks in San Francisco and Washington D.C. jump significantly above that number, while only 21% of Portland hipsters would stoop as low as to be so technologically mundane. Snobs aside, going online has become the de facto way of securing a favorable table time.

Even in a crowded marketplace, online dining reservations remains a popular frontier for budding food-tech entrepreneurs. The top layer of the market is dominated by Open Table, offering huge breadth –but little depth — in terms of customer options.  The key differentiator for Open Table, which services 21 million diners across 40,000 eateries, is the vast number of restaurants it serves. For each reservation made via its website or app, the company receives a fee as well as revenue from a propriety reservation/CRM-like terminal it offers to its clients.

The top of the res-tech space is rich with mammoth players. Open Table was purchased for $2.6 billion in 2014 by Priceline Group. Open Table has leveled the playing field by acquiring such competitors as Quickcue and Rezbook. Following in the big fish eats little fish scenario, Yelp purchased Seatme, Michelin Travel bought U.K.-based Bookatable and Tripadvisor put European online res company La Fourchette into its fold for $140 million. Some acquisitions added new features to the mothership such as improving wait times for tables while others added more client bases.

Sensing opportunities to provide more in-depth services, newer entrants such as Scottish-based Eveve, Table 8, Resy, Nowait and Nextable are digging deeper into layers of value that go beyond clicking for table times. Newer firms are working to create communities between eating establishment and their patrons. Going far beyond loyalty clubs, the goal of these hopefuls is to maximize mobile technology and data to create dining experiences where the maître d knows his or her customer’s favorite table and server.

Among those with a new vision for the online res space, Table 8 suggests it can provide seating priority at restaurants that don’t take reservations; Nowait attempts to empower customers by upgrading the waiting in line experience; and Seven Rooms goes deep into CRM, allowing eateries to gather sophisticated data about their diners.

Included in this new crop of restaurant tech companies is Reserve. Offering what it calls “premier table management software” for restaurants which allows its clients the ability to more efficiently with a CRM component to understanding the behaviors of its diners. This includes “identifying VIPs and tracking visit history, learning about diners with social media profiles and food/beverage/service tags, searching for guests via any detail in their notes, and sharing diner data across locations in a group.” The company says it differs from Open Table in that they select a curated list of establishments it and charges establishments a monthly fee, as opposed to a per reservation fee.

With all the established players and newcomers to the res-tech space, a crucial opportunity seems to be falling by the wayside. As most online reservation spaces provide some sort of feedback loop, those comments—especially the harmful negative ones that make their way to social media—are not easily managed through current reservation systems. To handle a review crisis, restaurants rely on all-purpose social media management firms such as Bazaarvoice or specialty consultants like Reputation Ranger.

It seems fairly obvious that one way of competing with the online reservation Goliaths is to provide the tools to forestall social media disasters. Res-tech wannabes, take note.