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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

restaurant reservations

OpenTable Launches New Tools to Discourage Diners From ‘Ghosting’ on Their Reservations

OpenTable today launched its Show-Up for Restaurants initiative, which highlights the impact of no-shows and late cancellations on restaurants’ margins. The initiative will take the form of forthcoming new digital tools as well as “blog and social content educating diners on the impact of ghosting a reservation.”

In most places in the U.S., dining at restaurants is back in full swing. Yelp, for example, recorded its highest totals ever this past May for consumers using the app to dine out. Across the country, foot traffic is up by nearly 50 percent since the start of the year.

While most of that is good news for restaurants, the re-emergence of dining rooms also means the return of the no-show — when customers book a reservation then simply skip out on it without calling the restaurant to cancel. OpenTable’s own recent survey data found that 28 percent of of Americans haven’t shown up for a reservation in the last year. The company says that in certain cases, as few as six no-shows can affect profits at a small restaurant.

To help restaurants better control the situation, OpenTable will launch a tool this summer that will let restaurants label a customer as a potential no-show based on that person’s past reservation history. The restaurant can then “be proactive” about confirming the reservation with that diner via other tools the company offers, including emails, alerts, and credit card-required reservations. A “four strikes and you’re out” policy suspends diners that don’t show up for a reservation four times.

OpenTable says it will also use various forms of content to further educate diners on the negative impacts of no-shows. Presumably that also means highlighting the company’s own digital tools that make it fairly painless for the user to modify or cancel a reservation within the app.  

OpenTable Adds Platform Enhancements, Waives Some Pricing to Attract New Restaurant Customers

Restaurant guest management platform OpenTable today announced two new initiatives aimed at the restaurant reopenings that are slowly starting to happen across some U.S. states. In a news post, the company outlined a few new enhancements to its platform it says will help restaurants manage new capacity regulations and make it easier for businesses to take reservations. 

Whether they open now or at some later date, restaurants across the U.S. will have to contend with new social distancing guidelines, some mandated by state governments and others provided by groups like The National Restaurant Association. For example, one of the guidelines recently released by The Association states that restaurants should “update floor plans for common dining areas, redesigning seating arrangements to ensure at least six feet of separation between table setups.” Smaller party sizes and reservations-only businesses are also recommended.

Those guidelines are great for social distancing, but for restaurants used to operating at full capacity and without restrictions around large groups, they could prove operationally challenging. Think of your standard TGI Fridays-like setting where restaurants try to fill as many tables as possible during a busy dinner rush while guests cram into the entryway to wait. Eradicating the packed waiting area scenario as well as managing the flow of guests more precisely will require restaurants to somewhat overhaul their existing operations.

OpenTable says its platform enhancements are designed to help with such issues. While the company blog post didn’t go too deeply into specifics, it noted that restaurants can quickly pivot to offering reservations and managing guest capacity and table spacing more precisely.

At its core, OpenTable is a reservations platform, which means its main business — letting guests book tables in restaurant dining rooms — has been rendered pretty irrelevant during dining room shutdowns. Today’s announcement seems a bid to reassert that relevance, and as some restaurants may have to start taking reservations for the first time in their histories, OpenTable’s tech might prove useful.

To that end, the company also announced the Open Door pricing program, which waives subscription fees for new customers through the end of 2020 and covers fees through the end of September. New customers will also get access to a 50 percent discount on cover fees from the end of September through the remainder of 2020.

OpenTable is yet-another restaurant tech company fighting to prove its worth during the industry’s current upheaval. Most restaurants, including big chains, are just trying to keep the doors open right now. As businesses slowly reopen, the tech solutions they choose to spend money on will be based how much value they bring to a restaurant’s overall operations, whether that’s making tasks more efficient or assisting with social distancing measures. Whether reservations software is something businesses flock to will depend a lot on how much consumers will want to go out to eat as we start inching our way out of this pandemic.

EAT App Raises $5 Million Series B for its Restaurant Reservations Platform

EAT app, a Dubai-based online restaurant reservation platform used throughout the Middle East, has raised a $5 million Series B round of funding led by 500 Startups and Derayah VC. This brings EAT’s total amount of money raised to $9.2 million.

Magnitt, which bills itself as a “guide to the startup community, investors and VCs in the Middle East,” ran what looks to be the press announcement from EAT yesterday. In it, EAT says that it is the top restaurant reservation platform in the Arab World and works with more than 1,000 different restaurant and hospitality customers. EAT also says that it has more than 46 million monthly active users and has generated $32 million for the restaurants on its network.

More than just an app, EAT’s online platform acts as an entire guest-management system for restaurants, letting businesses view and manage bookings from various channels (online, phone, etc.) in a single view, confirm those bookings digitally, manage servers, view the restaurant floorplan, and access analytics, among other things. Restaurants pay a flat monthly fee to use EAT’s platform, and can add integrations, like POS systems, for an additional charge.

We don’t know a whole lot about the restaurant biz in the Middle East, but we do know that the online reservation space is a crowded one. OpenTable, TouchBistro, SevenRooms and American Express (which acquired Resy) are all players trying to book your next restaurant table.

We also know that the future of actually eating at a restaurant is set to undergo drastic changes as off-premises eating continues to grow and, well, eat up a bigger percentage of the restaurant business.

None of that is stopping EAT, however, which says it will use its new funding to invest in R&D and “expand and solidify” its presence across the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia.

Week in Restaurants: Amex Launches Reservations Tool, Data Breaches Galore

Nursing a turkey hangover? Actual hangover? Longstanding grudge against your in-laws? A quick glance at the past week’s restaurant tech won’t cure any of those ailments, but it may give you a two-minute mental break from the holidays as we leave Thanksgiving behind and head towards Cyber Monday and the month of December.

Herewith, the latest news in restaurant tech from around the web:

Amex Launches Reservation Booking Tool
American Express this week introduced a restaurant reservation booking tool in to its mobile app that lets Platinum Card and Centurion Members search, book, and manage restaurant reservations. In a press release sent to The Spoon, Amex said it will “continue to invest” in digital initiatives around the restaurant experience, a goal evident in the company’s recent acquisitions of Resy, Pocket Concierge, and Cake Technologies. The reservations feature can be used by select Platinum Card members now and will become available to a wider base in early 2020.

Multiple Restaurant Chains Announce Potential Data Breaches
It’s the holiday season, folks, which means more people whipping out credit cards to pay for goods, services, and meals out. But at least three restaurant brands are dealing with potential data breaches, Nation’s Restaurant News reports. Church’s Chicken is investigating a possible card data breach, Checkers Drive-In Restaurants reported a malware issue, and On the Border is looking into a security issue with the payment-processing system at some of its locations. All three companies have released statements regarding their investigations. 

Wingstop Launches Online Ordering Extension with Twitch
In a bid to gamify the food-ordering experience, Wingstop has teamed up with livestream platform Twitch to offer an extension that will let users order food for delivery from within Twitch itself. The chain’s Wing Calculator asks viewers questions to determine their order size (e.g., “How many are in your crew?”), then makes menu suggestions based on that information. Viewers head over to the Wingstop site to complete the order and pay for it. Delivery is being handled by DoorDash.

Yelp’s New Features Highlight the Company’s Struggle to Stay Relevant in the Restaurant Space

This morning, Yelp unveiled new features: Yelp Connect, a social feature for restaurants, and updates to Yelp Waitlist.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Yelp Connect is a subscription service that lets businesses share information — drink specials, menu updates, upcoming events — with followers in much the same manner they would on any other social network. The feature, priced at $199/month for restaurants, aims to give businesses more control over their own Yelp page by letting them share information they feel will be most relevant to current and potential customers.

Also today, Yelp Waitlist, which lets users “get in line” from their phones and has been around for some time, launched two new features. Predictive Wait Time gathers restaurant data to show users, via a handy bar chart, how long the wait time is at any given hour at a restaurant. Waitlist’s other new feature, Notify Me, lets people schedule a reminder on Yelp to join a waitlist. A user specifies when they want to dine and how many people will be in their party. Using data based on the current wait time at the restaurant, Yelp will then notify the user when it’s time to join the in order to get a table at the desired time. Waitlist starts at $249/month for restaurants.

Both of these are great news if you’re a diehard Yelp user who wants a single app to the find the latest updates on a favorite restaurant and skip waiting in line to eat there.

If you’re not, however, these updates don’t seem particularly competitive at first glance, nor are they particularly unique. Waitbusters, for example, has long had a platform that lets guests “get in line” without, you know, getting in line, and also offers some data analytics for restaurants. At $129/month, it’s a good deal cheaper than Yelp’s offering.

Then there’s Google, with whom Yelp has had a longtime rivalry. Via Maps, restaurant-goers can follow favorite eating establishments, read reviews, join a waitlist, and, yep, view busy times via a bar graph. Meanwhile, Google has also added features in 2019 like menu recognition via Google Lens and a Maps feature that lets you parse through photos and reviews of popular dishes.

Yelp itself has been plagued by controversies, plunging stocks, and increased competition from social media sites like Facebook and Instagram over the years. Unfortunately, a few more incremental updates won’t give the company an edge in this fight. Instead, they feel a bit like a case of too little, too late.

OpenTable and Quandoo Partner for Restaurant Reservations

Furthering its seeming aim to reach across the whole of the restaurant business, OpenTable announced this week a partnership with Berlin, Germany-based restaurant reservations platform Quandoo.

The integration of the two systems will allow users to see more choices when it comes to picking a restaurant. Quandoo users can now reserve tables at restaurants on the OpenTable platform, and the reverse will be true in the near future.

The deal also gives OpenTable more visibility in overseas markets, as Quandoo is available in 12 different countries across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

According to the press release, the initial integration will include over 10,000 restaurants across OpenTable and Quandoo, increasing OpenTable’s available restaurants to 56,000 and Quandoo’s to 23,000. More restaurants will be added to the integrated platform in the UK, Germany, Australia, Italy, and Singapore in the coming months.

“This partnership will make each site more comprehensive for diners and restaurant partners will benefit from increased discoverability by being available on both platforms,” OpenTable’s Chief Operating Officer, Andrea Johnston, said in a statement.

And while OpenTable may be focused on restaurant reservations with this deal, the company has of late made many moves suggesting it wants to be much, much more than just a platform for booking a table. Last month, OpenTable announced a partnership with some third-party delivery companies, including Grubhub and Uber Eats, which gives users the option to pick (but not pay for) delivery from within the OpenTable app. The company also recently partnered with restaurant-management platform Upserve to share data on customers’ dining preferences (e.g., food allergies) with servers in real time.

OpenTable faces competition most directly from Resy, a restaurant reservation system that was just officially acquired by American Express. Resy also unveiled a table inventory management system and a new loyalty program in 2018.

Increasing both restaurant choices and exposure to worldwide markets through the Quandoo partnership is no doubt a move to help OpenTable boost its visibility with more potential customers. In doing so, it’s another way to stay relevant while the company furthers its aim of becoming a one-stop-shop for an increasingly competitive restaurant biz.

How the Uber Eats ‘Dine-In’ Feature Could Affect Restaurant Operations

Uber Eats now wants to streamline more than just your food delivery order. The company made an addition this week when it announced it will also speed up your experience when you eat in the actual restaurant, too.

A tipster dropped a line to TechCrunch detailing the new Uber Eats Dine-In feature, which lets customers order their food ahead, so there’s very little wait from the time a person enters the restaurant to when they get their meal.

To use the feature, customers log into the Uber Eats app and choose the “dine-in” option. The app shows how long the food will take to prepare and notifies you when it’s nearly ready, which is your cue to head over to the restaurant and take a seat. Users can leave a tip for the server in the app. For this feature, Uber Eats also waives the usual delivery and service fees.

Image: Jenn Marston/The Spoon

The whole process is very much like Allset, a competitor that also offers a streamlined process for dining in-house.

Beyond how Uber Eats’ entrance into this area might affect Allset’s business, the move also raises questions about how an uptick in these sorts of apps could affect restaurant operations. Within Uber Eats’ Dine-In option, users are shown how long the food will take to prepare (see screenshots above). It’s unclear if that time calculation factors in how busy the kitchen is at the moment or, for that matter, if the restaurant has the seating to accommodate the order. The app seems like an ideal way for a person to speed up a lunch in the middle of the workday or a pre-movie dinner. But those are both times restaurants tend to get heavy traffic anyway, so it remains to be seen if adding another sales channel to the mix will make restaurants’ lives easier or more hectic.

One area Uber Dine-In could provide a boost is for off-peak times. As TC pointed out, restaurants could use the Dine-In feature to attract more customers during less busy times by running promotions through the app itself or by subsidizing an Uber ride to the restaurant. In theory, at least, these kinds of promotions could provide a small revenue boost for a restaurant.

Restaurant operations aside, apps like Dine-In and Allset do raise the question of why you would go out to eat in the first place if you don’t have the time or patience to wait 11 minutes for your food to arrive after ordering. There does seem to be something about these features that would make, say, a pre-movie meal feel more like just-another-transaction rather than an evening out with friends or family. That’s in the eye of the beholder, of course, and as we see more apps like these coming to market, we’ll hear plenty more pros and cons from both side of that argument.

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.