Table Wars

Today, anyone can score a prime-table at the hardest-to-get-into restaurant in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles…for a price. In recent months, as retail rents have risen in these cities and as food prices have simultaneously hit three-year highs, various companies have been trying to find new ways to monetize the restaurant experience. Inspired by how we pay for concerts, airline tickets and car services, more and more apps and reservation systems have honed in on disrupting a fundamental ritual: how we book a table. These services are cheaper and more efficient than say, a human reservationist- not to mention absolutely zero hold time – and also give restaurants access to more intimate portraits of their diners, matching customers to tables algorithmically.

This summer, NY restaurateur Keith McNally and his group teamed up with Resy, a service that sells reservations for tables at peak times. Resy, which splits the fee from each reservation with the restaurants, allows its clients to put a premium on prime-time seats. Table 8 in San Francisco sells reservations at popular restaurants in SF and LA just days in advance; Zurvu scours the best open tables on OpenTable; Reserve, a start-up created by the founders of Uber and Foursquare, aims to be a full-fledge digital concierge; and SeatMe, which was acquired by Yelp, allows restaurants to ping eager diners if tables open up at the last minute. Normally, when you dine at a restaurant, you’re getting two things: a table, and the food. But by paying for a reservation separately, you’re unbundling them. These apps are just the beginning, as other types of services with a broad range of applications will soon be on the horizon- think medicine, spas, personal trainers…and the list goes on.