For those surprised that Somni is using OpenTable as opposed to Tock (or to a lesser extent Resy), I have a tidbit of inside baseball.
According to a source, OpenTable has finally refined prepaid bookings to the point of essential feature parity with Tock. And as part of their sales pitch, OpenTable is offering much more effective and comprehensive marketing and promotion than Tock can provide. SingleThread switched from Tock to OpenTable last month and I have heard other top restaurants are mulling a change. American Express’ $400 million acquisition of Tock may end up being a gigantic blunder…
Ahh well not that it really matters, but for the sake of clarity I was not plagiarizing this article, which I had not seen until right now. I was told this information a few months ago by someone at one of these “top restaurants”. The article generally corroborates what I was told.
I always wondered why restaurants used Resy when (from the customer POV) it sucked so bad. Maybe it’s better on the iPhone app than in an Android web browser?
Cheaper. Opentable was and maybe still is the most expensive? They charge a monthly platform fee of $159 - $500/month and $1 per every cover from the Opentable network.
I still prefer resy for the notify feature and UI. Opentable sometimes makes you click experiences because when you look for a day/time it often shows as unavail even if the experiences are available (like Kato) which trips me up.
You’re right resy on a browswer blows. App is fine, to me.
Basically any prepaid rez on opentable gets lumped under experiences. For example I just tried Kato on a random date in december and it said nothing was available but the bar tasting, but then when I clicked on the “dining room experience” category I found multiple reservations for that date.
viewing the full availability for kato shows all the available “experiences” for a particular date. you need to pick the specific time that the dining room experience is available to see it.
I believe the table I booked was labeled a “Visa Collection” table, meaning it was available to me because of my credit card. I wonder if Visa has deals to incentivize restaurants to use OpenTable.
“Ryan Bailey, co-owner of Kato, said, ‘Our ambition is to be one of the best restaurants in the world, and OpenTable is the perfect partner to help us realize that vision with the best in restaurant tech, hands-on support and access to unique initiatives like the Visa Dining Collection. …’”
Normally, it would. But like I said even if I click into a time on certain dates it only shows the bar. But if I go thru dining room experiences, that date is available. Maybe it’s a but. Either way it sucks