The Reservation Wars: How to Pick the Right Platform For Your Business

If you were a restaurant operator 15 years ago and you took reservations, your options were pretty slim. Either you went the old-fashioned route and manually jotted them down in a book, or you were using OpenTable. OpenTable was a virtual monopoly, and most operators felt they were being gouged, but saw it as a necessary evil. There was the upfront fee, the $1 fee per cover for reservations made through their website, plus another fee for covers booked in-house; OpenTable was making cash on every guest that walked through the door. But there was virtually no competition. A few minor competitors existed, but they were more like seating apps than actual reservation platforms.

Yelp got into the game in 2010 via a partnership with OpenTable. But it wasn’t until Resy launched in 2014 that the game really changed. Soon after tech startups threw their hat in the ring launching Reserve, SevenRooms, and Tock. At some point the credit card companies took notice and realized that the reservation platform was a great way to offer amenities to their best cardholders. American Express bought Resy in 2019, then bought Tock five years later. Capital One partnered with SevenRooms in 2022, and most recently Chase and Visa got involved with OpenTable.

That leads us to where we are today, with the ‘reservation wars’ in full swing. As a recent New York Times article points out, there’s a lot of money on the table to lure the hottest restaurants onto one platform or another. OpenTable, Resy, SevenRooms, and Tock are the major players now, and figuring out which one is right for your business isn’t simple. Let’s break it down.