OpenTable is an online real-time restaurant

Restaurant

A restaurant is an establishment which prepares and serves food and drink to customers in return for money. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services...

 reservation

Table reservation

A table reservation is an arrangement made in advance to have a table available at a restaurant. While most restaurants do not require a reservation, and some have no policy for making one, higher-end restaurants do tend to require a reservation, and may have tables booked for weeks in advance...

 service founded by Chuck Templeton in San Francisco, CA in 1998. Reservations are free to end users; the company charges restaurants monthly and per-reservation fees for their use of the system. In 1999, the website began operations serving a limited selection of restaurants in San Francisco. It has since expanded to cover restaurants in most U.S. states as well as in several major international cities. Reservations can be made online by going to its website at opentable.com.

Services for Users

OpenTable allows users to search for restaurants and reservations based on parameters including times, dates, cuisine, and price range. Users who have registered their email address with the system will then receive a confirmation email. Users can also receive OpenTable rewards points after dining; these points can be redeemed for discounts at member restaurants.

OpenTable also has an application available in the Apple's App Store, Blackberry's App World, Google's Android Market, the Windows Phone Marketplace, and Palm's App Catalog that allows users to find and book dinner reservations.

Services for Restaurateurs

OpenTable provides restaurant owners with a comprehensive reservation management system. Subscribing restaurants utilize an Electronic Reservation Book (ERB) to replace existing paper reservation systems. OpenTable provides the ERB as an integrated software and hardware solution that computerizes restaurant host-stand operations. The ERB handles reservation management, table management, guest recognition, and email marketing.
Features include:

• Reservation Management: Making, Changing, Canceling and Confirming reservations.
• Guest Management: Keeping track of VIPs, customer preferences and repeat customers. Also allows for targeted marketing
  Marketing
  Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
  
  to customers.
• Table Management: Assists restaurant staff in seating (and even preassigning to seats) customers and tracking table status.
• POS Integration: Connects ERB to point of sale systems (MICROS, Aloha, Positouch) to retain check spend data by reservation and guest.
• Reports: Advanced analytics helps sustain and improve restaurant efficiency.

Restaurants may also offer 1,000 OpenTable points to diners for reservations at non-peak hours. This acts as an incentive to web reservation users to fill out a restaurant during slow times, resulting in incremental revenue for the restaurant. Restaurants offering these incentives are displayed on the search results page when looking for a reservation.

Markets

OpenTable’s home market consists of the United States of America. However, OpenTable has expanded in recent years to include such markets as Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Japan.

External links

• OpenTable
• New York Times article