…And Results of Tock’s Diner Survey

The restaurant business is about to get harder, not easier. Wait… what?

Ambiguity makes planning for business incredibly difficult. A month ago, with mandatory shutdowns in place, the only option for restaurants was to quickly build robust carryout and delivery meals and experiences. To Go was likely not enough to fully replace revenue, but it was clearly the only viable path at that moment.

Now, slowly in fits and starts, restaurants are told they can reopen, but with capacity restrictions, often conflicting safety guidelines, and no notion of how consumers will respond. What’s worse, requirements and consumer sentiment vary from state to state and city to city.

In the best of times, restaurants are “game-day is everyday” operations. They make it happen. But usually the playing field is known. Now? Maybe service is in the middle of a street, outdoor dining only, four people max per table, six feet apart in kitchens (whoever thinks that’s viable has never been in a restaurant kitchen), with servers wearing masks, and reservations, contactless ordering, and payment required, even for your casual neighborhood bar.

In early March, Tock rapidly built and deployed Tock To Go to help thousands of restaurants, wineries, and even farms pivot their operations, rebuild sales, lower costs, and eliminate third party delivery apps.

Now we’ve launched Tock 20: a unified reservation, takeout, and delivery system that will help you build a bridge to the future and firmly maintain control of your operations. Here are the key features:

• Contactless ordering and payment, at the time of the reservation or within the restaurant
• Customizable communication tools and surveys
• Real-time floor plan editing and capacity planning
• Complete access and ownership of your data, as always

We prioritized these features, adding to Tock’s already robust platform, because we spent the last month investigating what diners want as they return to restaurants.

Results of Tock’s Diner Survey

In May, we surveyed the most active Tock diners. We received a statistically relevant sample of 16,757 responses from around the country.

Let’s start with the good news. 73.3% of respondents plan to dine out shortly after restaurants reopen.

People that want to dine out, will, however, need separation and social distancing measures to feel safe. No surprise here.

The bad news is that nearly 27% of the most frequent diners do not plan on returning anytime soon. This is certainly alarming, and restaurants will need to clearly and consistently communicate safety standards and protocols to win these uncertain consumers back.

Contactless ordering and prepayment are emerging as new trends. Just over 50% of respondents want to be able to pay in advance for their meal when they make a reservation. This streamlines the kitchen, eliminates unnecessary interaction with staff, turns tables faster, and most importantly, reduces no-shows rates.

It will be more important than ever to know customer preferences and hospitality cues. Keeping track of where a diner sat, with whom they interacted, and for how long is also critical — and in some locations mandated by local municipalities. Tock easily facilitates tracking diner behavior and spend through existing, easy-to-use features.

Elevated, controlled takeout and delivery are here to stay as part of the “new norm” and will be necessary to supplement revenue, even for upscale restaurants. Over 75% of respondents have been ordering pickup/delivery at least 2–4 times a week during the pandemic. 72% of these same respondents say they will continue to order takeout even as restaurants open.

To Go is going to be a necessary bridge for restaurants to cover their costs as they are allowed to partially open their dining rooms. A restaurant at 50% capacity will not be able to cover the expenses of payroll, rent, and food/beverage.

Finally, we asked diners to simply share their thoughts, hopes, and ideas for restaurants, and we received thousands of passionate and empathetic responses. It was apparent that these customers view their favorite restaurants as cornerstones of their communities.

What we found from these highly engaged diners is that they are looking for more:

• Meal kits/family meals
• Grocery, pantry items, and CSA-style boxes
• Cocktail kits and curated wine packages
• Contactless curbside pickup and delivery options

Far from being ‘done with To Go’ as restaurants reopen, the thing that consumers want the most are unique new offerings from their favorite local places. Dine in and carryout will exist side-by-side permanently, just in more creative ways.

All of these requests, To Go operations, and operational flexibility have been fully built and integrated into Tock — a single platform with single-point-of-truth operational clarity and analytical reporting.

It’s called Tock 20 and it’s available today to get restaurants, wineries, and the hospitality businesses through this crisis and on to a stable and thriving future. We pledge to serve the industry and its workforce with the same care and compassion that they share with millions of people every day.

Tock’s Bridge to the Future — Tock 20 was originally published in Tock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tock is excited to announce the first of its kind digital concierge service — Tock Time. Tock Time features include: The Wishlist™, InstantBook™, and a brand new Diner Profile with Dining History, Maps, and Personalized Recommendations — all created to make your life more delicious. Here’s the story of why we created Tock Time — and what it will do for millions of passionate diners like you.

Do you remember going to a Blockbuster video store to rent a movie? It went something like this. “Let’s rent a movie tonight.” Your crew would drive to the store, check out the ‘Just Released’ section which was mostly sold out, and then browse by category. Maybe you had a movie in mind, but when you got there it was already gone. A debate amongst your family or friends ensued, and eventually, you settled on a videotape. The search was hunt and peck. The results were often disappointing. The store shelves and configuration seemed haphazard.

Blockbuster is now extinct — well, not quite. One store exists, but it cannot mate. Why? Online movie services, primarily Netflix, first eliminated the drive. Then they did something even better… they began to learn your preferences and make smart suggestions. The search for a movie or show became enjoyable. Discovering new movies — and now music, too, of course — broadens our tastes and expands our entertainment and educational options. But it also has a sense of what we’ll probably enjoy. That’s the way it should work.

Booking a reservation to a restaurant remains primitive. OpenTable took the physical reservation folio used by hosts for a hundred years and listed the names digitally… but little else. Google assistant is now doing robocalls with an AI to restaurants with no awareness of how busy they are, what type of food they serve, or what you even like. Craziness. Why limit the host stand to a landline when we all have computers in our pockets? Very little has changed in the last 30 years, and in some ways, it’s gotten worse.

We have a lot of questions.

Why do booking systems allow diners to filter from thousands of restaurants in any city by cuisine, price, or location only to allow them to click on a restaurant and find that “there is nothing available within 2 hours of your requested time?” How is that a good experience?

Let’s suppose you travel to New York often and dine out frequently there. Your best friend texts you asking for recommendations… Why can’t you easily keep track of and share your dining history, private reviews, and favorite discoveries with the click of a button? Now you can…with Culinary Collections.

At Tock we spent the last year asking these and many other questions, exploring solutions, and designing a set of new services to make booking a dinner reservation as exciting as discovering a new band or watching a great movie. After all, great dining is the most universal entertainment in the world — nourishing, delicious, and made to be shared with family and friends.

Your Diner Profile Just Got an Upgrade — To the 21st Century.

The first feature available in Tock Time is our new Diner Profile page. Free for everyone with a complimentary Tock account and available right now, this is your new home to view, manage, discover and share reservations at thousands of restaurants, wineries, and pop-ups around the world.

While we’ve made the basic reservation functions more elegant with an improved and intuitive interface, the magic happens when you begin to share your preferences. Dietary restrictions or allergies can be easily noted. Dining basics like booth vs. table, still vs. sparkling water, and coffee vs. tea, among many others, can be set once and will be automatically shared with restaurants every time you dine. Magical service is the result of guest preferences and desires meeting hospitality in real-time, every time. That’s Tock Time.

Note your special days… family birthdays, for example, or your anniversary… and Tock Time will give you a gentle, timely nudge reminding you to book well ahead to ensure your celebration is extraordinary.

Your dining history will be mapped, so you can remember that special meal on your last vacation, or jog your memory of a great local spot. It’s fun and useful to explore your dining footprint — and easy to rebook on the spot.

We’ve created a number of fun Culinary Quizzes. Are you an adventurous diner or more cautious? Cocktails, Wine or Non-alcoholic beverages? Locavore or Culinary Traveler? As you take a moment to fill these out, Tock Time will get to know your tastes and make informed, tasteful suggestions.

There are playful badges to earn — Pitmaster, Cocktail Aficionado, Star Collector, and dozens of others — and new experiences to discover. Create Culinary Lists to share with your friends. And many more innovative features are coming in the near future.

But most importantly… Tock will not publish your ratings or opinions, ever. Restaurant ratings should serve you, the diner, to remember what you liked and what you did not, or to let a restaurant know directly that an evening was magical or needed improvement. The conflicts of interest inherent in Yelp, OpenTable, and other sites that both publish reviews and sell bookings will not exist.

The Tock Time Diner Profile remembers all previous bookings on Tock. You can set it up today and it will populate instantly.

And it will get smarter over time.

Cheers!

The Tock Time Digital Concierge—A Culinary Membership to Make Your Life More Delicious.

Coming soon….

Launching later this year, the Tock Time Concierge will expand on the diner profile with the world’s first fully digital hospitality concierge. Conceived around how, and more importantly why, you book delicious experiences, Tock Time will be your personal digital assistant working to get you a hard to book table, the winery tour of your dreams, or a last-minute weekend table in your neighborhood.

Join Wishlist™ Not The Waitlist

Your 10th anniversary is coming up in May, but the restaurant of your partner’s dreams is currently booking only until March. You’re in a bind because you’ve also got to book hotels, airfare, and vacation time at work asap. Until Tock Time you had little choice but to call, email, and beg the restaurant for an early booking. Or wait until they open the month of May window, hoping to be lucky enough to grab a table. A few minutes late and now you’re on the Waitlist. Purgatory.

Tock Time’s Wishlist allows you to make a booking wish noting the time, day, and party size you desire — or even a range of days. The millisecond bookings become available Tock Time will automatically hold a table for you for 24 hours and send you an email notification with a link asking you to complete your booking. Just click and book. Wish granted!

Every Tock Time Member will be allowed two concurrent wishes, but an unlimited number overall. Ours is a fair Genie and works to give every member access to their culinary dreams. We’ll also notify you if a particular Wishlist is very popular so Tock Time can offer alternative suggestions that are equally magical.

Who enjoys waiting? The Wishlist is the hopeful, helpful assistant that is lightspeed faster than any human concierge, and doesn’t require a greased palm.

Need Something Now? Show Me the Tables!

It’s Thursday and I need a table for a busy Saturday night… just show me what’s available, ranked by my preferences, history, and desirable times. Throw in some new fun places too. That’s the way it should work, right?

With Tock Time’s InstantBook™ you can see tables available within the next week, for the day and party size you want. Just swipe left or right until you see something delicious. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yes, it’s like Tinder for your tastebuds. (sorry).

When you find the perfect culinary match just swipe up and your table is instantly booked. It’s that simple.

Sometimes the best innovations are the ones that are so obvious you wonder why it was never done this way before. InstantBook is a simple, elegant, and fun twist on the typical booking process… and you might just discover you have a new favorite dish. (Last time, we promise).

Check Out Your Timeline

All of your Tock reservations are organized on your Timeline — past, present, and future.

Scroll up and down to browse your dining history. Easily cancel or reschedule future reservations. Be reminded of an old favorite in the past and easily click to rebook.

And as you scroll Tock Time notes that cool new pop-up that’s coming in March, your son’s birthday in July, and Mother’s Day Brunches in your area. Pop-in nudges offer helpful suggestions to keep your dining life ahead of schedule and instantly organized.

Tock Time Member Specials

Tock Time Members will enjoy access to surprising evenings, unique experiences, city guides, Chef Collections, and timely discounts on related merchandise like great cookbooks, seasonal food products, cookware, and more. It’s very likely that your savings will exceed the annual cost of membership.

Want to Learn More? Of course you do… !

We’ve set up a handy page to show you what a few of these features will feel like when we launch… but we also have a few surprises up our toques. You can learn more here… and add your name to be notified when Tock Time becomes available, including all pricing, introductory offers, and details.

2020 is an exciting time…. It’s the Tock Year of the Diner.

And it’s about Tock Time.

It’s About Tock Time was originally published in Tock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

TL;DR

Transport objects are good for representing data in transport, but generally, aren’t very good at representing native program data. For objects where the value of a native representation is high, it makes sense to define a separate native object and an explicit translation function from the transport object to the native object.

The problem

A normal thing to want to do in a program is to read a value from some external source such as an external server or from disk, and then work with it as a normal program value. For instance, at Tock, we talk a lot about bookings, and it makes sense for the Javascript client to fetch bookings from a server and also do lots of local manipulation.

Any time we want to send data over the wire, we have to put it into some kind of transport format; that is, we’ve got to have some scheme for representing the object we want to send as a (preferably short) self-contained bit sequence — e.g. a defined JSON or S-expression format, XML, whatever. At Tock, we use protocol buffers.

Along with that wire format, we also need some way to access those bits programmatically in every program that’s going to read them. The standard solution to this problem, and the one used by protobuf, is to generate code in any language you want that reads the bit sequence into what I’ll call a transport object, that is, a normal value in your programming language that reflects one-for-one the data that was sent over the wire.

At some point, though, we’re going to want to use the information contained in that transport object for some core business purpose. For instance, at Tock we send bookings over the wire from the server to the client, which then wants to interpret them, manipulate them, make decisions based on them, etc. In other words, we want what I’ll call a native object; that is, whatever value we use within the parts of our program that aren’t concerned transporting data.

So how should we get a native object?

The most obvious answer is to just use the transport object directly. For instance at Tock the only value we really use to represent a booking is the transport object itself. This is a tempting option because the protocol buffer compiler has already generated all the code for you so there’s no extra work involved, and your transport object often looks similar to the object you’d write by hand. Much of the time this choice is fine.

But it’s not fine all the time. This isn’t just because sometimes people define proto buffers incorrectly or whatever. There’s a fundamental tension between what makes a good transport object and what makes a good native object, and that tension means that using a transport object as a native object is sometimes a bad choice.

What makes a good transport object?

The goal of any transport object — JSON, XML, proto, whatever — is to faithfully represent the data that was actually transported while exposing its underlying structure as naturally as possible in the host language. To do that, the transport object needs to do a few things.

First, it needs to have a good representation of every concept that the format exposes to the host language. For instance protocol buffers expose the concept of records with multiple fields, so we’d expect a good, native representation of that concept in every language it supports (e.g. as objects in Javascript and Java). In contrast, since protos don’t expose the concept of unordered sets, it doesn’t have any good representation for them. Similarly, the transport format itself (as opposed to the transport object that represents it in some language) should only let you define constructs that are feasible to map into a wide variety of languages.

Second, it needs to reflect the fact that the transport format can evolve over time. If the definition of a message can change, then in any system where multiple programs talk to each other — either because they’re running on different nodes in the same network, or even just a single program that reads data that it has saved in a previous run — you might be in a situation where one of them knows about the new version and one only knows about the old version.

Of course a transport object isn’t going to magically make its surrounding program understand and use new fields in a good way, but it would be good from a deployment perspective if at least:

1. An old client could parse a new message, leaving out anything it didn’t understand rather than crashing
2. A new client could parse an old message, clearly indicating a missing field rather than crashing

Putting these two requirements together, transport objects tend to:

• Be simple tree structures — for instance, protos and JSON both basically only allow strings, numbers, and booleans as base values and only associations and lists to build larger messages from smaller ones.
• Have what I call an “over-time” view of the world — a field is optional if future or past versions of the message being sent might not have that field, even if that field will always be present in the system as it exists today.
• Grow additively — it’s easier to add new information to an existing message than to restructure it, messages tend to evolve by having new fields added on rather than having all their fields refactored. This allows for a smoother upgrade path.

What makes a good native object?

Native objects have very different constraints. A native object, since it isn’t involved in transport, doesn’t need to be designed around transport problems. For instance:

• There’s no need to restrict yourself to concepts that map into many languages. It’s much more important to select a representation that fully captures the domain concept you’re trying to represent and to be idiomatic to the language you’re working with.
• You only need to support your actual program right now — you’re free to structure the value in a way that suits your program’s particular needs rather than trying to be a generically-useful value.
• You can have a point-in-time view of the world — you never need to worry about your code today working with code from yesterday that wasn’t recompiled, or code tomorrow that hasn’t been written yet.
• Similarly, you can refactor as much as you want — you’re going to be deploying your entire code change as a single unit, so you can change it as much as you want as long as you make sure your program still works after the change.

Some specific things you might want for native objects that don’t make sense for transport objects:

• Having a type declaration that captures precisely what values make sense in your domain and that makes impossible states unrepresentable
• Using appropriate data structures, such as maps and sets, where appropriate
• Having domain-appropriate methods

These aren’t the same!

The things that make sense for transport objects don’t make sense for native objects and vice versa. So how should we deal with that?

Option 1: Just use the transport object and deal with it

This is a pretty standard choice.

Advantages:

• No extra code to write upfront! You needed a transport object anyway.

Disadvantages:

• The transport object’s types won’t capture your point-in-time understanding of the domain object. The most obvious example of this is that the types will think of everything as optional even though that’s not probably what you want.
• Related to that, but more subtle: You end up scattering knowledge and assumptions about your transport format all over your program. To understand why, suppose your program uses an optional phone number, which your message represents as two fields: area code and number.

Logically, if area code is set then number must also be set and vice versa. But the transport object won’t guarantee that. So what you’re likely to do is, at the point where you actually read the phone number, check that both fields exist and signal an error otherwise. But what if there are two places where you read phone numbers in the code? That logic is likely to get duplicated. Even worse, imagine that the program originally only had one field for number; the area code field was added later and isn’t always set. Now everywhere that accesses phone numbers needs to know this rule! You could write a library to capture the logic, but everyone still has to know that they need to call that library.

Option 2: Map from transport object to native object

In this option, you write a separate, native object to represent your domain concept, and you write an explicit translation function from the transport object to the native one (and vice versa if your program needs to send values as well as receiving them). In your program as a whole, only use the native object except in the parts of the code that explicitly deal with transport.

Advantages:

• Your main code can use objects that you control entirely.
• All the domain knowledge of how to understand transport objects is encapsulated in the translation function; you never have to think about it anywhere else. For instance, in the phone number example, the code that figures out what fields to read is always written exactly once, in a single easy-to-find place — the decoder function — and all other code can rely on a phone number without having to know how anything about its proto representation.

Disadvantages:

• It’s not free! You have to write a bunch of code.
• Many concepts will map directly, which makes this code tedious to write.

Recommendations

In my opinion, the right thing to do depends on the complexity of the message. For messages that require a lot of interpretation or that represent especially complicated domain ideas, you’re likely to get a lot of benefit from a single translation function that knows how to interpret messages and a native object that has a proper type, so you’re better off doing the mapping. For smaller, simpler messages, mapping is probably overkill and you’re better off just using the transport object directly.

Native objects versus transport objects was originally published in Tock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After every outage, we write a blameless post-mortem to try and learn from our mistakes. It would be easy to slap a bandaid on whatever broke and move on, but we want to be more thorough. What exactly happened? Why did things go wrong? How do we learn from this and prevent the problem from happening again?

In this instance, I also took the opportunity to do a refresher on what “blameless post-mortem” means. Here’s a lightly edited version of what I told the team.

People are rarely the cause

As a rule, people are not the cause of an outage. The fault lies in the systems and software that should have done something reasonable but didn’t. Most outages are triggered by a change in the system, so there’s usually going to be a human pushing a button that sets things in motion.

We could just say “the reason this happened is that Dave pushed the button.” Instead, try asking:

• Why did Dave push that button? Presumably, it seemed like a good idea at the time, why was that?
• Why did pushing the button do something unsafe? The software could have said no, or done something reasonable autonomously.
• Given that the software did something unsafe, how could we have detected that more quickly? How could we have recovered more quickly?

There are a number of ways to get at the underlying systemic causes of outages — for instance the Five whys method pioneered by Toyota, or the Fault Tree Analysis popular in traditional engineering fields like aerospace.

Three key questions to ask

Personally, I’m a fan of a simple three-question prompt that Google’s post-mortem template used:

• What went right? Document processes that worked as designed, safety systems that did their job, and so on. In post-mortems, this section is usually short, but it’s a chance to document the software and processes that are giving you good value during incident response.
• What went wrong? Why are we writing this post-mortem? Each bullet here should typically translate to an action item that’ll get prioritized against the other things the company’s doing.
• Where did we get lucky? This section is to get people thinking about what didn’t happen during the outage, but by luck rather than by design. Being lucky is great, but by definition, you can’t rely on being lucky every time. Did your domain expert happen to be around, and that’s how you mitigated quickly? Great, lucky us! In the future, how do we spread expertise around more to avoid that single point of failure?

All these things are tools, not algorithms to follow blindly. Think of these as ways to get the conversation started, just like brainstorming is a tool to get people in a creative frame of mind. And regardless of the specific tools you use, aim to push past “a person did a thing”, and get at what in their environment led to that action being reasonable, and so forth.

Why does all this matter?

Blameless post-mortems matter for a couple of reasons. The first is obvious psychological safety. Being blamed for outages creates a crappy working environment, and people are going to look for another job.

More self-interestedly for the company, assigning blame for outages leads people to cover their asses. When that happens, the post-mortem ends up incomplete or outright incorrect, because people are not volunteering all the information about what happened, and that leads to drawing the wrong conclusions. Blaming people for outages makes the company worse at doing what it does, in addition to making it a bad place to be for employees.

And on a more personal note: regardless of these words about it not being a person’s fault that outages happen, I know firsthand that it feels really bad when you’re the one who pushes the button and sets things off. If you’re anything like me, you get a fight-or-flight adrenaline dump, and generally, have a very bad time.

So, when outages do happen, please look out for each other and, if you think it’s necessary, reinforce in that moment that it’s not the fault of whoever pushed the button. It may feel silly to do, because “obviously we all know we don’t blame people for this sort of thing”, but humans aren’t linear creatures that you can program once with information and forget about. A timely reminder will do absolute wonders to that person’s mood and feeling of safety.

Why Blameless Post-mortems? was originally published in Tock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s that time of year again — you’re gearing up for crush. Harvest parties are a great opportunity to bring new guests onto the property and drive revenue for the rest of the year. Approximately 6.34% of winery and tasting room visitors will take the steps to become club members.¹ We compiled a guide with a few simple steps to help you get organized, optimize sales, and provide the best in hospitality. It’s time to throw your most successful harvest party to date.

1. Manage everything on one platform

It’s really easy for RSVPs to become convoluted between Eventbrite, Facebook, your website, email and phone reservations. Here’s the thing: with Tock, you can manage all of your reservations (tasting appointments and special events) in one place. There’s no need to create a one-off Eventbrite page — just add your crush party as a special event on your Tock page alongside ordinary tasting appointments and tours. Not only does this make your job easier, but it improves the guest experience with a seamless booking process.

2. Let guests upgrade their experience

When you offer reservations for your harvest party this year, give your guests an option to make special upgrades, such as a reserve tasting or an estate tour. Most people will upsell themselves, especially if they’re given tiered options (see: The Good-Better-Best Approach to Pricing). This will 1) increase sales 2) enhance your guests’ experience and 3) allow for customization, which gives your team a unique opportunity to provide hospitable touches. What upgrades can you offer? Think about what makes your winery unique. Is it a private estate tour with the winemaker? A special table with a view? Commemorative wine glasses? Get creative.

3. Use smartgroups to give your most valued club members exclusive or early access

Last year, we were thrilled to announce a strategic partnership with WineDirect. With this integration, you can automatically filter and give your VIPs early access to your harvest party (or any event for that matter) with a personalized booking experience. This makes it so much easier to comp or discount tastings for club members. Tock is the only platform with this capability. Make use of it.

4. Reduce no-shows with prepayment

People are willing to pay in advance for a special experience, and when they do, you can bet they’re going to show up. Utilize prepaid reservations, or take a deposit for your harvest party. When you have an accurate guest count and the right overhead, you can get focused on what matters. Cut costs, reduce waste, and save time preparing the best for your guests.

5. Take advantage of Tock’s communication tools

Tock’s guest communication tools can automatically provide answers to frequently asked questions. Streamline communication by providing all guests (at once) with information on event location, transportation, parking, club membership pick-up, and anything else that’s relevant. Then, on the day of your event, use Tock’s automated detailed guest list so your team will know who to expect. With QR codes, check-in is a breeze.

What’s Next?

• Learn more about using Tock at your winery.
• Already using Tock? Let us help you get your event up and running.

¹ Stitcher, Molly et al. “Insights for Successful Consumer Wine Sales.” Silicon Valley Bank: Wine Business Monthly, 2019.

Wineries, it’s time to crush your crush party was originally published in Tock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve looked at a lot of monthly OT bills and reports but this one jumped out at me for a good reason. I knew for a fact that the restaurant had a link on their website to OpenTable… and yet, they were getting credit for ZERO referrals. OT was claiming credit during this time period for ALL of their online bookings organically. And charging the full $1 per seated diner rate for every single online booking. This seemed beyond unlikely. Something was broken.

A look at the restaurant’s website quickly gave me the answer: the restaurant’s web developer simply cut and pasted a link to the OT page for their restaurant. They did not include the proper REF code (This one: &restref=RESTAURANT_ID) in the HTML, and so even if a diner went to the restaurant website and clicked the link, the restaurant was charged the full $1 per seated diner and OT was credited with an ‘incremental diner’. By the way, this is also true if a diner starts at Google, Maps, Yelp, etc.

I wondered aloud — more like screamed — in the Tock offices, “Man, I wonder how many other restaurants fuck that up.” The great thing about working with brilliant people is that instantly one of our engineers shouted at me with a wry smile, “You know, I could write a program to check for that.”

And so, my restaurant friends, he did just that. And whether or not you ever look at Tock or consider switching to our system (but please you really should, and you’ll want to by the end of this blog post), we at Tock want to save you money immediately. How many of you? Well, a lot of you. By our current calculation, 40.3% of OpenTable clients in the US and UK.

That answer to my question was found within 24 hours. It blew my mind…

There’s about a 40% chance that you have coded your website incorrectly and OpenTable is overcharging you for your monthly per-diner fees. How do we at Tock know this? Read on! If you’ve made this error we’ll save your restaurant money immediately.

See that screenshot from an OpenTable contract above? That * is very important to you if you are an OpenTable client restaurant. Why? Because it’s very likely that it’s costing you a ton of money every month. As the founder and CEO of Tock I learned this the hard way.

The only consistent objection to switching from OpenTable to Tock that I hear is that OpenTable brings xxx number of guests per month through their network. It’s a belief that OpenTable has worked very hard to engender and is in fact the only competitive advantage they have right now… not the network, the belief. It’s core to their entire business plan. A large percentage of their revenue comes from these incremental per-diner fees.

OpenTable charges $1 per seated diner for every guest that books through OT’s website, app, or affiliate partners. They charge $.25 per seated diner if the referral originates on the restaurant’s website. Presumably, the restaurant ‘earned’ that guest and a discount. OpenTable obviously has a huge incentive to push as many diners through their proprietary sites as possible since they earn $0.75 more per person.

As Tock’s CTO Brian Fitzpatrick outlined in a logical Medium post, in the age of Search and Social OT relies on reselling a restaurant its own diners far more often than bringing in incremental business. But despite explaining this to restaurants, they fear that they will lose customers if they switch from OT, even though diners ultimately will book through any competently built system, Tock included. OpenTable works hard to stoke that fear.

Here’s what we found from a program we built to check every current OpenTable restaurant to see how they link back to OT.

• Total OT restaurants in the US & UK that we indexed to their websites: ~31,000

That’s how many we were able to index. Of those:

• ~9500 restaurants had NO LINK WHATSOEVER back to OT on their website and therefore do not EVER qualify for the $.25 discounted charges
• ~2,100 restaurants’ websites had multiple links to OT with some links that do not include the referral code and some that do. It’s impossible to know without Google Analytics access what percentage of covers are affected. From our spot checks with potential restaurant clients we estimate between 30% and 40%. That’s a lot of wasted $$ and ££.
• ~900 restaurant’s websites had a link to OT with no referral code and therefore got no discount ever. This could have been going on for years in many cases.

These numbers are approximate solely because some restaurants use Flash (ugh) and other programs which make it difficult or impossible to index the site links perfectly.

Perhaps most amazingly, some of the 2,100 that had multiple links — and you gotta love the chutzpah on this one — had OpenTable provided “award” banners that restaurants put on their website that do not include the reference code. OpenTable gives them an ‘award’ of their own creation to put on the restaurant website, and that banner ad does not contain the restaurant reference code. Brazen.

Of course, they say right at the very bottom of the contract, with an * and some fine print, that it is the restaurant’s responsibility to put in the code — though beyond contacting OT they don’t tell the restaurant how to do that. So basically, OT can argue it’s the chef’s or manager’s or owner’s fault.

And because most restaurant owners and workers don’t understand web coding or never bothered to contact OpenTable, OpenTable never bothered to contact them. And in some cases kept charging them for their own customers — and sending them a monthly report indicating that diners came organically through OpenTable’s Network, worth the $1 per cover. This reinforces the fear of leaving OpenTable.

It took one of our engineers at Tock less than 12 hours to do a health check on thousands of websites. It’s taken OT nearly 20 years to keep the business model intact long past its useful existence. Does OpenTable have the best interests of its restaurant customers in mind?

OpenTable claims to have seated something on the order of 252,000,000 diners last year alone. It’s unclear how many of those booked digitally… but let’s be generous and say it’s only half. If 35% of bookings originate at a restaurant’s website, and 40% of those 31,000 restaurants are affected and are overpaying by $.75 per seated customer…. well, it’s impossible for us to calculate the amount of money restaurant’s may be overpaying, but it’s on the order of millions and millions of dollars every year. For many, many years.

We decided to make a website analysis tool that can help your restaurant identify broken links. It’s ready today.

For restaurants we’ve made this website: https://www.tockhq.com/check-my-restaurant/

Just enter your restaurant’s URL on our page and we’ll send you a link to a report within 5 minutes to tell you:

• If you have the proper reference code to OT on your website
• If you do NOT we will give you instructions on how to fix the referral link and start saving money immediately
• Whether or not through SEO OpenTable links are ahead of your website on major search engines and how to fix that
• Whether or not OpenTable is running GoogleAdwords to compete with you for your own customers so you spend more cover fees with OT
• How to contact us to learn how to install Google Analytics and audit your OT monthly bills even if you have the proper REF code installed. It’s worth checking!

Please visit https://www.tockhq.com/check-my-restaurant/ if you’re on OpenTable and contact us at Tock should you need any help. Even if you never switch to Tock, we want you to start saving money.

I’ve long suspected that this was common practice but now we have the data to prove it. I welcome any journalist to check our methods. You can email me at nick@tockhq.com with any questions.

We’ve Built a Website to Check if You Are Overpaying for OpenTable… There’s a 40%+ chance you are! was originally published in Tock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tock has two payment plans: The preferred plan is a flat-rate monthly plan where restaurants can book an unlimited number of reservations with no additional charges. The second — for small restaurants (think omakase, chef’s counter, etc.) charges a low base fee and a per-person fee on top of that.

Katie, a member of Tock’s hospitality team, was running some reports on our billing system. She wanted to see if we had any restaurants on our “per-person” plan that were doing enough business that it would be cheaper for them to switch to our flat rate plan when she noticed something weird. She noticed what she thought might be a discrepancy in how we were billing for per-person charges and started digging around to double-check herself. She then confirmed with one of our engineers that there was an edge case where we would double-bill our restaurants for a reservation.

We immediately checked all of our restaurants on the per-person plan and found that we had over-billed almost 5% of our restaurants to the tune of a few hundred dollars over the past year.

Nick and I discussed this and immediately agreed that we needed to make it right. This meant:

• Fix the bug
• Audit our billing system to make sure it is accurately counting per-person charges everywhere
• Apologize
• Make it right: Issue refunds — plus a 10% “inconvenience” bonus

Here’s a copy (anonymized) of the email that I personally sent to our affected customers:

From: Brian Fitzpatrick <fitz@tockhq.com>
Subject: Refund for your restaurant
------------------------------------
Dear Chef,

We discovered an error in the way you were charged for your monthly Tock subscription and wanted to let you know immediately. Due to a counting error on our part you were over-billed $282 over the past year.

Because you were overcharged we'd like to refund you 110% of the amount you are owed for a total refund amount of $310.20. The error was entirely ours, the accounting issue has been corrected, and we are very sorry it happened.

Next month, you'll see a line item on your invoice for the refund. Please take the extra 10% and buy yourself a nice bottle of wine, on us.

-Fitz

While I’m certainly not happy that we made this mistake, I couldn’t possibly be happier with how the team found the bug and how we as a company handled it. If you want your team to be on the lookout for things like this, they have to:

• Care deeply about their customers in the first place
• Feel comfortable asking questions and calling out when something looks wrong
• Be in an environment of shared responsibility vs. pointing fingers

I’ve encountered far too many people in my career who think that making mistakes or admitting they were wrong was a sign of weakness or incompetence. I couldn’t possibly disagree with that more: no one — and no company — is perfect.

You’re not defined by your ability to be perfect. You’re defined by how you react when you screw up.

Your Company Will Screw Up…Mine Did was originally published in Tock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dimmi lit up our Facebook feed this February after announcing that 38,000 diners had been ‘blacklisted’ from Australian restaurants via their bookings platform. It’s all part of their strategy to combat restaurant no-shows ― a phenomenon that they reckon costs our industry around $75 million a year.

Restaurant no-shows are indeed a massive problem for the hospitality industry ― so we’re delighted to see a business as large as Dimmi (a TripAdvisor company) take action on it. See, some diners don’t realise what far-reaching effects it can have when they don’t turn up for a restaurant booking. It lowers staff morale, it creates environmental wastage and ― in the long term ― it puts the venue at risk of shutting its doors.

For fine dining venues the problem is amplified. So much work goes on behind the scenes in preparation for a guest’s booking, and it starts pretty soon after their reservation is made. For instance, when you make a booking at Lûmé, our chefs begin preparing for your meal about a week before you arrive. Our front of house team take time to look at who’s made the booking, and find out if you’ve dined with us before, whether you have any favourite wines we might need to order in, or whether you have dietary requirements we need to adjust our menu for in order to accommodate. Depending on the night and the number of bookings we have, we may also need to put extra staff on. If it’s a busy Friday or Saturday, we’ve most likely had to turn down a lot of diners who would have liked to make a booking as well.

So you can see that it’s not just about filling a table on the night, but the various resources ― including labour, special orders and supplies ― that are paid for in advance by the restaurant…all in the lead up to a guest sitting down for a tiny slice of time to enjoy their meal.

— — — —

Over the years, some restaurants have adopted the ‘walk-in only’ system as a way of protecting themselves against no shows. But these venues factor the walk-in model into the style of food they offer, the efficiency of how it’s prepared, and the type of service they provide in order to make it work. This model best fits venues with higher numbers of covers per night, and those who offer a more casual service with greater economies of scale in their food preparation (perhaps by using an off-site kitchen to service multiple venues, or cooking many dish components in advance so that they can be stored and reheated more easily). However, it’s not a suitable business model for a fine dining venue, where service is highly personalised and menus are prepared in exact quantities for the number of guests dining that night.

We don’t think Dimmi’s blacklist is the right answer either. Since it was first introduced just over a year ago, the list of customers blocked from making restaurant bookings has risen from 3,159 to 38,000. In that time, no-shows have only decreased by 25%. While it’s great to know that Dimmi have committed to eliminating no shows by 2020, three years is a long time to wait for restaurants who are struggling with the issue now.

At Lûmé we know the problem well. Back in 2015, we’d started losing around $3000 a week in no shows. That’s not just money lost in labour and overheads, but food wastage too (we order produce in exact quantities in order to avoid wastage, and aim to minimise environmental impact by taking only what we need of local foraged ingredients). The fact is that if we were using the ‘blacklist’ solution to combat no shows, our restaurant would be closed by now.

Instead we looked to the US, where the growth of hospitality tech startups has been accelerating rapidly. That’s where we found Tock ―the online reservations system developed by Nick Kokonas (Alinea) and Brian Fitzpatrick (Google), and backed by stakeholders including Thomas Keller (The French Laundry), Dick Costolo, ex-CEO of Twitter and Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp.

Tock use a prepaid ticketing system to manage restaurant reservations ― much like way you’d book a flight through an airline, or tickets to a concert. It’s different to taking a deposit then charging a guest if they fail to rock up. Instead, everything is done up front. If a guest needs to change their reservation, they can still do that as well with prior notice — but tickets are not refundable for unexplained no shows.

Within a week of switching our bookings over to Tock, our no show rate dropped dropped down to 0.13%.

It might not be the answer for all restaurants, but for us it definitely was.

— — — –

Pre-ticketed dining ― avoid if you’re a technophobe

Last year, John Lethlean wrote a pretty scathing and ill-informed article about ticketed dining. We saw it and immediately cringed to think that it represented the opinion of Australian media. It read like the collective opinion of those who fear technology, hate change, and want everything to stay the same way it’s always been because, err…that’s how it’s always been. But with Worlds50Best arriving on our shores this year, the article did our restaurant and tourism industries no favours in positioning Australia as an innovator, global leader, or even legitimate player in the international dining scene.

Seriously, it was just embarrassing.

In the article, John was specifically referring to our use of Tock. This was our response at the time, which we originally posted on Facebook in May 2016. With Dimmi firing up the no show debate again, we think it’s a good time to revisit these little chats.

The article in the Weekend Australian –Tickets On Themselves –“Good restaurants are meant to be human, even unpredictable. So why are some so… impersonal?” by John Lethlean…

This article caused quite a stir here at the restaurant over the weekend. I’ve always read John’s articles with much enthusiasm and 9 times out of 10 I agree with his sentiments. However, his piece on ticketed dining on Saturday really hit a nerve with me for 2 reasons.
Lûmé was singled out as being clinical and impersonal when we are anything but.
Yes, I’m aware that it’s an opinion piece but after reading through the article several times, I can’t help but feel that his opinion is based on misinformation and is focused entirely on one side of the fence.
I realise the job f food journalists is to critique but I believe more and more so that their position is one to sell content. Wouldn’t it be a much more interesting read to have a story in front of you that states the facts of both parties so that readers can then have an informed opinion that they’ve arrived at all on their own?
I believe he has overwhelmingly misinterpreted our intention behind using Tock. A restaurant like ours focuses on the customer experience — not on making money. We provide a very niche product and we don’t expect to herd people through our door for the sake of numbers. Other more casual venues do this, and that makes sense because it’s part of their business model. They do high turnaround, and they serve food which matches that style of service and accommodates the risk of no-shows.
That’s not the business model of Lûmé.
Lûmé as a business model is extremely risky. It’s expensive to run; we offer a niche product at a time when the industry (in Australia anyway) is very risk averse and focused more on what will get bums on seats. I’m not interested in playing that game. For me, Lûmé is a creative pursuit. Yes, we obviously need to make money to open our doors, but ultimately the focus of our restaurant is to create a unique guest experience — not to replicate the ‘safe’ restaurant model that everyone is already doing.
I’m not saying that in 6 months time everyone will be using Tock, not at all. Tock itself is a niche product that we’ve chosen to align ourselves with because it makes sense for our business and to the guest experience we wish to offer. I don’t believe Tock, Lûmé, or any other restaurateur should be portrayed in a negative light purely for doing something in a different way. There’s no reason that old and new methods alike, can’t exist side by side. There are restaurants today that still use the same system for reservations that were used 250 years ago in Paris, France. Is there anything wrong with this? Not at all. All business’ are unique, as are the customers who frequent them. But at Lûmé, our ethos is based on embracing change, embracing creativity from all of our employees, innovation and learning. That’s what drives us and that’s what we hope our guests enjoy, about their experience with us.
I thought I’d share with you some information from our end on why we went with Tock and the impact that it’s had on our business.
Our profit margin sits between 5–7%. At the time of implementing Tock, we were losing anywhere from $1000-$3000 a week on no-shows. You don’t need to be a member of Mensa to realise that these figures don’t equate to a sustainable business model.
With the implementation of Tock in November 2015, we have had a 0.1% ‘no-show’ rate. Basically unheard of, I’m sure my fellow hospos will agree.
Another benefit — on average each week, a reduction in food costs by 5–9%. As our guests pay the full amount at the time of booking, we have an immediate and guaranteed cash flow which allows us to broker better deals with some of our suppliers.
A reduction in wage costs by 15%. Tock allows us to more accurately forecast staffing levels and also spend less time each day answering calls and emails. We’re a small business, we don’t have the luxury of hiring a reservations assistant. Don’t get me wrong, we could hire someone to do that but choose not to as I believe the money spent on that employee’s wage is much better utilised in other areas of the restaurant such as more wait staff/chefs, another bar tender, a better wine list etc. Things that actually benefit the guest when they walk through the door and sit down to enjoy the experience that they’ve paid a lot of money for. Does the average guest who is interested in dining in our restaurant, really care about talking to someone on the phone when they book? Our research and experience is a resounding, No.
In the 7 months since we have implemented Tock, we have had exactly 2 complaints about the system from guests. I’m pretty happy with those numbers to be honest. Both guests went on to book, they just needed a little help, which…we gave them over the phone.
The money that we save by using Tock does not go towards expanding the lawns on my estate; I live in West Footscray and drive a Daewoo. Rather, Tock makes the Lûmé business model more sustainable. We can spend more on creating and evolving the guest experience.
A few more points to ponder on-
Our service charge is 5%. It is fully offset in our pricing. The only reason it is there is so that people don’t feel uncomfortable about wait staff standing over them waiting for a tip at the end of the night. Since we put it in place we have received a 35% reduction in tips. I will not be changing this.
I dare say that in Australia, where tipping culture holds no economic purpose other than entitlement and the adaptation of American values, many diners are confused about what’s expected from them. We want to remove that uncertainty and make them sure that everyone is taken care of. I personally don’t believe in tipping culture, especially in Australia.
Here’s what Danny Meyer has to say about tipping: http://ny.eater.com/…/95…/danny-meyer-no-tipping-restaurantsNoma and Fat Duck are mentioned as being excluded from this rant. Why? Because they’re already famous? Where does this double standard come from? Would it be better if we called ourselves an event only restaurant?
The Fat Duck use a ticketing system in their restaurant in Bray as well as the popup. In addition, according to their website:
“We will ask you for a discretionary 12.5% service charge which will be added to the final bill, along with drinks and other additional items which are priced separately.”
I’m not comparing us to The Fat Duck of course. I mean, as I said our service charge is 5%.
I also note that the majority of fine dining venues in Victoria include some degree of cancellation fee as part of their reservations policy. For example:
Brae — $100 per person
Attica — $250 per person (full cost of menu)
Dinner by Heston — $100
Nora — $95
In my mind, this is totally acceptable, as is our policy.
We endeavour to go above and beyond what our guests may expect of us. We create separate menus to suit any dietary requirements. We offer entirely new menu’s to repeat guests so that they may experience something new from the last time they dined with us. We offer a full vegan and vegetarian menu. We offer a full temperance beverage pairing for guests who choose not to consume alcohol but still wish to drink something other than water or tea with their meal. etc etc. The sole reason for opening Lûmé was to offer people an experience that they would not be able to have elsewhere. We work with an acting coach so that our staff (all our staff) may communicate better and more confidently with our guests. We work with a psychologist on our wording and terminology that we use around guests so as to make them feel more comfortable and at ease, and ultimately to have fun. How is the humanity lost in that?
We don’t ask guests to vacate the table by a certain time, and we don’t ask them to wait at the bar while we turn their table over. Let’s compare this with, say, Dinner By Heston (although according to John, they’re ‘influencers’ and are apparently immune to this discussion). Their website states:
“All early reservations before 8.30pm are reserved for a specific dining period. We may require your table back after the time listed below:
Tables for 1 to 2 guests are reserved for 2 hours
Tables for 3 to 5 guests are reserved for 2.5 hours”
Is it only the terminology that he disagrees with? Because we both know that the only people a pre-paid reservation system should hurt are those who are not sure if they want to show up. That’s a legitimate market, and there are other no-bookings restaurants which cater specifically to it. They scale back the personalisation of their service to fit that model in order to remain viable. But that’s a very different kind of restaurant to what I’ve tried to create at Lûmé.
We’re not suggesting we know best. But at least we’re willing to take a risk in the hope that we can keep this industry dynamic — not let it stagnate and be left behind the rest of the world. We want our customers to tell us what they think. If our customers have an issue with it, we’ll find a better way. But as I stated earlier, it’s just been business as usual. I understand that this might mean losing John as a customer, and the $50,000 he has to spend on dining a year.
Tock is not for everyone and every restaurant, but it is for us. For the sole reason that it helps us to offer better and more personalised customer service to the people that we ultimately opened our doors for…the guest.

— Chef Shaun Quade

Veronica Fil is obsessive about hospitality marketing and restaurant economics. She runs Lûmé restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, alongside her partner — Exec Chef Shaun Quade. More recently, she’s joined the Tock team to help Australian restaurants keep ticking.

At the time of original publication (Feb 2017 on the Lûmé blog), Veronica was not affiliated with Tock; this article was written from her own experience in operating a restaurant. For the record, Lûmé used Dimmi for 6 months before deciding that the system didn’t work for them, and that they’d prefer to embrace the future.

Tick, Tock: time’s running out to tackle restaurant no-shows, but Dimmi’s blacklist is not the… was originally published in Tock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Mr. W***,

We are in receipt of your letter dated February 6, 2017 regarding Tock, Inc’s cybersquatting on the Internet Domain OpenTableSaurus.com. I am the CEO and co-founder of Tock.

Frankly I was relieved to receive your request to transfer the domain to your client.

Tock is a small company with only 23 employees. Mind you, they are a brilliant bunch working hard to change the restaurant industry, but our marketing and sales resources pale in comparison to your client’s. One day I was talking with Kyle — he’s our entire marketing department — when I thought, you know what would be funny for the National Restaurant Association show this Spring is if we simply passed out toy dinosaurs that said “OpenTableSaurus.com” on them.

Kyle raised his eyebrow at me as if to say, “I don’t follow yet, but OK. Go on.”

He was intrigued.

Yeah — we could pass them out as a symbol of OpenTable’s antiquated technology. First, everyone loves dinos, right? When you were 10 years old dinosaurs were the coolest things in the world. So restaurant owners would actually take the toys because, well, who doesn’t want a toy dinosaur. Then they’d wonder, what’s with this URL? And when they go to the URL we’ll have a big animated Brontosaurus lumbering about the page that says OpenTable on it… and there will be a few others as well — maybe Micros or Aloha because everyone hates their POS systems too. And then a meteor will drop from the blue sky, obliterate the dinos, and boom you get redirected to a Tock page, showing the future of restaurant reservations software — Tock.

We got pretty excited because it had been a long week of testing out our new consumer flow (which is pretty beautiful and nifty and actually reduces no-shows and sells great restaurant experiences, not just seats) and to be honest we had dipped into the wine at 4 PM on a Friday.

So we bought the URL OpenTableSaurus.com and got to work.

First thing we did? Alibaba for some toy dinos. It turns out there are tons of them to choose from but I insisted on a Brontosaurus only. Cases were made for other species but, no, in my mind it had to be a Bronto.

Why?

First and foremost, this is a very large creature, one of the biggest to ever walk earth, estimated at 17 to 19 tons. But more importantly it had the proverbial “Brain the size of a Walnut” powering that big, slow animal. To top it off — a vegetarian. Now I’m fine with vegetarians personally but if you have to power 17 tons with just leaves and grass? Not a good plan.

After a while we settled on this guy:

Perfect right? But after putting in a few RFQs from different manufacturers we realized this would need to be a two-step process. Buy the toy dinos from China, and then get the imprint “OpenTableSaurus.com” on them here in the US. Doable, but not as easy as we had imagined. And a bit more costly.

Nonetheless, we ordered 5,000 of them.

In doing the search we also found that one can buy an inflatable 22 foot tall dino that is nearly 18 feet long. Ok. Now this would be the draw in front of McCormick place to get people over to our non-booth. We’d sand bag it, have a few Tock employees handing out the toy dinos, and really, who’s going to question anyone with a 22 foot dinosaur outside a convention center?

So we ordered one of those too. It looks like this:

Now this is guerilla marketing at its finest. We get the benefits of a booth at the NRA show without actually buying a booth at the NRA show. We drive traffic to our site with humor, but also creatively reinforce the point that OpenTable software was created in 1998, or what I like to call the late Jurassic period of skeuomorphic computer design of the late, early internet.

Now here’s the thing. This was a ‘great’ plan. But really, it wasn’t that great. The toy dinos? Too small, and not that nice. We had trouble finding a suitable company to imprint the OpenTableSaurus.com URL. And that big giant inflatable dino that seemed so affordable? Turns out you needed a constant source of inflation, meaning generators and an industrial air compressor. The devil is always in the details.

As a can-do CEO of a small company, though, I could hardly admit defeat. At Tock we take pride in providing great hospitality to our restaurant partners regardless of the hoops we may need to jump through. It’s really a distinguishing characteristic of our company relative to our competition. And so I could hardly say, well, these dinosaurs won’t work — it’ll be too difficult. Let’s just get a traditional booth at the show, put up some computer monitors and show off our superior software in the most boring manner possible.

But thanks to your letter Mr. W*** you have given me an out. We will donate the dinosaurs, sans OpenTableSaurus.com imprint, to worthy children’s charities. The giant inflatable dinosaur was restocked for a small fee. And on or before February 20, 2017 we will forward the domain OpenTableSaurus.com to the owners of your choosing. Just let me know who should own the domain and I’ll make it happen.

It’ll be a relief.

Sincerely,

Nick Kokonas

CEO, Tock, Inc.

PS: If you’re a restaurant that is tired of using software from 1998, raise your hand. We’d love to show you the future.

FEBRUARY 22, 2017 EDIT: We did indeed turn over the URL to OpenTable. However, the website www.DinosaurTable.com is now ours… and never, ever mentions OpenTable anywhere on the site. Check it out!

We had a ‘great’ marketing idea for our business. Then we got this Cease & Desist letter. was originally published in Tock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“A restaurant apocalypse is nigh,” suggested Daniel Duane in this NYTimes article entitled Dinner, Disrupted.

“David Chang explains the coming restaurant apocalypse,” in the recent GQ lament that he personally wrote. “Razor-thin does not even begin to describe just how slender the margins are in the restaurant business, and that’s if you’re one of the fortunate few that don’t go under in the first year. If you’re lucky, small single digits. Like, the smallest single digits. It’s legitimately one of the dumbest businesses you could possibly get into.” This from one of the industry’s most beloved and successful chefs.

Restaurant Apocalypse. I must be in the wrong industry. It gets worse.

I read a while back about the closing of a chef-driven, much beloved restaurant — an all too common occurrence these days. In this case it was Thirty Acres in Jersey City. It seems all my social-media friends in the restaurant industry re-posted chef-owner Kevin Pemoulie’s lament that “I don’t want to do this shit anymore.” The typical response from chefs on Facebook: “I’m *so* about this!” with a link to chef Pemoulie’s comments on Grubstreet. His interview touched a nerve with nearly every ambitious chef I know.

At nearly the same moment, on the opposite coast, a similar story played out. The LA Times wrote a piece titled, “Why we love Alma, maybe even a little too much,” to announce that it too was closing. Amid financial squabbling, a lawsuit, and efforts to survive, something finally drove Ari Taymor to close up shop and, one hopes, eventually start again.

Want to get really depressed if you are either a passionate diner or, far worse, a restaurant owner? Here’s a sampling of a little collection of articles I’ve been building that I call, “Holy shit the restaurant industry is doomed.” It reminds me to stay paranoid. Please don’t read them all.

• How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business - MUNCHIES
• Cantina 1910 closes for good, owners cite labor costs
• Rash of new restaurants folding in short order
• Why Are So Many Great NYC Restaurants Closing? It's Not Just The Rent. - Food Republic
• The Thrill of Losing Money by Investing in a Manhattan Restaurant
• With wages climbing, NYC restaurants may add hefty new fees
• Why We Are Mourning the Death of Fine Dining
• Why Portland Is Experiencing a Restaurant Apocalypse - MUNCHIES
• There's a Massive Restaurant Industry Bubble, and It's About to Burst
• Busy and broke: Why even the best neighbourhood restaurants are here today and gone tomorrow
• Has DC Already Reached Peak Restaurant?

What is going on?

These articles all claim that the restaurant industry is littered with failure, so much so that it is a terrible business with low margins, high pressures, and little reward beyond the intangible but great-to-write-about chefs’ passion for cooking and hospitality. In the end, though, chef-owners can’t pay their teams, their rents, or afford their own family lives with passion alone. As chef Taymor himself posted on Instagram, “We’ve learned a lot of lessons about operating a business, about having goals that are meaningful and goals that are not meaningful.”

I sadly never had the chance to eat at Thirty Acres or Alma or AQ or many of the other restaurants mentioned in those articles — I wish I had. As a diner, there is nothing more exciting than a small, intimate, chef-driven restaurant where chefs push their culinary visions in spaces that are the culmination of years of dreams, planning, and sweat. Those restaurants become the cornerstones of their neighborhood, their community, and the restaurant industry itself. A few years later those are the places that the corporate restaurant groups will copy and plunder for ideas and staff, building knock-offs with four times as many seats, an added bar, and a burger on the menu just in case. I call it “restaurant gentrification.” Take that as you will.

Here’s the thing: the restaurant closings that get written up are not about the places that were never any good. They are about the ones that should have made it. How can it be that a place everyone loves is closing?

The Grubstreet piece about Thirty Acres is titled, “Another acclaimed, ambitious restaurant is closing — here’s why.” But despite Sierra’s smart reporting, and with full respect to chef Pemoulie, I don’t think she nailed the “why.”

The press, as well as chefs and owners themselves, often seek outside reasons to blame for the closure of a well-regarded restaurant. Rents are exploding and we cannot afford the neighborhood anymore. Critics loved us to death and we couldn’t cope with the influx of customers (that’s a real one!). Tipping is broken and treats all restaurants, regardless of type, the same. Increases in the minimum wage are great for our employees, but make it impossible for owners to turn a profit. Healthcare costs are doubling. The list of reasons is infinite.

Here is the harsh reality:

Chefs are willing to innovate in the kitchen, they’ll drill service to perfection and spend gobs of money on the front-of-house — and then forget that business innovation, restaurant booking templates, yield management, pricing, modern and efficient marketing focusing on search / social media, and accounting are as critical as the food they put on the plate and the hospitality they provide. Moreover, innovating on the business of managing their restaurant gives a chef more freedom to do the kind of cooking, to present the great experiences, they want to offer their patrons. That business stuff isn’t usually sexy and it requires a different mindset. But a well-run business is a virtuous cycle that is better for chefs, owners, their employees and their customers.

You cannot, after all, eat at these great restaurants once they close.

I started writing this blog post many months ago. Then another article would appear, another restaurant would close, and after a dozen meetings with restaurant owners and a few public presentations I’d sit down and start examining another restaurant management topic thinking it’ll be simple to explain, say, the reasons why Flex-Tables are a clusterf*ck, only to find that I’d written another 2,400 words and had still barely scratched the surface.

About two years ago I wrote another very long blog post about the work we were doing at our restaurant group to change the way we booked our restaurants in which I presented data that showed the results of our experimentation. That post garnered millions of page views and resulted in hundreds of emails from restaurants all over the world asking if they could use our “ticketing site” at their restaurants.

Those emails, discussions, and encouragement gave me the push I needed to start a new company. I was fortunate to reach out to Brian Fitzpatrick of Google for advice on how to build a scalable, much more comprehensive version of the reservations software I had created. A few months later Fitz left Google and together we founded Tock. In the intervening 2 years or so we’ve raised money, hired an amazing team of engineers, designers, and customer support staff and have begun offering Tock to a diverse group of restaurants, both geographically and by category. Tock is already helping restaurants in 12 countries and 43 cities around the world.

Because of my role at Tock I’ve talked to restaurant owners around the world. When I read the articles I linked to at the top of this rant I get fired up. Why are chefs being asked about business? Why are they forced to do everything from cooking to accounting and expected to be experts at both? Why can’t the industry make money and be OK with that? Let me tell you — this does NOT need to be a low margin, high anxiety business.

I’ve decided to write down my thoughts and share our data, splitting it into a series of posts instead of one very long screed. I’ve got some strong opinions, not all of which you’re likely to agree with, but the point is to start a discussion and encourage the industry to be a bit more open-source. Over the next few months I’ll be writing on here regularly.

Here’s what’s coming:

Part 1: Restaurant reservations.

Restaurant reservations were built around the telephone, a black book, and a pen. But the telephone died about 8 years ago. Let’s examine the history of restaurant reservations, the pain points, and why your restaurant booking template is the most important thing you can re-examine if you want to drive revenue and efficiency.

Part 2: It’s time to treat restaurant employees as the professionals they are.

A tightening labor market means that the competition for great employees is higher than ever. But what other industry is saddled with an outdated cultural practice that is strictly regulated by the government? Tipping will end for restaurants with mid to high check averages and that’s a good thing for everyone. Here’s the why and how of eliminating voluntary gratuity, and the ethical case for treating all restaurant employees like the professionals they are.

Part 3: The future of restaurant discovery and advertising is search and social media.

The internet is big. Really big. Your restaurant affiliate marketing program is small. Really small. Let’s see what a social media campaign looks like, costs, and how effective it can be in putting butts in seats. (Spoiler: don’t spend your marketing / reservation booking money anywhere else).

Part 4: The new metrics.

Check average. Food cost percentage. Labor cost percentage. Every restaurant owner can cite these off the top of their head. These metrics overly simplify restaurant operations and are not providing actionable data. Let’s consider: revenue per seat minute, food-cost marimekko charts, and other ways to parse your business and make better data-driven decisions. Time to get geeky.

Part 5: Some real numbers.

I’ll practice what I preach and open the kimono to show the changes in our operating revenues and profits as we’ve implemented various experiments within our restaurant group. I’ve asked a few other chefs and restaurateurs to do the same.

This series won’t be comprehensive. It can’t possibly be. But I hope it drives the discussion in a more positive direction. Let’s encourage the press to focus on the restaurants that are innovating in successful ways. We should celebrate those teams who have made the unique, impossible restaurants work.

The restaurant apocalypse need not happen. The bad grammar in the title is purposeful.

It is the apocalypse that isn’t.

The Coming Restaurant Apocalypse That Isn’t** was originally published in Tock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.