OpenTable’s CEO fights the myth of the impossible reservation

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- Table for two. Restaurant reservation culture is out of control. There are black markets and bots, with diners shelling out hundreds of dollars just to secure tables, especially in cities like New York. New York lawmakers even passed legislation to curb the phenomenon.

But Debby Soo, the CEO of OpenTable, says some of that is a myth . "You can still find reservations at the hottest, hardest-to-get restaurants if you are flexible with timing," Soo says. "This narrative out there that it's so hard—sometimes I don't think it necessarily serves restaurants because I don't want to discourage diners from trying."

OpenTable launched 25 years ago as an early player to the restaurant tech space. Today, the reservation-booking platform is owned by the $21 billion company Booking Holdings, also the parent to Kayak and Priceline. As competitor Resy, owned by American Express, has come in and cornered the market on New York's trendy restaurant scene, OpenTable dominates tourist-friendly spots as part of a travel-based strategy. OpenTable has 60,000 restaurants on its platform compared to Resy's 16,000 .

Soo, a Google alum, spent a decade at Kayak before moving over to run OpenTable four years ago. She arrived amid the pandemic. "The P&L was in shambles because we waived all our fees for restaurants," she says.

OpenTable adjusted a one-size-fits-all pricing model to offer different tiers for different kinds of restaurants, like a 500-seat midtown restaurant that relies on marketing to fill its tables (OpenTable encourages travelers booking flights on Priceline to book restaurant reservations next, for example) or a 50-seat restaurant that never struggles to fill seats and only needs basic restaurant tech.

Once the industry made it out from the depths of the pandemic, Soo realized that OpenTable had some catching up to do. "The company was operating perhaps not as quickly as we needed to in the restaurant tech landscape," she says. "Competition had come in."

While diners and critics sometimes complain about the rise of technology at restaurants—like QR code menus—Soo argues that tech can improve the in-person experience. "The days of picking up your phone and calling a restaurant trying to get a reservation are over. Oftentimes, restaurants do not even have someone to pick up that phone," she says. "You could argue that makes the experience less personal, but from what we see it frees up staff to really make those moments when you are actually in the restaurant special" with notes in the platform about which wine a customer ordered last time they visited, for example.

Soo says OpenTable has increased restaurants it categorizes as "celebrated and awarded" by 28% year over year. She argues that OpenTable's travel connections are a strength. "We are not a credit card company. We are a hospitality company," she says. "Our customers are our restaurants. Our customers are not our card holders."

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com