OpenTable

OpenTable* (www.opentable.com) is an online real-time restaurant reservation service started in San Francisco, CA, USA in 1998. It was started to help people find restaurant reservations and help restaurants better service their guests. The Electronic Reservation Book or ERB that replaces the paper based reservation system a restaurant used to use helps a restaurant do three main things.

Reservation Management: Making, changing, canceling and confirming reservations.
Guest Management: Keeping track of VIP's, customer preferences and repeat customers. In addition it provides a location to store customer data to help create marketing programs specific to a restaurants' customers needs.
Table Management: As the shift begins the ERB helps restaurants plan the where parties should be sat and helps staff keep track of what parties are on what tables.

OpenTable currently has customers in almost every state in the USA, Canada, Mexico, England, Hong Kong, Japan, Sigapore and is opening up other countries in 2007.

Because OpenTable was started in 1998 in the Silicon Valley, it was part of the first dotcom wave of companies and was a survivor. It has a varied and vast set of investors, including some of the leading venture firms in the Valley and leading entertainment corportations.

OpenTable was featured often in press releases early in its existence, but as of late as quitely flown under the radar while it focuses on building its customer base. The company is laser focused on adding new restaurants and bringing new guests to restaurants. Its focus on reservation taking restaurants has helped it to become the industry standard. Many other POS companies have tried to add reservation software to their product mix, but have not been able to bring the same level of value as OpenTable and it network of reservation bookers has been able to bring to restaurants.

The service allows customers to search for their dining criteria, including by restaurant name, quesine (French, Itilian,...), time (8 pm on Friday), neighborhood, (SoHo, South of Market,...), table size and date. They offer other methods in which to search and book tables as well.