If you are a restaurant or restaurant goer, you will notice that some restaurant websites have the ability to make reservations. Giving guest the option to make reservations is a great marketing strategy for restaurants and helps you plan for visits and reduce your real time revenue reliance on walk ins.
There are a few ways to achieve this. We have the more traditional way where customers call the restaurant to make a reservation. Secondly, a restaurant can have just a general form on their website where customers can type in their information, send it out to the restaurant in hopes of making a reservation on the day of their choice. Lastly, there is the option, which is, subscribing with a company that is in the reservation business to make reservations and seat management as seamless as possible. Well, here is a description of 4 reservations platforms you might consider.
OpenTable
OpenTable is the leading platform for online reservations. When you think of reservations, the first place that comes to mind is usually OpenTable. They have been in this space since 1998 so it’s been a while. In addition to their services, they offer a reward system to customers who reserve through their platform by giving them $10 in points towards their next meal and customers love it. If you are a restaurant that has reservations as a major part of the business OpenTable would be a great restaurant marketing fit for you as they offer a wide range of services. Some of their features include reservation management, waitlist management, credit card vaulting, passcode protection, wireless chit printing, integrations & APIs, recommended tables assignments, table blocking, holiday promotions, reservation timeline view, alerts & notifications, multiple floor plans and more.
OpenTable’s, pricing starts from $249/month with a setup fee of $1295.
Yelp Reservations
As you all know, Yelp is a great reviewing platform for many businesses especially restaurants. Yelp now offers Yelp Reservations which has a great list of services including accepting reservations from right from your Yelp profile and website, text reminders to guests, table assignment, waitlist management and server management.Yelp Reservations provides these services at a monthly rate of $249 with no setup fee. Also included in the subscription is an iPad to get a full experience with their tools.
Yelp Reservations provides these services at a monthly rate of $249 with no setup fee. Also included in the subscription is an iPad to get a full experience with their tools.
Resy
Resy is a complete reservation and waitlist system that includes table management, waitlisting, ticketing, and booking. It is very easy to integrate with a POS system and with your website. It is definitely not as popular as the first two and but you get just what you need at a lower price than the others. Resy also provides “ResyPay” which allows guests to pay and split checks. ResyPay is unfortunately not available with the basic plan.
Resy provides these services at a starting monthly rate of $189 with no cover fee.
Tock
This is one reservation tool I had not heard of before but I love how simple the look and feel of it is. Tock is also a complete reservation system that offers free bookings to guests, prepaid options for bookings, reservation management, table management, guest profiles and notes, texting, financial reporting, booking widget for your website and note taking so you remember details about your guests.
Tock provides these services at a starting monthly fee of $99 with a $0.99 cover fee. No setup fee.
Getting started with a reservation system
In summary, here is a comparison chart of the 4 reservations systems for their starting packages
| OpenTable | Yelp Reservations | Resy | Tock | |
| Monthly Payment | $249 | $249 | $189 | $99 |
| Setup Fee | $1295 | No extra fee | No extra fee | No extra fee |
| Cover | $1.00 | No extra fee | No extra fee | $0.99 |
| Hardware | no | iPad Included | no | no |
| Website Integration | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Texting | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Table management | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Take Notes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| POS Integration | yes | no | no (upgrade req’d) | no |
Well, I hope this blog post helps to introduce you to reservation systems out there. Whether you decide to pick one of these 4 as your system of choice or any other system that integrates with websites, note that they easily work with any ASBA Website.
Comment below with any other reservation system out there you recommend.
