Welcome to In the Weeds, a new publication covering the business of independent restaurants.
I’ve been following the so-called reservation wars between OpenTable and Resy mostly through coverage on Expedite, a restaurant tech newsletter by Kristen Hawley. While two large tech companies wage this battle, independent restaurants are part of the story, too, and may become collateral damage.
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Isla restaurant on Tock
At Isla, a fine-dining restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, Chef Andrew Smith spent early September fielding messages from diners asking whether he'd raised prices. He had not. But after an update to his reservation system, Tock, which Resy and American Express bought in June 2024, the figure many diners now saw on the platform included the 20% gratuity Isla adds to every bill. It was a small change that had a big impact, he said.
“Our reservations dropped off dramatically over the past few weeks,” he told me when we spoke two weeks ago. “We just looked like a bunch of assholes raising our prices when people can’t afford to pay for anything.”
Andrew wasn’t alone. Chef Joseph VanWagner at Echelon in Ann Arbor also saw a drop in reservations for his chef’s counter after the diner-facing price changed on Tock from $164 to $207. This updated price included an automatic 22% gratuity and a 3% Team Member Well-Being charge.