11 ms·

Tickets for Restaurants

243 points by BryantD 12y ago

tptacek 12y ago
For one thing, it's pretty amazing to see Nick Kokonas writing about Alinea and Next as if they were "Lean Startups". But another thing that sticks out to me: look how pretty and refined these ticketing apps aren't, even though they drive hundreds of thousands of dollars per month of revenue. And after you notice that, read how Kokonas talks about how easy and simple the system is for them to use? There's a lesson in there somewhere about the kinds of UX that matter to customers versus the kind of UX people believe should matter for customers. As a restaurant customer, I think the ticketing system is great; I've gone through the process of getting an Alinea reso (if you want a real fun time in Chicago, try getting one for Schwa) and it was an opaque nightmare. The alternative to tickets for these places isn't a fair reservation system; it is basically "you don't get to eat there ever".
- rhizome 12y ago
  No reservation site is slick. Hotels get the closest, but opentable, etc. are all pretty rudimentary without much innovation from 10 years ago.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    OpenTable is extremely easy to use and functional, even on a phone. I wish the whole internet was like that.
  - monksy 12y ago
    Hipmunk does a great reservation system for flights.
- bradly 12y ago
  I also think the ticketing system is great, but it looks like Next is adopting service charges from the traditional ticketing industry. It's a bummer to see such a non-customer friendly practice like that tacked on to an innovative idea.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - nkokonas 12y ago
    Service charge is literally the charge for restaurant service -- instead of a 'tip'. It's not a charge for the tickets. We do that because of Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) makes tipping difficult if you charge ahead... or if you want to share revenue with cooks.
    - bradly 12y ago
      Yeah, that's understandable, but personally I'd prefer the 20% just included in the total price of the ticket. The French Laundry does this; they just charge a flat $260 and there is no tipping. The tip is already priced into the $260.
      - pndmnm 12y ago
        Yes, but at Keller's restaurant it's not charged in advance -- it's just a "gratuity included" situation. The specific definition in the FLSA states that tips for an employee are "actually received by the employee", which is the main issue in counting prior ticket purchase as gratuity. Also, Nick, if you're still reading -- do you think that the prepurchase model materially affects people's spending on e.g. upgrades and drinks? My wife and I did Alinea & Aviary on November, and I was definitely happier to spend a little more given that the original "purchase" was so many paychecks in the past.
        nkokonas 12y ago
        inclusive pricing is what I'd like to do but people compare pricing without gratuity for most places... TFL can do that. Next cannot.
- BryantD 12y ago
  That was exactly what caught my eye about this piece -- it's really informative seeing how a completely different industry addresses issues, even when using similar data-driven techniques.
- applecore 12y ago
  There's a big difference between great UX and looking pretty and polished. Something can look like shit at first glance, but still be useful and well-designed.
  - DaveWalk 12y ago
    This is what I thought, too -- its "ugliness" looks to me similar to seating/service apps one might see in bars and restaurants everywhere. Black screen, white text, red/yellow/green indicators... I do admire the utility of the interface; it looks like it gets the job done.
- Gorbzel 12y ago
  Yeah, he clearly has the business model and restaurant selling points down flat, but there really does seem to be room for improvement as far as UI/UX is concerned. • From a user's perspective, it's not as if some aesthetic improvements are mutually exclusive with the overall goals stated in the article. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It'd be nice if the website had the same premium feel and attention to detail that the actual food and front of house do. It's a bit jarring to spend $3k+ on season tickets on a website with a minimum viable design. • While I admittedly lack the insight of a restaurant operator, it seems he's stagnated frontend-wise on simply "anything but IE." While that makes the geek in me chuckle, it seems to dismiss the benefits that come from having an actual strategy focusing on the way that mobile devices could be integrated. Just because the ticket biz model is better than those focused on leasing hardware doesn't mean that a FOH person couldn't be armed with a tablet to access the webapp or that a native app for customers and restaurants doesn't make sense. Anyways, very interesting, and while I didn't think it was possible to be more excited for Modern China, I'm now looking forward to potentially keeping an eye out for how the restaurant interacts with the software during service.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Well, one easy data point to collect here: has any Alinea or Next or Aviary guest commented about how the reservation site looked?
- hft_throwaway 12y ago
  I hacked up something with Asterisk to auto-dial Schwa until I got something other than the dreaded machine. Alinea is like walking into a fantasy world on acid but eating incredible food with Aesop Rock blasting while Chef swigs Jameson 10 feet away from you was as if some crazy person got inside my head and knew exactly what I wanted.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    You mean Schwa was, right? :) I had a great meal at Schwa, and my reservation wasn't that hard to get, except that they cancelled it on me 3 times in a row.
    - hft_throwaway 12y ago
      Yes. Alinea was a touch more subdued. ;)
      - tptacek 12y ago
        You haven't really eaten at Schwa until you've been there when Michael Carlson gets arrested during service. Man, though, I really liked that Schwa meal. It was worth the wait.
- bhntr3 12y ago
  Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas are incredibly smart and their keen understanding of the software business is surprising but pretty clear from this article. I actually knew that already because the company I used to work for helped build software for them and Grant and Nick spoke at our company event. They blew us all away. I think this was just before or right after they had launched Next. Their description of the reservation ticketing system and the variable pricing model seemed awesome then. Glad to see it worked out so well. But what really made an impression on me was Grant's discussion of the similarity of software user experience design and his own dining experience design. He talked about how he's not just making food but controlling an entire experience for the diner. That includes the interesting centerpieces on the table that are used in the meal, the narrow entrance hall to the restaurant, the use of smoke and smell to evoke memories. I'm completely sure the user experience of the reservation system is a piece he considers a part of the overall dining experience. Whether or not actual conversion numbers are there to justify investing in it, I bet these guys consider it one of the intangibles that make their restaurants the best fine dining experiences in the country. One of the stories that sticks out for me was Grant's explanation of the trickiness involved in not having tablecloths. At the time, he said, fine dining meant white tablecloths. But he didn't want there to be tablecloths at Alinea. So he got rid of them. But the problem was water rings. When cold water was placed on the stone tables, rings of condensation formed. He said they solved the problem by finding the precise temperature at which the water was chilled but not cold enough to form condensation rings on the table and they keep it at exactly that temperature in the kitchen. Something about that story says to me that he understands that the quality of the experience lies in the substance and not the decoration. I haven't actually used the reservation system. I went to Alinea before it was used there and I haven't been to Next. So I don't know if it's ugly but I doubt it sucks. Because these guys understand and care about user experience of all forms to a surprising degree.
nkokonas 12y ago
the lean start up was the software itself, not the restaurants. The restaurants were hardly lean... but the software was one programmer and me. -- nick
- tptacek 12y ago
  On the off chance we can cadge more of your time: It seems like in retrospect that tickets were a really smart idea that panned out nicely for your group. Why do you think nobody had done it on your scale before? How well do you think a ticket scheme would work out for a "non-destination" restaurant? For, say, Lula or Nightwood, instead of Alinea or Elizabeth? In the process of getting this stuff working, was there ever a point late in the game where you were worried that it just wasn't going to come together in time to get tickets working for the launch of Next? Thanks for taking the time to comment!
  - nkokonas 12y ago
    I think it would work for almost any restaurant -- or for that matter any business or service that has time slots... think dentist, hair cutter, spa, etc. If a restaurant is less in demand then they can use pricing as an incentive, never charging a premium but going under baseline for quiet times. Aviary is the example that I use because we never go all night to full capacity. We've done 350+ covers, but we could do more. Most Wednesdays we do 125-150. So take a non destination place, add in a deposit for prime slots or other perks, and I believe the psychology is that you can move patrons to those times. I think the entire industry was afraid to take the risk that patrons would hate tickets -- you spend $ 2 million building a restaurant and you want to minimize risk. I felt Next had so many people interested in the concept that I could afford to take that risk... indeed in some ways it was concepted FOR the tickets because I was so nutty about them for a year or two before. And yes, I was very very worried. Up for several days in a row beforehand. Didn't shower or shave... ate pizza, drank cheap wine. Usual stuff.
    - infinitone 12y ago
      Funnily enough, we're working on scheduling for detailers and cleaning businesses (http://carwashy.com http://carwashy.com). We haven't look into ticketing because well, to be frank, most of our customers never really mention the problems you guys face. And looking at the data, no-shows account for less than 2% of bookings.
lominming 12y ago
Wow. I am a huge foodie and a big fan of Alinea. I am surprised they actually blog about data and thought process behind the ticketing system. I completely understand the reasoning behind this. High demand for a table at Alinea allows them to do this. I think this will work for very limited number of restaurants like Per Se, TFL, Saison, etc., but will not apply to majority of other restaurants. The big difference between Open Table vs Alinea is for Alinea, you actually need to pay upfront. The demand and the quality of the restaurant allows Alinea to do that, but again, does not work majority of restaurants when there is no single fixed menu.
- nkokonas 12y ago
  Sure... but the thing is this: you could just take small deposit against the final check. And vary the scale or application of that deposit. For example, putting in a $10 deposit could give you a $ 15 credit. That's just one example on how a 'normal' demand restaurant could use ticketing and dynamic, variable pricing.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Try getting a table with a few days notice at Osteria Nico in Chicago. Nico isn't Alinea; it is a restaurant you might go to for a good meal, and not a life experience. And yet your odds of getting a prime-time table there this year are pretty bad. There are lots of non-event restaurants that would be more customer-friendly with some sort of ticketing scheme; not for every table and every time, but for hotspots?
al2o3cr 12y ago
"About six months before Next was due to open I hired a single programmer and laid out visually, as a flow chart, what the system needed to do. Talk about a lean start up model!" Talk about a waterfall, you mean. Complete with the "OH FUCK WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" crisis at the end when things have slipped...
- tptacek 12y ago
  Kokonas isn't a software developer; he was a prop trader and then a restaurant owner. The fact that they pulled this off at all is impressive; it's actually even more impressive given that they did it with a less effective project management methodology.
  - nkokonas 12y ago
    well in fairness I had a bit of experience in software design -- ancient but relevant. We are redoing the entirety of the site now... keeping the good, improving the rest.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Will trade security assessment for one meal.
      - sachinag 12y ago
        I would trade cash money for you two to do a podcast / text interview.
        hft_throwaway 12y ago
        Hear, hear.
    - quadyeast 12y ago
      FYI - https://www.nextrestaurant.com/website/tos https://www.nextrestaurant.com/website/tos starts off with <<<<<<< HEAD ======= >>>>>>> parent of b836bf2... testing
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
infecto 12y ago
Great article! I would love to see this model applied to other industries. Unfortunately I think the only way to drive this change is internally.
joshu 12y ago
I'm hugely interested in the restaurant business from afar so I was really, really impressed with this writeup. It's too bad that folks in the actual tech industry don't get this deep.
- wil421 12y ago
  >I'm hugely interested in the restaurant business from afar Stay afar, the restaurant industry is a different animal altogether. Dont ever try and start a restaurant unless you will be doing it with an industry veteran. I spent/wasted 6 years in the industry.
  - joshu 12y ago
    I have a small investment in a restaurant and they are remarkably tolerant of my annoying questions. But yeah, I figure it's probably more efficient to just light money on fire.
tantalor 12y ago
Presumably, scaling the deposit by the seat count solves the short-sat problem because the client might end up paying more as the deposit than the final check (and there is no refund) so they are incentivized to not reserve a too-large table.
capex 12y ago
Ah, my startup [0] carries the same idea but applies it to days of the week. So far the responsive from the restaurant industry is overwhelming. [0] http://opendeals.com.au http://opendeals.com.au
- nkokonas 12y ago
  one direction on pricing means it's a 'deals' site and will only attract struggling restaurants.
kmeil 12y ago
Nick, this is so awesome! I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'm really interested in what a ticketing deployment for a "regular" restaurant that uses OpenTable now might look like. Recognizing that, as you mentioned, many restaurants have different OT strategies (Girl & Goat vs., e.g., SF's Fang, which is great and often full but has tables avail every 15 mins in perpetuity and seems to manage fine, as they turn quickly): 1. Do shoppers used to limited merchandise translating to high quality get turned off by seeing all the inventory? 2. How to they get the word out to sell tickets? Will you help customers with deployment? 3. How do they restaurants convince an existing customer base not to just call (if they continue to call, it reduces cost savings) or show up (rendering system unnecessary/reducing it to a crm) without turning off their phones, like fab (http://recode.net/2014/06/04/codered-fab-operators-no-longer-standing-by/ http://recode.net/2014/06/04/codered-fab-operators-no-longer...)? 4. How sophisticated does a manager/hostess need to be to run & record results of the pricing experiments it would presumably take to optimize, once they did get adoption up? I don't mean to imply that people in restaurants aren't smart, just that recording, passing on the info and rerunning tests seasonally seems like a large organizational difficulty, assuming results didn't arrive instantly, like they might in a high-demand restaurant (your superbowl test). Ok sorry I got excited and hung up on lots of little details!
austenallred 12y ago
As someone who has sold millions of dollars worth of event (mostly broadway) tickets, the fact that they're moving that quickly says you're not charging enough. My first instinct when I see something that moves that quickly is to write a program that reserves them for me and sell them at a 2x-3x profit on the secondary market. Is there an opportunity for that, or does a secondary market exist? Imagine traditional market economics applied to the same model - eBay for restaurants?
- taurath 12y ago
  Exclusivity is kinda a big deal to many restaurants. If you charge "open market" prices and get "open market" customers, people might be much quicker to decide the stall across the street is a lot more hip than you.
- tptacek 12y ago
  You can't do a secondary market for Alinea tickets. Consider also: the overwhelmingly dominant global standard for allocating fine dining tables --- the reservation system --- doesn't have any notion of floating prices. The owners of a restaurant design a menu and put a price on it. You could look the prices on up a site like Zagat and know that's what you'd be paying. (IIRC, Charlie Trotter's used to have a listing where the "price" was "VE", for "Very Expensive").
  - bradleyjg 12y ago
    From: https://tickets.alinearestaurant.com/website/faq https://tickets.alinearestaurant.com/website/faq ----- Can I give my ticket away or sell it? Yes. The ticket is completely transferable. However, selling tickets for greater than face value may be illegal in your area. Anyone who purchases a ticket from another patron should take care to be sure that the ticket and times are as claimed by requesting both an email confirmation from us as well as a printed ticket from the seller. Any tickets purchased on the secondary market are at the purchaser's risk. We will not be held responsible for forgeries or misrepresentations. Can I just give my ticket away instead of transferring it on this site? Because we are calling all ticket holders before they dine with us we request that the tickets are formally transferred through our site. Log in and navigate to Manage Account ---> Transfer a Ticket. ----- I don't know exactly what laws govern (i.e. where you purchase or always Chicago) but at least on the face of it I don't see why there couldn't be a secondary market. The terms of service seems to reserve the right to shut down an abusive operation, but there's nothing clearly stating they would. P.S. nkokonas: on http://website.alinearestaurant.com/site/reservations-contact/ http://website.alinearestaurant.com/site/reservations-contac... the FAQ link on the bottom right points to the wrong place, it 404s. And thanks for the write up, it's fantastic, I hope one day to eat there.
patio11 12y ago
This is a fantastic writeup. I wonder if a part of the attraction isn't de-commercializing the experience for the diners? Paying up front, presumably via credit cards, means that the service experience is Uber-smooth. You never have to ask for the check, fumble with cards, or do the who-has-this-one dance with other people at the table. You simply show up, get treated like royalty, and leave when you're ready to. I feel professionally obligated to quibble at one point: Most reservation and ticketing systems charge by the number of customer transactions, the number of restaurant admin users, for equipment, or a combination of all three. The more business a restaurant does, the more they end up paying. As a business owner I hate such models. Adding an incremental user on my end costs a software company nothing – especially one that has a cloud based system. You may discover, in running a software company, that it is really valuable to have the prices which you can charge scale with the success of your users. It's how software companies can bid down their lower-end entry points, since we can't conveniently sell our users alcohol at 80% margins.
- megablast 12y ago
  > Paying up front, presumably via credit cards, means that the service experience is Uber-smooth. Just like using a group on voucher. It feels a bit weird, just leaving at the end of a meal, without having to go to the register.
  - weaksauce 12y ago
    > It feels a bit weird, just leaving at the end of a meal, without having to go to the register. or walking out of an apple store with an iPad and no bag and no receipt. I enjoy the convenience and green nature of it but feel like a thief sometimes. especially since there is no "checkout register" as everyone can ring you up for the device.
    - hnriot 12y ago
      "no bag and no receipt. I enjoy the convenience and green nature" - that's because an iPad comes in a clear plastic wrapped bleached-white, non-recycled (but highly recyclable) cardboard box. There's nothing green about iPad packaging or not getting a bag. The decentralized checkout process is really just bringing the cash register to the buyer. That works for high price items like Apple sell, but wouldn't work for much else.
mlchild 12y ago
First off, wanted to say thanks to Nick and Grant for the most amazing meal of my life at Alinea, as well as several killer nights at Next and the Aviary (I was an instant convert and had to get season tickets). Secondly, this write up is incredibly rich and I really appreciated the chance to get so much insight into the success of the system so far. That said, I'm particularly interested in the next moves. You note that the network effects of OpenTable for discovery are waning, thanks to Google, but I'm not sure that's the case on desktop, and even less so on mobile. The cases I experience are: 1. I know exactly where I want to eat. In this case it's almost always easier to go to OpenTable anyway, since restaurant website design is clunky and unpredictable. 2. I have a general idea, say "mid-range Cal-Ital on Thursday." Google may be superior to OpenTable on recommendations (slightly, and I think that's debatable), and it doesn't really matter if they do a better job pulling up, say, Nopa and Rich Table, since I'm not getting in anyway. OpenTable shortens the loop between idea and execution. 3. I have no idea where I want to eat, other than, "right here, right now, and good." In this case superior mobile recommendation apps carry the day, many of which I can book through, usually via OpenTable's platform. With extensions/deeplinks/etc. picking up on Android and iOS, it seems likely that this will be further entrenched. I like the idea of more flexible and innovative reservations systems taking hold, but I'm not sure I'd discount the network effects so soon. Finally, the kiosks in restaurants that are provided (some might say forced in) by OpenTable seem like ripe opportunity, given the horrific UI and vendor lock-in. Are you considering building an iPad/tablet app to manage your systems in-restaurant? Or is the browser interface sufficiently mobile-friendly to serve this purpose? Thanks again for the write-up, really enjoyed the read. Looking forward to Next Chinese.
abalone 12y ago
The essential change is that customers put down a nonrefundable deposit for their reservation. It's hard to really assess this based on the experience of Alinea/Next/Aviary alone. This might work for the most in-demand, popular restaurants / high end bars like those but I'm skeptical it will work more broadly. Reason being it's a competitive disadvantage vs. places that don't require a deposit. Super popular places already have so much demand and competitive advantage that it may not affect them, but the average (or even above-average) restaurant may actually risk a decline in bookings by requiring deposits. I believe OpenTable actually offers cancellation fees as an optional feature; few places use it. We'll see how it goes, I guess.
- rdslw 12y ago
  This. Ticketing will work mostly for heavily booked and popular places.
dabernathy89 12y ago
Looks like nobody else is gonna do it, so I'll be the bad guy: this post is nearly impossible to read: tiny, white (and sometimes black) text on a dark gray background. Judging by the other comments, it's a great piece, I just wish it were easier to read :)
- chime 12y ago
  No images but https://www.readability.com/articles/rs8nq3xr https://www.readability.com/articles/rs8nq3xr is readable. I use rdd.me all the time just for this purpose.
- e2e8 12y ago
  You want to know what I did? I disabled CSS. Suddenly the page is ultra readable like 1999. Works everywhere too.
jonstewart 12y ago
One thing I don't see mentioned in the blogpost or in the comments is the discussion that ticketing gets you deferred revenue, i.e., float. They get to pay for most of their COGS with cash instead of credit, and earn interest in the process. This seems like the most fundamental improvement to the restaurant business, but maybe not something they want to highlight on their blog.
j_s 12y ago
Edit: author addressed this issue elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7856212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7856212 The claim in the article regarding people feeling disappointed after winning an auction for a table doesn't address the fact that people are 'paying for access alone' by purchasing from scalpers. There are other ways to address this issue: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/27/196277836/kid-rock-takes-on-the-scalpers http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/27/196277836/kid-rock... As seen last year: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101161
joshdance 12y ago
Really liked it. Just interesting that they use Internet Explorer.
smackfu 12y ago
It's interesting that there are any short-sat no-shows anymore. That is literally a free meal at an amazing restaurant.
jljljl 12y ago
One question I didn't see covered in the article: Are the restaurant tickets transferrable? Can I sell my ticket to someone else if I can't make the date or something comes up? I imagine this would be a nice feature, but might open up a lot of complications

243 points by BryantD 12y ago

For one thing, it's pretty amazing to see Nick Kokonas writing about Alinea and Next as if they were "Lean Startups". But another thing that sticks out to me: look how pretty and refined these ticketing apps aren't, even though they drive hundreds of thousands of dollars per month of revenue. And after you notice that, read how Kokonas talks about how easy and simple the system is for them to use? There's a lesson in there somewhere about the kinds of UX that matter to customers versus the kind of UX people believe should matter for customers. As a restaurant customer, I think the ticketing system is great; I've gone through the process of getting an Alinea reso (if you want a real fun time in Chicago, try getting one for Schwa) and it was an opaque nightmare. The alternative to tickets for these places isn't a fair reservation system; it is basically "you don't get to eat there ever".

rhizome 12y ago
No reservation site is slick. Hotels get the closest, but opentable, etc. are all pretty rudimentary without much innovation from 10 years ago.
- rayiner 12y ago
  OpenTable is extremely easy to use and functional, even on a phone. I wish the whole internet was like that.
- monksy 12y ago
  Hipmunk does a great reservation system for flights.
bradly 12y ago
I also think the ticketing system is great, but it looks like Next is adopting service charges from the traditional ticketing industry. It's a bummer to see such a non-customer friendly practice like that tacked on to an innovative idea.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nkokonas 12y ago
  Service charge is literally the charge for restaurant service -- instead of a 'tip'. It's not a charge for the tickets. We do that because of Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) makes tipping difficult if you charge ahead... or if you want to share revenue with cooks.
  - bradly 12y ago
    Yeah, that's understandable, but personally I'd prefer the 20% just included in the total price of the ticket. The French Laundry does this; they just charge a flat $260 and there is no tipping. The tip is already priced into the $260.
    - pndmnm 12y ago
      Yes, but at Keller's restaurant it's not charged in advance -- it's just a "gratuity included" situation. The specific definition in the FLSA states that tips for an employee are "actually received by the employee", which is the main issue in counting prior ticket purchase as gratuity. Also, Nick, if you're still reading -- do you think that the prepurchase model materially affects people's spending on e.g. upgrades and drinks? My wife and I did Alinea & Aviary on November, and I was definitely happier to spend a little more given that the original "purchase" was so many paychecks in the past.
      - nkokonas 12y ago
        inclusive pricing is what I'd like to do but people compare pricing without gratuity for most places... TFL can do that. Next cannot.
BryantD 12y ago
That was exactly what caught my eye about this piece -- it's really informative seeing how a completely different industry addresses issues, even when using similar data-driven techniques.
applecore 12y ago
There's a big difference between great UX and looking pretty and polished. Something can look like shit at first glance, but still be useful and well-designed.
- DaveWalk 12y ago
  This is what I thought, too -- its "ugliness" looks to me similar to seating/service apps one might see in bars and restaurants everywhere. Black screen, white text, red/yellow/green indicators... I do admire the utility of the interface; it looks like it gets the job done.
Gorbzel 12y ago
Yeah, he clearly has the business model and restaurant selling points down flat, but there really does seem to be room for improvement as far as UI/UX is concerned. • From a user's perspective, it's not as if some aesthetic improvements are mutually exclusive with the overall goals stated in the article. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It'd be nice if the website had the same premium feel and attention to detail that the actual food and front of house do. It's a bit jarring to spend $3k+ on season tickets on a website with a minimum viable design. • While I admittedly lack the insight of a restaurant operator, it seems he's stagnated frontend-wise on simply "anything but IE." While that makes the geek in me chuckle, it seems to dismiss the benefits that come from having an actual strategy focusing on the way that mobile devices could be integrated. Just because the ticket biz model is better than those focused on leasing hardware doesn't mean that a FOH person couldn't be armed with a tablet to access the webapp or that a native app for customers and restaurants doesn't make sense. Anyways, very interesting, and while I didn't think it was possible to be more excited for Modern China, I'm now looking forward to potentially keeping an eye out for how the restaurant interacts with the software during service.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Well, one easy data point to collect here: has any Alinea or Next or Aviary guest commented about how the reservation site looked?
hft_throwaway 12y ago
I hacked up something with Asterisk to auto-dial Schwa until I got something other than the dreaded machine. Alinea is like walking into a fantasy world on acid but eating incredible food with Aesop Rock blasting while Chef swigs Jameson 10 feet away from you was as if some crazy person got inside my head and knew exactly what I wanted.
- tptacek 12y ago
  You mean Schwa was, right? :) I had a great meal at Schwa, and my reservation wasn't that hard to get, except that they cancelled it on me 3 times in a row.
  - hft_throwaway 12y ago
    Yes. Alinea was a touch more subdued. ;)
    - tptacek 12y ago
      You haven't really eaten at Schwa until you've been there when Michael Carlson gets arrested during service. Man, though, I really liked that Schwa meal. It was worth the wait.
bhntr3 12y ago
Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas are incredibly smart and their keen understanding of the software business is surprising but pretty clear from this article. I actually knew that already because the company I used to work for helped build software for them and Grant and Nick spoke at our company event. They blew us all away. I think this was just before or right after they had launched Next. Their description of the reservation ticketing system and the variable pricing model seemed awesome then. Glad to see it worked out so well. But what really made an impression on me was Grant's discussion of the similarity of software user experience design and his own dining experience design. He talked about how he's not just making food but controlling an entire experience for the diner. That includes the interesting centerpieces on the table that are used in the meal, the narrow entrance hall to the restaurant, the use of smoke and smell to evoke memories. I'm completely sure the user experience of the reservation system is a piece he considers a part of the overall dining experience. Whether or not actual conversion numbers are there to justify investing in it, I bet these guys consider it one of the intangibles that make their restaurants the best fine dining experiences in the country. One of the stories that sticks out for me was Grant's explanation of the trickiness involved in not having tablecloths. At the time, he said, fine dining meant white tablecloths. But he didn't want there to be tablecloths at Alinea. So he got rid of them. But the problem was water rings. When cold water was placed on the stone tables, rings of condensation formed. He said they solved the problem by finding the precise temperature at which the water was chilled but not cold enough to form condensation rings on the table and they keep it at exactly that temperature in the kitchen. Something about that story says to me that he understands that the quality of the experience lies in the substance and not the decoration. I haven't actually used the reservation system. I went to Alinea before it was used there and I haven't been to Next. So I don't know if it's ugly but I doubt it sucks. Because these guys understand and care about user experience of all forms to a surprising degree.

nkokonas 12y ago

the lean start up was the software itself, not the restaurants. The restaurants were hardly lean... but the software was one programmer and me. -- nick

tptacek 12y ago
On the off chance we can cadge more of your time: It seems like in retrospect that tickets were a really smart idea that panned out nicely for your group. Why do you think nobody had done it on your scale before? How well do you think a ticket scheme would work out for a "non-destination" restaurant? For, say, Lula or Nightwood, instead of Alinea or Elizabeth? In the process of getting this stuff working, was there ever a point late in the game where you were worried that it just wasn't going to come together in time to get tickets working for the launch of Next? Thanks for taking the time to comment!
- nkokonas 12y ago
  I think it would work for almost any restaurant -- or for that matter any business or service that has time slots... think dentist, hair cutter, spa, etc. If a restaurant is less in demand then they can use pricing as an incentive, never charging a premium but going under baseline for quiet times. Aviary is the example that I use because we never go all night to full capacity. We've done 350+ covers, but we could do more. Most Wednesdays we do 125-150. So take a non destination place, add in a deposit for prime slots or other perks, and I believe the psychology is that you can move patrons to those times. I think the entire industry was afraid to take the risk that patrons would hate tickets -- you spend $ 2 million building a restaurant and you want to minimize risk. I felt Next had so many people interested in the concept that I could afford to take that risk... indeed in some ways it was concepted FOR the tickets because I was so nutty about them for a year or two before. And yes, I was very very worried. Up for several days in a row beforehand. Didn't shower or shave... ate pizza, drank cheap wine. Usual stuff.
  - infinitone 12y ago
    Funnily enough, we're working on scheduling for detailers and cleaning businesses (http://carwashy.com http://carwashy.com). We haven't look into ticketing because well, to be frank, most of our customers never really mention the problems you guys face. And looking at the data, no-shows account for less than 2% of bookings.

lominming 12y ago

Wow. I am a huge foodie and a big fan of Alinea. I am surprised they actually blog about data and thought process behind the ticketing system. I completely understand the reasoning behind this. High demand for a table at Alinea allows them to do this. I think this will work for very limited number of restaurants like Per Se, TFL, Saison, etc., but will not apply to majority of other restaurants. The big difference between Open Table vs Alinea is for Alinea, you actually need to pay upfront. The demand and the quality of the restaurant allows Alinea to do that, but again, does not work majority of restaurants when there is no single fixed menu.

nkokonas 12y ago
Sure... but the thing is this: you could just take small deposit against the final check. And vary the scale or application of that deposit. For example, putting in a $10 deposit could give you a $ 15 credit. That's just one example on how a 'normal' demand restaurant could use ticketing and dynamic, variable pricing.
tptacek 12y ago
Try getting a table with a few days notice at Osteria Nico in Chicago. Nico isn't Alinea; it is a restaurant you might go to for a good meal, and not a life experience. And yet your odds of getting a prime-time table there this year are pretty bad. There are lots of non-event restaurants that would be more customer-friendly with some sort of ticketing scheme; not for every table and every time, but for hotspots?

al2o3cr 12y ago

"About six months before Next was due to open I hired a single programmer and laid out visually, as a flow chart, what the system needed to do. Talk about a lean start up model!" Talk about a waterfall, you mean. Complete with the "OH FUCK WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" crisis at the end when things have slipped...

tptacek 12y ago
Kokonas isn't a software developer; he was a prop trader and then a restaurant owner. The fact that they pulled this off at all is impressive; it's actually even more impressive given that they did it with a less effective project management methodology.
- nkokonas 12y ago
  well in fairness I had a bit of experience in software design -- ancient but relevant. We are redoing the entirety of the site now... keeping the good, improving the rest.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Will trade security assessment for one meal.
    - sachinag 12y ago
      I would trade cash money for you two to do a podcast / text interview.
      - hft_throwaway 12y ago
        Hear, hear.
  - quadyeast 12y ago
    FYI - https://www.nextrestaurant.com/website/tos https://www.nextrestaurant.com/website/tos starts off with <<<<<<< HEAD ======= >>>>>>> parent of b836bf2... testing

deleted 12y ago

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infecto 12y ago

Great article! I would love to see this model applied to other industries. Unfortunately I think the only way to drive this change is internally.

joshu 12y ago

I'm hugely interested in the restaurant business from afar so I was really, really impressed with this writeup. It's too bad that folks in the actual tech industry don't get this deep.

wil421 12y ago
>I'm hugely interested in the restaurant business from afar Stay afar, the restaurant industry is a different animal altogether. Dont ever try and start a restaurant unless you will be doing it with an industry veteran. I spent/wasted 6 years in the industry.
- joshu 12y ago
  I have a small investment in a restaurant and they are remarkably tolerant of my annoying questions. But yeah, I figure it's probably more efficient to just light money on fire.

tantalor 12y ago

Presumably, scaling the deposit by the seat count solves the short-sat problem because the client might end up paying more as the deposit than the final check (and there is no refund) so they are incentivized to not reserve a too-large table.

capex 12y ago

Ah, my startup [0] carries the same idea but applies it to days of the week. So far the responsive from the restaurant industry is overwhelming. [0] http://opendeals.com.au http://opendeals.com.au

nkokonas 12y ago
one direction on pricing means it's a 'deals' site and will only attract struggling restaurants.

kmeil 12y ago

Nick, this is so awesome! I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'm really interested in what a ticketing deployment for a "regular" restaurant that uses OpenTable now might look like. Recognizing that, as you mentioned, many restaurants have different OT strategies (Girl & Goat vs., e.g., SF's Fang, which is great and often full but has tables avail every 15 mins in perpetuity and seems to manage fine, as they turn quickly): 1. Do shoppers used to limited merchandise translating to high quality get turned off by seeing all the inventory? 2. How to they get the word out to sell tickets? Will you help customers with deployment? 3. How do they restaurants convince an existing customer base not to just call (if they continue to call, it reduces cost savings) or show up (rendering system unnecessary/reducing it to a crm) without turning off their phones, like fab (http://recode.net/2014/06/04/codered-fab-operators-no-longer-standing-by/ http://recode.net/2014/06/04/codered-fab-operators-no-longer...)? 4. How sophisticated does a manager/hostess need to be to run & record results of the pricing experiments it would presumably take to optimize, once they did get adoption up? I don't mean to imply that people in restaurants aren't smart, just that recording, passing on the info and rerunning tests seasonally seems like a large organizational difficulty, assuming results didn't arrive instantly, like they might in a high-demand restaurant (your superbowl test). Ok sorry I got excited and hung up on lots of little details!

austenallred 12y ago

As someone who has sold millions of dollars worth of event (mostly broadway) tickets, the fact that they're moving that quickly says you're not charging enough. My first instinct when I see something that moves that quickly is to write a program that reserves them for me and sell them at a 2x-3x profit on the secondary market. Is there an opportunity for that, or does a secondary market exist? Imagine traditional market economics applied to the same model - eBay for restaurants?

taurath 12y ago
Exclusivity is kinda a big deal to many restaurants. If you charge "open market" prices and get "open market" customers, people might be much quicker to decide the stall across the street is a lot more hip than you.
tptacek 12y ago
You can't do a secondary market for Alinea tickets. Consider also: the overwhelmingly dominant global standard for allocating fine dining tables --- the reservation system --- doesn't have any notion of floating prices. The owners of a restaurant design a menu and put a price on it. You could look the prices on up a site like Zagat and know that's what you'd be paying. (IIRC, Charlie Trotter's used to have a listing where the "price" was "VE", for "Very Expensive").
- bradleyjg 12y ago
  From: https://tickets.alinearestaurant.com/website/faq https://tickets.alinearestaurant.com/website/faq ----- Can I give my ticket away or sell it? Yes. The ticket is completely transferable. However, selling tickets for greater than face value may be illegal in your area. Anyone who purchases a ticket from another patron should take care to be sure that the ticket and times are as claimed by requesting both an email confirmation from us as well as a printed ticket from the seller. Any tickets purchased on the secondary market are at the purchaser's risk. We will not be held responsible for forgeries or misrepresentations. Can I just give my ticket away instead of transferring it on this site? Because we are calling all ticket holders before they dine with us we request that the tickets are formally transferred through our site. Log in and navigate to Manage Account ---> Transfer a Ticket. ----- I don't know exactly what laws govern (i.e. where you purchase or always Chicago) but at least on the face of it I don't see why there couldn't be a secondary market. The terms of service seems to reserve the right to shut down an abusive operation, but there's nothing clearly stating they would. P.S. nkokonas: on http://website.alinearestaurant.com/site/reservations-contact/ http://website.alinearestaurant.com/site/reservations-contac... the FAQ link on the bottom right points to the wrong place, it 404s. And thanks for the write up, it's fantastic, I hope one day to eat there.

patio11 12y ago

This is a fantastic writeup. I wonder if a part of the attraction isn't de-commercializing the experience for the diners? Paying up front, presumably via credit cards, means that the service experience is Uber-smooth. You never have to ask for the check, fumble with cards, or do the who-has-this-one dance with other people at the table. You simply show up, get treated like royalty, and leave when you're ready to. I feel professionally obligated to quibble at one point: Most reservation and ticketing systems charge by the number of customer transactions, the number of restaurant admin users, for equipment, or a combination of all three. The more business a restaurant does, the more they end up paying. As a business owner I hate such models. Adding an incremental user on my end costs a software company nothing – especially one that has a cloud based system. You may discover, in running a software company, that it is really valuable to have the prices which you can charge scale with the success of your users. It's how software companies can bid down their lower-end entry points, since we can't conveniently sell our users alcohol at 80% margins.

megablast 12y ago
> Paying up front, presumably via credit cards, means that the service experience is Uber-smooth. Just like using a group on voucher. It feels a bit weird, just leaving at the end of a meal, without having to go to the register.
- weaksauce 12y ago
  > It feels a bit weird, just leaving at the end of a meal, without having to go to the register. or walking out of an apple store with an iPad and no bag and no receipt. I enjoy the convenience and green nature of it but feel like a thief sometimes. especially since there is no "checkout register" as everyone can ring you up for the device.
  - hnriot 12y ago
    "no bag and no receipt. I enjoy the convenience and green nature" - that's because an iPad comes in a clear plastic wrapped bleached-white, non-recycled (but highly recyclable) cardboard box. There's nothing green about iPad packaging or not getting a bag. The decentralized checkout process is really just bringing the cash register to the buyer. That works for high price items like Apple sell, but wouldn't work for much else.

mlchild 12y ago

First off, wanted to say thanks to Nick and Grant for the most amazing meal of my life at Alinea, as well as several killer nights at Next and the Aviary (I was an instant convert and had to get season tickets). Secondly, this write up is incredibly rich and I really appreciated the chance to get so much insight into the success of the system so far. That said, I'm particularly interested in the next moves. You note that the network effects of OpenTable for discovery are waning, thanks to Google, but I'm not sure that's the case on desktop, and even less so on mobile. The cases I experience are: 1. I know exactly where I want to eat. In this case it's almost always easier to go to OpenTable anyway, since restaurant website design is clunky and unpredictable. 2. I have a general idea, say "mid-range Cal-Ital on Thursday." Google may be superior to OpenTable on recommendations (slightly, and I think that's debatable), and it doesn't really matter if they do a better job pulling up, say, Nopa and Rich Table, since I'm not getting in anyway. OpenTable shortens the loop between idea and execution. 3. I have no idea where I want to eat, other than, "right here, right now, and good." In this case superior mobile recommendation apps carry the day, many of which I can book through, usually via OpenTable's platform. With extensions/deeplinks/etc. picking up on Android and iOS, it seems likely that this will be further entrenched. I like the idea of more flexible and innovative reservations systems taking hold, but I'm not sure I'd discount the network effects so soon. Finally, the kiosks in restaurants that are provided (some might say forced in) by OpenTable seem like ripe opportunity, given the horrific UI and vendor lock-in. Are you considering building an iPad/tablet app to manage your systems in-restaurant? Or is the browser interface sufficiently mobile-friendly to serve this purpose? Thanks again for the write-up, really enjoyed the read. Looking forward to Next Chinese.

abalone 12y ago

The essential change is that customers put down a nonrefundable deposit for their reservation. It's hard to really assess this based on the experience of Alinea/Next/Aviary alone. This might work for the most in-demand, popular restaurants / high end bars like those but I'm skeptical it will work more broadly. Reason being it's a competitive disadvantage vs. places that don't require a deposit. Super popular places already have so much demand and competitive advantage that it may not affect them, but the average (or even above-average) restaurant may actually risk a decline in bookings by requiring deposits. I believe OpenTable actually offers cancellation fees as an optional feature; few places use it. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

rdslw 12y ago
This. Ticketing will work mostly for heavily booked and popular places.

dabernathy89 12y ago

Looks like nobody else is gonna do it, so I'll be the bad guy: this post is nearly impossible to read: tiny, white (and sometimes black) text on a dark gray background. Judging by the other comments, it's a great piece, I just wish it were easier to read :)

chime 12y ago
No images but https://www.readability.com/articles/rs8nq3xr https://www.readability.com/articles/rs8nq3xr is readable. I use rdd.me all the time just for this purpose.
e2e8 12y ago
You want to know what I did? I disabled CSS. Suddenly the page is ultra readable like 1999. Works everywhere too.

jonstewart 12y ago

One thing I don't see mentioned in the blogpost or in the comments is the discussion that ticketing gets you deferred revenue, i.e., float. They get to pay for most of their COGS with cash instead of credit, and earn interest in the process. This seems like the most fundamental improvement to the restaurant business, but maybe not something they want to highlight on their blog.

j_s 12y ago

Edit: author addressed this issue elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7856212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7856212 The claim in the article regarding people feeling disappointed after winning an auction for a table doesn't address the fact that people are 'paying for access alone' by purchasing from scalpers. There are other ways to address this issue: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/27/196277836/kid-rock-takes-on-the-scalpers http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/27/196277836/kid-rock... As seen last year: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101161

joshdance 12y ago

Really liked it. Just interesting that they use Internet Explorer.

smackfu 12y ago

It's interesting that there are any short-sat no-shows anymore. That is literally a free meal at an amazing restaurant.

jljljl 12y ago

One question I didn't see covered in the article: Are the restaurant tickets transferrable? Can I sell my ticket to someone else if I can't make the date or something comes up? I imagine this would be a nice feature, but might open up a lot of complications