OpenTable Restaurant Reservations

It’s Friday night and I have a problem. I want to have a nice dinner with my girlfriend but forgot to book, and she was really looking forward to going somewhere nice….

Enter opentable.com, a website that let’s you quickly see which restaurants have seats available and instantly confirm reservations.

I am a huge fan of the service, which is a breeze to use and has major restaurants available in their system. And I am not alone, as the site already claims to provide one million reservations a month.

In their own words:

OpenTable is the leading supplier of reservation, table management and guest management software for restaurants. In addition, the company operates www.opentable.com, the world’s most popular website for making restaurant reservations online.

With more than 5,000 restaurant customers throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Hong-Kong, Japan and Mexico, the OpenTable hardware and software system replaces pen-and-paper at the host stand. It automates the process of taking reservations and managing tables, while allowing restaurants to build robust diner databases for superior guest recognition and targeted e-mail marketing.

Bookings are free and you can change and modify them with a click of the mouse.
… after 6 months of use I already got a cheque for $25 to spend at any Opentable restaurant.

Some features I would love to see incorporated in future versions:

Still, Opentable is a website I can’t live without, and I can’t wait to see more of the great restaurants in NYC signing up to the service.