Quick reservation with no need to call

Easy and convenient. Painless way to make a quick restaurant reservations without being put on hold or talking to a person. Can view manu and everything there is to know about restaurant I'm looking at online.

Pros

I have been using open table on both sides. I use it to make my personal restaurant reservations and I use it at the restaurant I work for as a server. I love that when I view restaurants and want to make a reservation about 70% of total restaurants have open table. Its quick and painless way to make a reservation without being put on hold by a hostess..sometimes for very very long time. It give you chose of time and you can read all about the place you looking at. It shows you :hours, Entertainment, menu, you see photos that costumers posted, you see map of location, even who the chef is. Making reservation takes less then 10 seconds!!!! Fast and confident. As a worker it's very easy to operate system. Brainless I would say. I like that I can make notes for each reservation. Such a sever request or allergy.

Cons

For my personal use I never had an issue. As me working with open table every here and then reservations are not showing on my side as hostess/server. I had few angry guest. Will never know if that was a costumer fult or open table system fult for not processing reservation.

Love Open Table!

OpenTable is wonderful, not only do they have fast and professional customer service, they're also improving the software everyday. I love that we can train our hosts quickly and use the software to make it an enjoyable dining experience for our guests.

Pros

From a sales perspective, Open Table is fantastic at making sure we have plotted the proper rooms for private events. It is constantly making suggestions and making sure we're in the right time slots for turning tables. For our FOH manangers, it is very easy to train on which makes it less time consuming in the host training process. Guest center is also a great hub to check reviews, see your seating from an app on your phone and make any changes on the go. Love the pop up function and notes section to make sure our hosts have all the information they need. OTrestaurant.com is also wonderful to make sure we have all the right marketing tools turned on and become available to our guests. It is important that our guests have an ease of use to make a reservation and with the bonus points they receive from booking on open table it is just a plus for us to use the software.

Cons

Not a con, but we would love to see Open Table integrate with private dining software to make plotting private events faster.

Not only great for reservations......

OpenTable has been great for running the dining room more efficiently, and allows us to maximize our reservations and table turns like never before. Our hosts can confidently run the dining room from the tablet at the host stand and deal with all the reservations, walk ins, call aheads, using a waiting list. Everything is very easy to manage. With the ability to enter such succinct information about each table sat as to where they are in their meal, whether it is appetizer, meal, dessert, is the check on the table....it makes it much easier to estimate when a table will be done, so we can quote guests the proper wait time. I have been thoroughly impressed with OpenTable since we started using it a few years ago.

Pros

Most everything you can do with this software is very intuitive. Very easy to learn how to do multiple things very quickly and very easy to teach my other employees to do the same. I love how I can run my dining room on a busy weekend night from my tablet and be in complete control of all reservations, walk ins, and call aheads.

Cons

Very few issues with this software. If i had to come up with one for the review, i would say that it can be slightly buggy every once in awhile. What i mean is, some settings that i have changed to block tables for reservations or reconfigure the dining room setup can revert to previous settings without my doing. Once in a blue moon, but it is very frustrating when it happens.

Not worth it unless you are a major chain with 300 seats

Not enough to list. Exposure, but it's limited for smaller companies.

Pros

It allows you to assign tables in the restaurant as they come in and shoes a fairly good job of tracking several metrics like turn time, server cover counts, etc. It also has ways to advertise and draw in customers who may not know about you.

Cons

It's impossible to compete. With the difficulty in finding a restaurant as a customer it translates to moe exposure for larger chain restaurants with budgets to throw at open table. Also, it's pricey. The cost per guest that books is unreasonable and you still have to pay more to advertise. It's just not worth it in my opinion. That are cheaper methods available that focus on phone number advertising as opposed to email (because who opens email nowadays). There are text message options with open table but they are buried and not effective.

Halfway there, but needs help

Table reservation management is the basic goal, and attracting new patrons is also right up there. On the latter, OT is only fair. They used to be better about bringing in new people, but seem to have changed their algorithm. But it's not as bad as the money grubbers at Yelp who go out of their way to prevent people from seeing your restaurant name unless you pay them absurd amounts.

Pros

OT is a reasonably priced reservation system that is reliable and straightforward to use. It offers more extensive services for a large operation, but in its minimal form is easy for a small (35-45 seat) restaurant to use without dedicating a person to managing it.

Cons

The mobile app could be great, but isn't. There are three ways to interact: PC Web, Mobile Web, and Mobile App (Android in my case). They all have slightly different functionality, for no good reason. - Example 1: The mobile app lets you see previous times a patron came in; mobile Web and PC Web only tell you the number, not the dates. But the mobile app doesn't give you control over scheduling and such. So you find yourself flipping among multiple devices to get your job done. - Example 2: Mobile Web and mobile app require constant re-login. PC does not. - Example 3: PC works reliably to see reservations, but after a period of inactivity, stops allowing interaction (such as setting a guest to "Seated"). A browser refresh is required. Exasperating!