Everything in life is a "stopgap". In an ideal world we wouldn't need to make reservations at all, our phones would just sense that we were heading toward a restaurant and would work directly with people there to ensure we have a table and our food is ready and paid for by the time we get there.

But we don't live in an ideal world, and making a "perfect" system that nobody uses is useless.

This is a solution that real people can take advantage of right now for many places that don't have the budget or time to integrate with every service out there. It's an real solution to a real problem, and I don't think calling it "show and tell" is fair just because you can think of a "technically better" solution in 5 minutes that you'll never be able to roll out to 90%+ of stores and services out there.

"Don't let perfect be the enemy of good"