Hacker News Reader

Comment by d2viant | Hacker News Reader

That's not a huge barrier though. The restaurant didn't have some outlay of capital for that hardware that is going to motivate their decision to switch. When they cancel their OpenTable contract, they'll just send the hardware back.

This seems like an opportune space for a startup to compete in. You could easily sell the online reservation service for a fraction of what OT is charging and just skip the hardware nonsense. The hardware and table management system could be a separate product or service.

View on HN

I would hope so, but I remember reading that the hardware was one of the keys to their success; "here plug this in, it will do your table management. And by the way, people can make reservations now too." Maybe now a competitor could get by just having a really good ipad app for the restaurants (is this what urban spoon's rez is?)

Here's what I'm thinking. I'm already working on a startup, so I'll give this one away for free.

Build the web app portion that allows reservations to be made from the customers perspective, just like they have now. Integrate it with Twilio so that the restaurant receives an automated call and can confirm/deny the reservation on their end, without having to deal with a bunch of new hardware. You just tell them that they're going to receive a phone call with the reservation information and the options. There's little or no training required on their side, no additional hardware, minimal integration, no new systems. It's a more organic transition for a restaurant when you're trying to talk them into becoming a customer.

You're missing half of the equation - It's not just the act of performing the reservation, it allows customers to search for to see if which restaurants have availability (and at what time). You can't do that unless you have access to all of their seating data, including walk-ins.

Yup, and accessing table availability requires integrating with the restaurant's point of sale system so you can track when tables are getting seated and cleared.

Innovating technology wise in the restaurant space is pretty tough cause sooner or later you're going to hit the wall of having to integrate with a dozen or more point of sale providers, no matter what you're trying to do (mobile/online ordering, reservation/waitlist systems, reporting systems, etc).

Oh, and because of their incredibly low profit margins, most restaurants can't afford to buy this type of tech. And the ones that do typically keep it for 5+ years between upgrades.

How bad is the barrier to entry though on the software side really? It's my understanding that Micros/Aloha (Radiant Systems) own 50-80% of the restaurant industry. If you hit that percentage with just two integrations it's really not that bad right?

Micros and Aloha are definitely the biggest two, and it makes the most sense to start there. But you also have to keep in mind that they both have multiple product lines (plus legacy systems), each with different capabilities and SDKs.

The worst part is dealing across vendors though. The APIs are incredibly inconsistent between them, and some are frankly, crippled.

who is going to disrupt the restaurant business by offering both the web-based POS AND reservation system bundled into a single product/service?

solves the problem of having access to seating data and provides a compelling upgrade option compared to alternatives. hardware just needs to be a "dumb" Internet terminal (likely with a touch screen and print capabilities).

OpenTable is 24/7 and from the customer's perspective, instantaneous. A phone-based backend would not be able to compete.

I had this idea about 2 months ago and thought quite seriously about it, for the reasons you described.

But there are a lot of issues. How do you confirm to the customer that their booking went through? What if no-one answers? The customer experience just isn't that great.

The other big barrier is integrating their reservation system with whatever point of sale system the restaurant is using. (Of which there are many. All with different SDKs. Most of which cost lots of money to get access to).

A reservation/waitlist system that doesn't interact with the restaurant's point of sale system is mostly pointless as you need to be able to track real time table availability.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com