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Comment by bschne | Hacker News Reader

I've been following this somewhat because I learned about Tock, a Chicago startup founded by one of the Co-Founders/Owners of the Alinea restaurant. [1]

Their founder Nick Kokonas is quite interesting and seems to have a bit of an ongoing fight with OpenTable, Tock even built a tool where restaurants can analyze if they're paying too much for OpenTable's services [2].

If it interests you, check out his interview on Tim Ferris' podcast, it's well worth the listen. [3]

[1] https://www.exploretock.com/join/ [2] https://medium.com/tock/weve-built-a-website-to-check-if-you... [3] https://tim.blog/2018/10/18/nick-kokonas/

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Tock's cofounder is Brian Fitzpatrick, who founded Google's Chicago office (and the data liberation front). Great guy. https://www.red-bean.com/fitz/bio/

Fight is probably a strong word. They just think people are not really analyzing whether they are actually getting value for it :)

> who founded Google's Chicago office (and the data liberation front).

And also SVN. And apparently Apple, developing webapps, which I really don't understand since it doesn't seem like they have a (any really) strong corporate consulting arm.

I hate Tock, and my wife and I will not eat at any restaurant that requires that we use them. Eating out is not just about acquiring food. It's a social ritual, and paying for the meal at the end is an essential part of that ritual, the culmination of mutual trust between a diner and a restaurateur. Tock's pay-up-front business model destroys that trust. The not-so-subtle message to the customer is, "We don't trust you to pay." But that knife cuts both ways: if you get my money up front, why should I trust you not to cut corners on the meal that you provide?

I get that restaurants have to protect themselves against no-shows, and I have no problem handing over a credit card number so that they can charge a no-show fee. But paying the entire cost of the meal up front is a line that I won't cross. There are too many excellent alternatives out there still doing business the old fashioned way, thank God.

Tock's business model is about people who make reservations and don't show up (or try to resell the reservations, etc), which is a huge issue for restaurants.

It's also about who the relationship is with. OpenTable, as you can see, believes the relationship is between you and OpenTable. Tock generally believes it is between you and the restaurant.

It's not at all about whether you can pay or not.

You must not have read my comment all the way through, because I explicitly said:

"I get that restaurants have to protect themselves against no-shows, and I have no problem handing over a credit card number so that they can charge a no-show fee."

> It's not at all about whether you can pay or not.

I never said it was.

I did read your comment. I just found it mostly not worth responding to your suggestion, honestly. But let's do it anyway.

""I get that restaurants have to protect themselves against no-shows, and I have no problem handing over a credit card number so that they can charge a no-show fee."

Did you ever consider this may not be at all a viable product model, given it's been tried and failed miserably?

IE your solution may not be a solution that works.

If your level of trust is that you expect restaurants to cut corners if you pay up front, i guess i'd suggest not letting other human beings prepare food for you, since they already paid in advance for the ingredients, and so they already have an incentive to cut corners in your model regardless of Tock or not.

Put another way, before you eat, you have already cost them money whether you eat there or not, and whether you use Tock or not. Additionally, basically all menus are fixed price and the tips don't got to the restaurant. So there is no reason people will cut corners more due to tock.

> it's been tried and failed miserably

That's news to me. Restaurants that I eat at do this all the time. Reference?

(I have a very hard time believing that now-show fees fail while pay-up-front succeeds. It makes no sense that consumers would accept the latter but not the former.)

You are probably not eating at the kinds of restaurants that are Tock's mainstay. In San Francisco, that's places like Atelier Crenn and Saison. A no-show at Alinea or Crenn is not the same thing as a no-show at The Publican or Zuni Cafe. They're all great restaurants, but The Publican and Zuni will chug along just fine with no-shows, while Alinea has every single 4-top in the place intricately planned out a week in advance.

Not all the restaurants on Tock are pre-paid, for whatever that's worth to you.

LOL. We've eaten at every 3-star Michelin restaurant in the Bay Area (we did Meadowood before they signed on to Tock) and four of the 3-stars in NYC (one of them lost a star since we were there). We're regulars at Manresa. We've eaten at four of the six two-stars in the BA (we won't do Atelier Crenn because Tock). (BTW, one of the two-stars was absolutely horrible. We didn't walk out, but we would never go back.) We ate at and fell in love with Gabriel Kreuther just before they received their second star, and at Meadowood just after they got their third one. We've been doing this for a long time.

Michelin doesn't give stars to LA restaurants any more, but when we lived there we were regulars at Patina, Spago and Providence (and the Water Grill before the chef quit to go to Providence).

So yeah, I'm pretty sure we are solidly in Tock's target audience.

> Not all the restaurants on Tock are pre-paid, for whatever that's worth to you.

Not even FaceBook is 100% evil.

I deliberately chose the restaurant comparisons I did to avoid this bogus response. It's not my contention that you're unfamiliar with fine dining. I'm saying something different, and if you reread my comment, I think you may find it.

A good clue that your response is out of line is that you started it with "LOL". I do that too, all the time (more often, the single-word sentence "What."), and have learned to notice it as a tell that I'm writing something I'm not going to be happy having said later. The edits I make when that happens always improve my writing.

Then I'm sorry, but you're going to have to be more explicit about the point you were trying to make because I don't see it.

> You are probably not eating at the kinds of restaurants that are Tock's mainstay. In San Francisco, that's places like Atelier Crenn and Saison.

Atelier Crenn has two stars. Saison has three. (And I have in fact been to Saison.)

> The Publican or Zuni Cafe

Neither of these has a star and both of them use OpenTable, not Tock. I have not been to either one.

So I'm sorry, but I am utterly at a loss as to what point you were trying to make.

Dusek's, Entente, Parachute, Sepia, and Roister† have stars in Chicago, and I stand a pretty good chance of getting a same-day reservation at any of them, and a walk-in at some of them. Michelin stars have nothing to do with my point, which you seem to have taken as "I think you eat at Burger King", which I do not.

My point is that lots of fine-dining restaurants can metabolize a no-show in ways that restaurants like Atelier Crenn and Alinea cannot. Kokonas claims that a single no-show at Alinea is the difference between a profitable and unprofitable day for them. That's obviously not the case at Zuni. That's why Atelier Crenn is on Tock, and Zuni is on OpenTable. Which is the point 'DannyBee was making.

† Roister, which is in the Alinea group, is on Tock, and is an a la carte restaurant and, like all a la carte restaurants, can't possibly charge the meal up front because they're not prix fixe. Once again: plenty of a la carte restaurants are also on Tock, presumably because Tock is a better partner for restaurants than OpenTable is and is certainly a more pleasant experience for customers.

OK, but I still cannot tell what the distinguishing characteristic of "restaurants like Atelier Crenn and Alinea" is supposed to be if not that they are high-end restaurants by some metric. The idea that all of these restaurants are on Tock because there is no other way for them to survive is manifestly untrue because some of them were open and thriving before Tock existed.

(BTW, since you offered a critique of my writing style, let me reciprocate: you are playing a game where you are making me guess at the point you are trying to make, and then giving me a hard time when my guess turns out to be wrong. That is childish, and more than a little annoying.)

Also, FWIW, I don't dispute that the restaurant business is extremely difficult. I certainly understand why restaurants want to charge up front, just as I understand why software developers would rather sell subscriptions than licenses. All I'm saying is that I don't like it, and I will not do business with anyone who adopts either of those models if I can avoid it (and in the case of restaurants, I can). I'm not saying anything about what anyone else on either side of the transaction should or should not do.

I just wrote out what the distinction is. One kind of restaurant has every seating planned out weeks in advance and may be driven into an unprofitable night by a single no-show; the other has reservations available on much less notice and can metabolize a no-show without altering the overall economics of the restaurant. It is the case that all the former restaurants happen to be prix fixe fine dining restaurants. It is not the case that all prix fixe fine dining restaurants are in the former category.

I can get a same-day table at Momotaro or Kai Zan in Chicago. I can also pre-pay for an omakase seating at Kyoten. Stipulate that they're places of comparable quality. Momotaro and Kai Zan are traditional restaurants. Kyoten is a 9-seat omakase-only restaurant that does two seatings a night. Momotaro and Kai Zan are on OpenTable; Kyoten, for obvious reasons, won't be.

Things sucked for restaurants before Tock, and suck somewhat less now, so the fact that restaurants sucked it up and ate the costs of no-shows before Tock existed is not a persuasive argument.

Because you've made a moral argument out of it, I'm going to keep pointing out that Tock hosts a la carte restaurants just like OpenTable, and, for obvious reasons, doesn't demand prepayment for them.

> you've made a moral argument out of it,

No, I don't believe I have. I've just stated my personal opinion.

Tock's pay-up-front business model destroys that trust. The not-so-subtle message to the customer is, "We don't trust you to pay."

OK, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree about this. I think that's a statement of fact, not a moral judgement about Tock.

OK, but you're clear now that Tock is not actually premised on the idea that you have to pre-pay for all the restaurants you go to. To a consumer, it's just like OpenTable, except that it has better restaurants on it, including some that won't use OpenTable because their economics work better pre-paid.

I understand not going to Kyoten or Atelier Crenn because you don't want to pre-pay (also, because you don't want to pay $450/person before drinks). I don't understand not going to Roister or Petit Crenn Brunch, both of which are a la carte and neither pre-paid, simply because they're on Tock.

> you're clear now that Tock is not actually premised on the idea that you have to pre-pay for all the restaurants you go to.

Yes, but I didn't actually know that before. Every encounter I have had with Tock has been pay-ahead, and so I assumed that was their business model.

BTW, w.r.t. passing moral judgement, I'm surprised that you didn't pick the more low-lying fruit:

> Not even FaceBook is 100% evil.

That was a moral judgement, but about Facebook, not directly about Tock. I don't like Tock because they (AFAICT) enable and encourage the pay-ahead model, which I don't like. But I wouldn't call them evil.

> I don't understand not going to Roister or Petit Crenn Brunch, both of which are a la carte and neither pre-paid, simply because they're on Tock.

I had never heard of either of these places before you mentioned them, but no, I would not boycott them simply because they're on Tock.

I think Facebook is pretty evil! I just think Tock is a lot less evil than OpenTable. :)

You may well be right about that. One of the things that makes FB evil is that it is not immediately apparent that they are.

I hope that in a distant future, when the world is encased in ice and the alien archaeologists have landed to gain some clue about the extinct species that put up the satellites and left some landers on the moon, the one remnant of human civilization they find is this Hacker News exchange.

This is why we take you to the goat-soup-only restaurants.

Be fair. They had homemade tortillas & you could bring in beer.

Allegedly put landers on the moon.

Ticketing systems like Tock are speaking to that mutual trust. Reservations are another form of mutual trust in the restaurant interaction. You're making a promise to show up and they're promising to hold a table for you. But that's a very uneven trust. You can bail with no consequence to you, while the restaurant gets screwed. I see no problem in leveling the playing field.

Besides restaurants are the outlier. Most experience-based services have a pay-up-front model: concerts, sports games, transportation, conferences, movies, etc. The reason restaurants generally don't is because the cost isn't usually predictable up front for each person. For fine prix fixe dining, it is.

> But that's a very uneven trust. You can bail with no consequence to you, while the restaurant gets screwed.

Yes, that's true.

> I see no problem in leveling the playing field.

Neither do I. That's why I wrote:

"I get that restaurants have to protect themselves against no-shows, and I have no problem handing over a credit card number so that they can charge a no-show fee."

You are the second person I've had to point this out to. Good grief, doesn't anyone actually read the comments they are responding to (or downvoting)?

People are calling out that your argument is pointing to the wrong step in the trust interplay. A ticketing system is not at all about a restaurant not trusting you to pay at the end of the meal and 100% about guaranteeing that you'll show up in the first place.

As you say, you're fine with restaurants addressing the reservation trust imbalance, but you apparently don't like the way a ticketing system accomplishes that. Why? Because you don't like the way it feels as an experience?

> Why? Because you don't like the way it feels as an experience?

Yes. Exactly.

Imagine if you took the menu of the French Laundry and served it in a McDonalds. The exact same food. Would you still pay $300 a plate?

If the ticketing system significantly detracts from the experience for you, then you shouldn't eat at those restaurants. That makes sense. But if you're arguing that restaurants that implement a ticketing system lead to a decline in quality or actual dining experience, then you'll have to provide some evidence.

I disagree that restaurants that use a ticketing system lose their incentive to deliver the best experience they can. These aren't one-off encounters. Repeat business, reputation, reviews, and word of mouth are all based on the actual experience. If the food or atmosphere is bad, then a fine dining place won't last, regardless of the payment dynamics they have.

> if you're arguing that restaurants that implement a ticketing system lead to a decline in quality or actual dining experience, then you'll have to provide some evidence.

I am not saying that this has happened, only that the pay-in-full-in-advance model removes one of the incentives that keeps it from happening. It may be that the removal of this incentive won't actually change anything, I don't know.

> These aren't one-off encounters

In the case of high-end restaurants, they often are. Not very many people can afford to be regulars at the French Laundry.

> If the food or atmosphere is bad, then a fine dining place won't last,

Maybe. But at the extreme high end, a restaurant can let things slide and coast on its reputation for a pretty long time.

So what happens in the hypothetical that the food sucks and the bill for $300 comes to you. Do you just not pay?

You are implicitly believing in their reputation by selecting the fine dining establishment. I don't really do fine dining so excuse me if this is ignorant, but it seems to me you don't really have recourse after the fact.

Problem is that there are millions of potential customers all who may or may not be flakes. When business could be make or break by one reservation backing out, they have much more to lose way more often than you having an awful experience at a reputable establishment. Tock makes sense in this scenario but you seem like you're being completely unempathetic to the economics of the situation.

> So what happens in the hypothetical that the food sucks and the bill for $300 comes to you. Do you just not pay?

The one time this actually happened to me we walked out before we actually got any food. But yes, we didn't pay (obviously). If we'd paid ahead it would have been a real problem.

> Problem is that there are millions of potential customers all who may or may not be flakes.

Yes, I understand that, and I am not unsympathetic to the restaurant's need to mitigate this risk somehow. But fobbing 100% of the risk back onto the customer is not the right answer IMHO, and any restaurant that does this is not going to get my business. There are lots of other possibilities (50% up front, no-show fee, reputation tracking) that I would be happy to sign up for, but not that.

TBH, convention seems to play a big role in what people expect/tolerate in terms of up-front payment, cancelation fees, and so forth. Some restaurants do require a deposit to hold a reservation that you lose if you don't cancel far enough in advance. But that's uncommon and pretty off-putting to many people.

I believe they have restaurants that don’t require upfront payments, or “ticket” resales?

I get it for some of the destination restaurants. If a three star Michelin restaurant is in the countryside of Spain, they have to protect against last minute cancellations, and even no show fees would probably be less revenue than the full meal price. We could argue on the merits of whether that type of restaurant should be seen as a similar experience as theatre, but since people seem to, the model makes logical sense to me at the high end.

The difference between restaurant and theatre is that in the theatre everyone is getting the exact same product at the exact same time (with the only variant being seating location). Restaurants are more personalized. Even high-end restaurants that only offer tasting menus will make adjustments based on individual tastes, preferences, allergies, etc. At least most of the time. Here's a data point:

My wife and I are frequent patrons of high-end restaurants. 99% of the time we have a great meal, but very occasionally we have an experience that is an absolute nightmare. On one occasion we went to a very well known (two Michelin star) restaurant in the Bay Area. They offered both a tasting menu and a la carte options. When we made the reservation (by phone) we told them that 1) we wanted to do the tasting menu but 2) my wife doesn't eat red meat. They said no problem.

Well, it was a problem. When we asked if they would substitute the red meat courses on the tasting menu they refused. We even offered to pay the price of a fish course from the a la carte menu. They still refused. (It was the chef who refused. The rest of the staff were as mortified as we were.) So we walked out, which we have not done before or since.

So I know for a fact from first hand experience that even a high end restaurant will occasionally treat their customers like shit. When that happens, I want to retain my leverage.

Fair point. Shows and concerts are a one-to-many versus a many-to-many experiences. Everyone hears the same sound versus your steak is perfect and mine is overdone. Although, Broadway shows can have alternative actors perform though in case the main actor gets sick, Lebron James gets hurt, etc.

I've never walked out of a restaurant after the food was served. I've had poor experiences at nice restaurants where little was done to remedy the situation, and I've had times where simply moving tables resulted in a free meal.

I realize Yelp and Tripadvisor have been known to hide or remove bad reviews, but this often is the best recourse of action along with contacting the manager or owner, or potentially disputing the charge with your cc company.

I'm not sure if Tock has any policy specifically in this instance? My guess would be that they leave it to the you and the restaurant to figure out?

Interestingly enough, the co-founder of Tock and Alinea just had a public dispute with Cat Cora of "Iron Chef." I've been to Alinea and Next, and had incredible service, but things happen.

I believe they have restaurants that don’t require upfront payments, or “ticket” resales?

This is true.

They will be out of business.

It only works in extremely high end ( think $400/per person ) kind of places with super limited seating. Or in a fast casual place that competes with the likes of Chipotle.

> The not-so-subtle message to the customer is, "We don't trust you to pay." But that knife cuts both ways: if you get my money up front, why should I trust you not to cut corners on the meal that you provide?

Because the mostly-anonymous diner has effectively no reputation to lose by not showing up. The restaurant has everything to lose by not continuing to produce good meals that satisfy their customers.

But that's not true. When I reserve on OpenTable, if I don't show up, that goes on my OT record, or at least I presume it does. And I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm proud of the fact that I don't screw restaurants (even though I easily could), and I want them to know that.

Also, we've had a few absolutely horrible experiences at some very high end restaurants. One case was so egregious that we actually walked out. Maybe our experience was unusual, but if a restaurant consistently treats its customers badly it's going to fail whether or not it collects the money up front. And if a restaurant does treat me like shit, I want to have some recourse other than just bitching and moaning about it.

> if I don't show up, that goes on my OT record

... but, who cares? If I somehow behaved badly enough to get banned, I could just reserve a table with a new OT account, or just call the restaurant; it's not like they ask for references and do a background check before taking the reservation. A "bad OT table record", if such a thing even exists, costs you nothing.

> ... but, who cares?

Well, I presume the restaurants care. If I'm a chronic no-show, a restaurant may not accept a reservation from me, or maybe limit me to off-peak times. I can think of a lot of ways that information could be effectively leveraged.

On the other hand, by having customers pre-pay, the restaurant is making sure that there are not reserved seats left empty due to no-shows, which means they are more likely to serve a full restaurant, they have a better idea ahead of time how much food will get eaten, and the end result mean less waste and they can provide better service and prices.

by having customers pre-pay, the restaurant is making sure that there are not reserved seats left empty due to no-shows, which means they are more likely to serve a full restaurant

When the restaurant charges a no-show fee, and then still fills the table with walk-ins, then the restaurant actually makes more money on people not showing up. It's not like if someone misses their reservation the restaurant leave the table empty for 90 minutes.

On the other hand, reservations are an added value on top of the services provided by a restaurant, so it makes sense to charge extra. A restaurant is under no obligation to give reservations, and if they're always busy (e.g. if a reservation is helpful to you) then reservations don't confer any benefit to the restaurant.

Absolutely. If a restaurant wants to charge me for a reservation on top of the cost of the meal, and make me pay up front for that, I would have no problem with it at all. I like that a lot better than asking me to pay for the entire meal up front. But that's a very different model, with very different price-discovery dynamics, than what Tock does.

If I'm gathering your perspective correctly from this thread you're saying that you expect a place that charges $350 minimum per seat and is in competition with the finest culinary establishments in the world with the highest tier of service will take shortcuts with your meal, and when you notice and complain, their likely response is "too bad, sucker, we already have your money". Is that right?

Yes. The way you phrase it makes it sound unreasonable but I have actually had a few very bad experiences at high end restaurants.

Fair enough. I have as well, but it's never gone uncorrected once I speak up. Even in cheap places that I've ordered delivery from leaning more towards the speed and convenience than quality, they tend to fix their mistakes when pointed out in my overall experience.

Yes, that's been my experience in 99% of the cases too. But it's precisely because high-end places are so expensive that this matters. If I go to Chipotle and pay $5 for a burrito that turns out to be sub-par, it just doesn't matter that much. If I'm paying $400 a plate, it matters. There's risk on both sides of this transaction.

Interesting, I see it from exactly the opposite perspective. By paying up front I’m putting forth trust and an expectation that the restaurant will do right by me or make it right through a refund at the end if I’m dissatisfied. I can’t say I’ve ever been in a position where I’ve been so dissatisfied with a meal that I’d use the fact that I haven’t yet paid to assert control over the situation. The friction reduction gained by being able to depart without worrying about the overhead of paying at the end is a win 99 times where paying at the end is a win maybe one time. I guess it depends what you consider to be an essential part of the ritual.

You only get to leave without the friction if you don't order any drinks or wine, but I can definitely see the appeal. We go on a lot of cruises, and being able to get up and go without waiting for the check is nice.

I'm wondering if this is how the world is going. Compromise on something or you won't get service. (my peeve is compromise on privacy to participate)

On one hand, a friend of mine runs a contracting business has told me that the people who put down a substantial deposit are good customers. The ones who want to pay nothing up front are the ones who cause trouble at payment time.

I kind of thought the price of the meal was what kept things exclusive, but not actually excluding people via tactics like this.

I like Tock because it encourages efficiency through dynamic pricing. A 5 PM Tuesday dinner should not cost as much as an 8 PM Saturday dinner.

Which is a large part of why lunches tend to be cheaper and happy hours exist. (Though the prevalence of happy hour food deals seems to vary a lot by location.)

OTOH, people don't necessarily like to have their noses rubbed in the fact that there's only a loose correlation between meal price and the restaurant's variable ingredients cost.

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