Skift Take
The work of one rogue OpenTable employee underscores both the escalating competition in the reservations space and the real-life effects of a restaurant no-show.
OpenTable has terminated an employee it says made fraudulent reservations on Reserve, a competing reservations platform, in an effort to deliberately harm the company with no-show diners.
In an open letter to restaurants, CEO Christa Quarles apologized and made no excuses about the behavior, calling it "disgraceful." Quarles says OpenTable will reimburse affected restaurants for lost revenue.
According to Eater, the employee made "several hundred" reservations at 45 Chicago restaurants on Reserve using fake accounts. Reserve noticed the suspicious activity and traced it back to OpenTable. According to the story, the employee planned to use the falsely-inflated no-show rates to convince affected restaurants that OpenTable was a superior product.
OpenTable says the employee in question "was not in a sales function and had no managerial duties."
No-Show No-Nos
To the casual observer, a no-show on a reservation may not seem like a huge deal — a restaurant could simply offer the table to someone else. It's not that simple, though, as restaurants use reservations and bookings to plan for service, structure food orders, arrange the dining room, and predict sales on any given day. No-shows cost restaurants real money, so creating intentionally f
