Skift Restaurants Forum Preview: OpenTable CEO on Evolving With the Times
Photo Caption: OpenTable CEO Christa Quarles will speak about the company's efforts at this year's Skift Restaurants Forum. OpenTable
Skift Take
For the past couple years, most talk about OpenTable has centered on its threat from competitors. But perhaps a healthy dose of competition is helping to drive change at the company that's still the leading provider of restaurant reservations in the country.
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OpenTable launched in 1998, well before the types of restaurant technology we're familiar with were viable businesses. In its 20 years, the company has evolved to meet a changing industry while weathering plenty of change itself, from a 2009 initial public offering to its 2014 acquisition by the Priceline Group (now Booking Holdings). Christa Quarles was named CEO of the company in 2015, and is now tasked with leading the high-profile company (with 47,000 restaurant customers globally) into what's next. "There used to be one way way to run a restaurant in 1995 and there’s a very different way to run a restaurant in 2018," she said. The challenge: continuing to innovate at the