Reserve Out to Snag Tables from OpenTable

We’re reaching a point where we’ve never had so many options when it comes to setting up reservations at a restaurant, and that’s not a bad thing at all.

Throw in our new payment options, advance ordering options, and others and the whole notion of going out to eat has never been so smooth. Reserve for Restaurants, a new reservation app, is stepping in to take a slice out of OpenTable’s market.

Reserve for Restaurants gives restaurants the ability to better follow customers within a restaurant, and for chain restaurants, from one facility to another.

The restaurant can get a better handle on what’s liked and isn’t based on that information, and allows the restaurant to better focus its offerings accordingly.

A set of customer relationship management (CRM) tools are included, and there’s even the ability to juggle wait lists and the like to help get people seated as fast as possible.

Those who want to bring it to their own restaurant can do so for $99 a month—and “no cover charge”—along with a free reservation widget.

For that $99 a month, restaurants can take on an unlimited number of reservations, so there’s no need to worry about one month being particularly busy while other months are flat; it’s always the same fee.

There’s also a Web-based portal in Reserve.com, a tool that allows its users—regular diners, for the most part—to browse information about Reserve for Restaurants users and make reservations accordingly.

Right now, there are about 500 such restaurants on hand, mostly in major cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

With an ever-increasing number of restaurants out there covering just about every kind of food imaginable, keeping the lines moving along and the process as smooth as possible is a welcome development.

An app like Reserve should go a long way toward keeping the lines moving and people dining happily, and will likely become table stakes before too much longer.

The sheer number of restaurants makes competition difficult; customers can have everything from a sandwich to a four-course prix fixe banquet, and when there’s this many replacement goods in a market, defining value becomes more than a matter of cost.

Businesses need to distinguish themselves in other ways, and Reserve for Restaurants may be just the thing to draw people’s attention and keep them coming back.