Dining Around with Gene Burns - Part II
February 11, 2006
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Ms. BISHARAT: Some real nice restaurants still have a couple openings. If you don't find the restaurant you want, there are a couple other things you can do though--couple other suggestions. One thing you can do is you can keep checking, because the wonderful thing about OpenTable is when someone has to cancel--let's say their babysitter suddenly is unavailable or they feel ill that morning and hit the cancel button--that table will immediately pop back online.
BURNS: Oh.
Ms. BISHARAT: So you can keep checking. And the ideal time to check actually is Tuesday, because most of the cancellations will come in on Tuesday.
BURNS: Is that right?
Ms. BISHARAT: That's right, the last 24 hours.
BURNS: And do we know why or...?
Ms. BISHARAT: Well, because it's at that last moment where people discover that they're not well--
BURNS: They just can't do it.
Ms. BISHARAT: ...or their babysitter--
BURNS: Or they're not feeling well.
Ms. BISHARAT: ...is ill...
BURNS: Yeah.
Ms. BISHARAT: ...or whatever...
BURNS: You're not saying on any Tuesday; you're talking about Valentine's Day Tuesday.
Ms. BISHARAT: Actually, I'm talking about Valentine's Day, but generally if you're looking for a cancellation, it's going to come in in the last 24 hours. If you're looking to--
BURNS: OK. So, in other words, if you're looking for a table next Saturday, the cancellations will come in the 24 hours preceding the...
Ms. BISHARAT: Generally.
BURNS: Generally.
Ms. BISHARAT: You have a greater likelihood. Now, if you're--if you really want a table for Valentine's Day at a particular restaurant or in a particular neighborhood, I would start checking now, because--
BURNS: Oh yeah.
Ms. BISHARAT: ...it's you know...
BURNS: I would have started checking a month ago. But if you find yourself in a world of hurt, you might want to check now. And if you're in pursuit of that particular table, particularly at the moment the restaurant is fully subscribed, then you really need to check periodically, and you need to really be on top of it.
Ms. BISHARAT: Check as often you can. All you have to do is keep hitting that search button.
BURNS: Right.
Ms. BISHARAT: And when that table gets released, if it gets released, you're going to see it. There's one other thing you can do, Gene, which a lot of people are doing, which is deciding that there are other days next week that are equally romantic to dine on.
BURNS: Yeah, it doesn't have to be Valentine's Day.
Ms. BISHARAT: A lot of people--we are seeing amount of people between this Saturday all the way through next Saturday.
BURNS: Yeah.
Ms. BISHARAT: A lot of people are telling their spouses or their dates, perhaps because they waited until the last minute--
BURNS: Right.
Ms. BISHARAT: We don't know. Let's go out next Saturday night.
BURNS: It could also be, you know, Tuesday is a school night for most of us. You know, we have to work the next day.
Ms. BISHARAT: That's absolutely right.
BURNS: Yeah, it might be better to go later. Well, what great suggestions. What a great resource this is. This is a stupendous idea--opentable.com--Jaleh Bisharat, vice president of marketing.
We'll talk more with our guest just ahead--find out some of the other things you'll find on opentable.com and encourage you to make use of it.
(Commercial Break)
BURNS: It is 12:51 on DINING AROUND WITH GENE BURNS.
Can I get a table for Valentine's Day? Maybe. And the best way to check it, unless you want to spend the rest of the day on the phone, is opentable.com.
Jaleh Bisharat, who is the vice president of marketing for OpenTable, is our guest, and we're talking about the services on the Web site.
Let's talk about what else is available. I know you have some features on your service as well as restaurant reservations. What are some of those and how can they be used?
Ms. BISHARAT: Well, everything is centered around restaurant reservations. But some of the things we haven't talked about, and might be of interest to your listeners for Valentine's Day, is if you want to put in a request to the maitre d'--let's say you want to request that a bottle of champagne be on the table--whatever your request might be--don't forget when you make that reservation that you can enter a note to the maitre d'. It's right in front of you. It's a big open area text block. Just indicate what you want and the maitre d' will see that when you arrive at the restaurant--prior to your arrival to the restaurant actually.
BURNS: Really? Interesting.
Ms. BISHARAT: So it's a nice way to kind of make any requests, especially if it's something you don't want your date or your spouse to notice.
BURNS: Have you thought about--I know you're still adding cities, and I know you've now gone international; you've done London and you're perfecting London--of course you're staring covetously at Paris and we're all hoping one day you're going to do it--so you're developing the international, and, as you say, you're in most of the states in the US--what about the future? Do you see other applications for OpenTable?
Ms. BISHARAT: You know, we think restaurant reservations are the really, really useful and interesting application for a long time to come. So we're maniacally focused on perfecting that side of the business before even thinking about anything else.
BURNS: Yeah, it seems to me you've got it down. There's not much more you can perfect it. The ability for someone who travels, whether you travel for business or pleasure--you know, what you do? You go out and buy a bunch of guide books or you try to call somebody you know in a place you're going to, but, you know, if your travels are going to take you to Miami or whatever, to be able to go to your Web site and find not only resources but then make reservations there.
Ms. BISHARAT: Absolutely. One of the areas we're spending a lot of time exploring right now that I think is of great interest is providing even more and more content to help people decide where they want to eat. Right now, for every restaurant, you can click on that restaurant, go to what we call a profile page, and it will give a lot of interesting information--a Gayot rating, any guidance on what to wear or parking or valet or what have you.
But we think there's even more opportunities for diners to take a look, particularly if they're traveling to a city, a new city, and understand a little bit more about how these restaurants stack up against each other. So stay tuned on that front.
Continue to Part III
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