July 23, 2007

TableXChange selling dinner reservations: $5-$40

TableXChange is the latest company to jump into the restaurant-reservations-for-sale fray, a development greeted by groans by people who fear the new peer-to-peer marketplace will make it even harder to snag a table at the likes of Babbo, Per Se, Nobu, Del Posto or Balthazar.

"We really by no means are trying to make it harder for anyone to get a reservation," co-founder Gabriel Erbst told NewYorkology in an interview today.

The site, which publicly emerged from its "friends and family" phase four weeks ago, has up to 100 restaurants available in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Hamptons with dinner reservations for sale for $5 to $40 each, (the maximum price allowed.)

They do have a few safeguards to dissuade scalpers from blacking out scads of major tables all over the city. To open a seller's profile, you need a PayPal account and you must provide your credit card details, Erbst said. You are allowed to sell no more than four reservations at a time. No more than three TableXChange reservations will be available at any restaurant on a given night (and no more than one per night at small restaurants.) New sellers must be approved and there is a zero tolerance policy for sellers who post fake reservations.

Additionally, if you buy a reservation, as soon as the transaction's complete, you'll be given the reservation details and can call the restaurant to confirm you've got the real deal.

Current offerings include Babbo on Friday at 8 p.m. for $30; Jean-Gorges for Saturday at 8:30; for $25 and The Modern on Friday at 8 p.m. for $5. Erbst said TableXChange is not seeding the offerings; they have all been made by registered users. TableXChange takes a cut of 10 percent to 12 percent of each transaction, but the plan is to make more money by selling ad space.

The site is operated by DBNR Partners LLC, four young guys who work in the financial services industry. Erbst declined to name any of his co-founders except to say two of them are "foodies" who still work in the financial services sector and the fourth partner is a web designer. "We're trying to keep their names confidential at this point," he said. "That's how most businesses are run these days."

Also confidential: the number of users on the site and the number of reservations that have been sold. He declined to say how many of the reservations have expired as unused, but said "a good portion," are selling.

They've been working on the site for almost 10 months and their research showed that about 20 percent of all restaurant reservations go unused. So the idea is that TableXChange offers an efficient service of matching sellers and buyers in an eBay-type style. "It's a win-win situation for everyone," Erbst said.

And what to the restaurateurs think? "Frankly I don't know. I would guess not thrilled, but indifferent."

Table XChange offers dinner only and normally only on Fridays and Saturdays. However, this week they have weekday slots for Summer Restaurant Week (which ends Friday,) and they're considering adding Thursdays and special occasions such as Valentine's Day. Another site, WithoutReservations.biz, launched in February 2005 to sell Valentine's Day slots for $40 each in NYC and Los Angeles. The site went live for only a handful of special occasions over at least two years but now appears to be abandoned.

A pricier option still exists, PrimeTimeTables.com, which is a membership dinner reservation service. Gold membership, for $450, gets you 12 reservations while premiere membership, for $600, gets you 20.

And then there's OpenTable.com, a completely free service (since the restaurants pay to have their open tables listed,) which is used by hundreds of NYC restaurants including Per Se, Perry Street, Mesa Grill, Telepan and Tabla. In most cases all you need to book through OpenTable .com is an e-mail address (though last week NewYorkology noticed a booking for 21 Club requires credit card details and bears a warning that a no-show would result in a $25 charge per person.)

Erbst said he didn't consider OpenTable.com as competition to his new site because using OpenTable is free and it's "just like booking through the restaurant themselves."

Earlier: Primo dinner reservations now on sale, online
Reservations: why get it free when you can pay?

July 23, 2007 04:33 PM in Foodology, Romance

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