Having spent nearly a decade convincing 8,500 restaurants to let people book tables online, OpenTable.com now aims to make doing that easier for those who leave home without making plans.
On Monday, Open Table Inc, a San Francisco-based company backed by venture capital money, plans to announce that people will be able to make quick online restaurant reservations over their BlackBerries and other mobile devices.
Chief Executive Jeff Jordan expects Open Table’s mobile site to be a hit among its target audience of “affluent, professional, time-constrained” diners who want to book a table while on the road, or away from their desktop computers.
“The company’s been around for 10 years, and for most of that time, has been maniacally focused on building out its restaurant network,” Jordan said in a recent interview.
That focus has paid off, with Open Table seating 3 million diners in May, Jordan said payday loans. That translated into $150 million in revenue for participating restaurants, the company said. A year ago, 2 million diners used Open Table in a month.
But the website, where people can check if their favorite eatery has a table free without calling, had only been improved cosmetically as Open Table has focused on selling computers fitted with its reservation software to restaurants, he said.
“We made a strategic decision to increase significantly our investment in the consumer-slash-website side of the business,” Jordan said.
The mobile feature is just one of many initiatives as Open Table tries to make choosing restaurants and booking tables at them more fun, useful and informative for people, Jordan said.
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