By Isnaini Azizah 
The current landscape is defined by three distinct but overlapping forces: the legacy incumbents who built the digital reservation infrastructure, the premium credit card companies looking to lock in high-spending customers, and the food delivery behemoths seeking to own the entire lifecycle of a meal. At the center of this conflict are three massive, well-capitalized entities—Booking Holdings (owner of OpenTable), American Express (owner of Resy and Tock), and DoorDash (newly armed with SevenRooms). Together, these companies are vying for the same "real estate": the limited number of tables at the world’s most sought-after restaurants.
To understand the current friction, one must look back at the origins of the digital reservation. For nearly two decades, OpenTable, founded in 1998, held a virtual monopoly on the market. Its business model was built on providing restaurants with hardware and software to manage their floor, while charging them a monthly subscription fee plus a "per-cover" fee for every diner who booked through the OpenTable marketplace. While effective, this model eventually drew criticism from restaurateurs who felt the per-seat fees were eating too deeply into their already thin margins.
The first major disruption arrived in 2014 with the launch of Resy. Founded by Ben Leventhal, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Michael Montero, Resy positioned itself as the "cool" alternative to OpenTable. It challenged the incumbent not just with a sleeker interface, but with a flat-fee pricing model that appealed to high-volume, trendy establishments in major hubs like New York City, Los Angeles, and London. Resy’s rise signaled a shift in the industry; it wasn’t just about utility anymore—it was about curation and "access."
The acquisition of Resy by American Express in 2019 marked a turning point, signaling that reservations were no longer just a software business, but a critical component of the "lifestyle" value proposition for premium financial services. This strategy was further solidified in 2024 when American Express announced its $400 million acquisition of Tock from Squarespace. Tock, founded by Alinea Group’s Nick Kokonas, had carved out a niche by focusing on high-end, "destination" dining, offering features like pre-paid deposits and tasting menu bookings. By folding Tock’s 5,000 premium venues into the Resy ecosystem, American Express has created a formidable network of approximately 25,000 establishments.
The logic behind the American Express strategy is rooted in consumer spending data. According to Resy CEO Pablo Rivero, American Express card members spend nearly $90 billion annually on dining. This isn’t just a peripheral interest; it is a core passion for the premium cardholder demographic. Data shows that users who have a Resy credit on their American Express card spend 25% more on dining transactions than those who don’t. By controlling the reservation platform, AmEx can offer "Global Dining Access," providing its Platinum and Centurion cardholders with exclusive tables at restaurants that are otherwise "sold out." This creates a powerful loyalty loop: the diner gets the table, the restaurant gets a high-spending customer, and AmEx secures the transaction.
However, OpenTable has not remained stagnant. Under the leadership of CEO Debby Soo, the platform has spent the last five years aggressively recapturing the "cool factor" it lost to Resy. By leveraging its parent company, Booking Holdings, and forming its own high-profile partnerships, OpenTable remains the undisputed leader in terms of scale, boasting a network of roughly 60,000 restaurants globally. OpenTable has also leaned into the credit card war, partnering with Chase and Visa to offer exclusive booking windows and perks to their cardholders, mirroring the AmEx-Resy model.
The most significant shift in the 2024 landscape, however, is the aggressive entry of delivery giants into the reservation space. In June, DoorDash announced its $1.2 billion acquisition of SevenRooms, a move that sent shockwaves through the industry. SevenRooms is not a traditional marketplace like OpenTable or Resy; it is a "white-label" platform that allows restaurants to take bookings directly through their own websites while building a robust database of customer preferences.
For DoorDash, which currently commands a 67% share of the U.S. food delivery market, the SevenRooms acquisition is about closing the "data gap." Historically, delivery and dine-in have existed as siloed data sets. A restaurant might know that a customer orders delivery three times a month, but when that same customer walks through the door for a birthday dinner, the staff has no record of their history. By integrating SevenRooms, DoorDash aims to create a "360-degree view" of the diner. As SevenRooms co-founder Joel Montaniel noted, this allows a restaurant to recognize a "first-time" dine-in customer as actually being a "seventh-time" loyal delivery customer, allowing for more personalized service and targeted marketing.
This integration creates what industry analysts call a "flywheel effect." DoorDash can now offer its DashPass subscribers exclusive tables at trendy restaurants, incentivizing them to stay within the DoorDash ecosystem whether they are eating on their couch or out on the town. In the early stages of this integration, DoorDash even offered "DoorDash cash" to users who booked reservations through the app, effectively subsidizing the dine-in experience to gain market share in the booking sector.
UberEats, DoorDash’s primary rival with a 23% market share, has taken a different approach. Rather than spending billions on an acquisition, Uber has opted for a deep integration partnership with OpenTable. This allows Uber users to book tables directly within the Uber app, leveraging OpenTable’s massive inventory without Uber having to manage the underlying restaurant relationships or software infrastructure. This "partnership vs. acquisition" split highlights two different philosophies on how to win the reservation war: owning the infrastructure versus owning the interface.
The implications of these "wars" for the average diner are profound. We are entering an era of "platform-exclusive" dining. Just as streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max compete for exclusive content, reservation platforms are competing for exclusive "inventory." A diner may find that the hottest new bistro in Manhattan is only bookable via Resy because of an AmEx partnership, while the Michelin-starred staple across the street is exclusive to OpenTable due to a Chase deal. This fragmentation forces consumers to manage multiple apps and, increasingly, multiple premium credit cards to maintain access to the full culinary landscape.
Furthermore, the "premiumization" of reservations is accelerating. With platforms offering "priority access" and "exclusive tables" to high-tier cardholders or subscription members (like DashPass), the "free" reservation is becoming a rarer commodity. In many ways, the reservation has become the new "fast pass" at a theme park—a perk that can be bought or earned through loyalty to a specific tech ecosystem.
From the restaurant’s perspective, the fight is equally complex. While these platforms bring in high-spending customers and provide sophisticated marketing tools, they also represent a potential loss of control. The $1.2 billion valuation of SevenRooms suggests that the real value in the modern restaurant industry isn’t just the food or the service, but the data. Restaurants are increasingly wary of becoming "ghost kitchens" for the platforms, where the tech company owns the relationship with the customer and the restaurant simply fulfills the order.
As the tech landscape continues to shift, new players are already emerging to challenge the status quo. Ben Leventhal, after leaving Resy, founded Blackbird Labs, a loyalty program for independent restaurants that uses blockchain technology to create a more direct, decentralized connection between diners and eateries. This suggests that while the current "war" is being fought by giants like AmEx and DoorDash, the next frontier may be a move back toward independence and direct-to-consumer relationships.
Ultimately, the battle for your reservation is a battle for your attention and your wallet. Whether it’s through the "cool factor" of Resy, the massive scale of OpenTable, or the delivery-integrated convenience of DoorDash, these companies are betting billions that the future of dining is digital, data-driven, and deeply integrated into our broader lifestyle choices. As the lines between delivery, dine-in, and financial services continue to blur, the winner of the reservation wars will be the company that can most seamlessly bridge the gap between the digital screen and the dinner table. For now, the fight is only getting started, and the prize is a seat at the table of one of the world’s most enduring and profitable pastimes.