Skift Take
Resy's innovations, especially in inventory management and customer feedback, are a windfall of potential tech upgrades for restaurants. It'll be interesting to see which integrations restaurant owners keep coming back to most.
— Erika Adams
Resy’s first annual product summit took place today in New York, and even though no particular announcement was groundbreaking in its scope, each of Resy’s new ideas fit nicely within both a) what restaurants are looking for with tech-focused operational assistance, and b) what consumers want out of a great restaurant app. Resy CEO Ben Leventhal noted that 75 percent of its product updates over the past six months were directly requested by restaurants.
International Expansion
One of the biggest items to come out of the morning was insight into Resy’s global expansion, which the company is now grouping under Resy Global Services.
As part of the expansion, Resy announced the acquisition of ClubKviar, a membership-based reservation app currently covering high-end Spanish restaurants. It will be rebranded as Resy Spain in the coming months.
Additionally, Resy is partnering with Formitable and Restorando, two reservation services that cover the Netherlands and several countries in central and South America, respectively, to bulk up the company’s immediate international reach. This brings Resy’s total network of restaurants to 10,000 worldwide, a huge jump from the now 2,000 U.S. restaurants it serves directly. Going forward, Montero stressed that the company is looking to build its international portfolio with more of these partnerships.
More benefits of Resy’s Airbnb partnership, announced last fall, are now coming into focus. Resy will be tightly integrated onto Airbnb’s app, allowing any user with an Airbnb app to reserve, confirm, and talk to restaurants without ever leaving the Airbnb interface. From the restaurant perspective, the potential customer base is significantly widened with access to Airbnb’s worldwide audience.
“Restaurants will go from being local favorites to global brands,” said Resy chief technology officer Mike Montero.
Restaurant-Facing Updates
The biggest update for restaurants is Resy Fly, a new version of the Resy operating system. Resy Fly (or simply “Fly,” as Montero referred to it) will use built-up data, learning as it goes, to suggest to reservationists how to book customers based on factors ranging from the weather that day to that customer’s previous dining habits. While it was announced today, this new feature is launching in beta on May 15.
Resy is also finally incorporating technology from Servy, the mystery dining feedback platform it acquired last fall. Restaurants on Resy’s platform will now be able to dial into customer feedback in highly specific ways. When a customer leaves a review, either via a public-facing platform like Yelp or Resy’s own diner survey system, managers can pull up a wide array of data to find out what potential factors affected that review, including that particular person’s wait time, their table, their server, their order, and their check.
The idea here is that restaurants will have a much more comprehensive look at all the factors that affect customer reviews, and Resy will arm them with real data to inform their subsequent actions. Was the service off? Servers have score cards that’ll show their ratings shift-by-shift. How did that new menu addition go over? Based on customer feedback, managers can look at what customers are saying about any given menu item at any time.
Resy will also maintain its three-tiered pricing strategy: $189, $399, and $899 per month.
Consumer-Facing Updates
Resy.com underwent an extensive reworking, in part to streamline the process of going from reading about a restaurant to booking a table at that restaurant. Original content running on Resy now features the option to book any restaurant highlighted in a post without leaving that page. This marks an official foray into content for Resy, which is not only useful — and entertaining — for diners, but can help to build the types of algorithms that will power recommendations in the future.
Resy also touted its user engagement statistics. Leventhal said that 40 percent of its users have booked in last 90 days, and 20 percent have booked at least three times in last year. Taking advantage of an engaged customer base, Resy announced the first details of its upcoming loyalty program, Resy Select, which will be available by invitation-only starting at the end of April. Initial Select customers will be selected based on how active they are on the Resy network, and rewards include exclusive dinner invitations, a dedicated concierge to make reservations, and chef meet-ups.
