New York City’s red-hot Cosme is serving as the test restaurant for a new OpenTable service that enables patrons hell-bent on getting an immediate reservation to secure one for a fee via the Open Table app.
OpenTable said the last-minute-reservation fee, which apparently will change in accordance with demand, will be offered for “a handful of tables” on Friday and Saturday nights. Any money generated by the service will go to the restaurant, Vannie Shu, OpenTable’s head of global marketing for consumer platforms, noted in revealing the test on the reservation service’s Open for Business blog.
“OpenTable’s Premium Reservations can help you grow revenue and delight valuable guests seamlessly,” she wrote in the blog, which is aimed at restaurateurs.
Shu did not say how long the test would run.
The last-minutes-reservations option is available only to users of OpenTable’s smartphone app, and the user must also be able to pay for the service via ApplePay.
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