NYT on restaurant reservation apps

There's a great piece in the New York Times today about the growing practice of using mobile apps to find and review restaurants. The way it works is simple for customers. Just pull out your phone (or your iPad), launch the app and find what's nearby.

Initially, OpenTable was the only app that could be used to make reservations. Now UrbanSpoon offers them as well, and customers are taking advantage. They're testing the idea in LA and Seattle, with 50 and 100 restaurants participating, respectively. Once you've eaten you can post a review. These are sorted by date, so those paying attention can see if a given place is on a slide or an upswing.

Even without these apps, I'll use my iPhone to search "coffee" or "hamburgers" with the Maps app to find a place in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Taking it that extra step -- placing a reservation -- is, as Spock would say, logical.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/technology/personaltech/01…

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There's a great piece in the New York Times today about the growing practice of using mobile apps to find and review restaurants. The way...

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brotkel

Don't forget about Siri, the amazing app that Apple purchased a few months ago and which we've heard little about since. It also uses OpenTable to allow you to make reservations. And all you have to do is to speak into it with the time and number of people to book a table for.

July 01 2010 at 7:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rick

I found this incredible "hole-in-the-wall" Indian restaurant with the use of YELP a few months ago. This place was so small that if you drove at 35 mph you would miss it.

When I walked into the place, it was clean and the waiter was obviously the son of the owner who spoke little English. I could peak into the kitchen and saw all fresh produce. What was most amazing was the stone oven where everything took place. The food was incredible!

The reviews on YELP drove me to this place and at least once a month I continue to go there. The only problem now is that if more people use Yelp, the service will probably deteriorate and they may not be able to keep up with demand. Needless to say that if I peak into the kitchen and see a Microwave I'll be out.

The food searching apps are great. Because not only are they able to drive me to a really good restaurant, but in this case Yelp also tells me which ones to avoid. There's one place in my neighborhood that has a restaurant where the parking lot is always full. I ate there once and the service was poor, the food worse. 3 out of the 4 of us got sick within a day of eating there. In the papers the reviews are always good about this place, but on YELP, everyone stated the obvious, the place is bad.

Yelp, in this case, has helped me to find some excellent places. I have not had the opportunity to use OpenTable yet mainly because of my aversion to handing over my personal information, but with the reviews this good, I will probably use it a bit more. Unfortunately, I haven't found UrbanSpoon to be that useful. But tying it into Yelp might be interesting.

Yeah, I eat out a lot, that's kind of sad come to think of it :).

July 01 2010 at 6:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Yelp! + Opentable + iPhone, a foodie's best tools.

July 01 2010 at 6:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply