New Reservations Apps Up the Ante on Hospitality

When a city has a restaurant caliber like Chicago’s, you can never have too many reservations tricks and tips. With so many dining options to choose from, not to mention so many hungry diners grappling over seats, it helps to have some new restaurant reservations services. Two new ones to join the fray as of late are Table8 and the humbly dubbed Reserve.

After successful launches in Miami, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Table8 has arrived in Chicago. The company arose out of the idea of making prime-time restaurant seating accessible to all. Available via iPhone and Android apps, Table8 serves as a last-minute function to grant access into restaurants at peak dinner hours. Once users download their app and sign up for free, they’ll have access to guaranteed reservations from a number of top-tier dining destinations throughout the city. Tables reserves at otherwise sold-out time slots, especially on weekend nights, will be offered to users for a small reservation fee, which gets shared with the restaurant. How does all that happen? The Table8 team partners with restaurants and meets with them to discuss how many tables and seats they’d like to remain open for Table8 users, splitting the proceeds with these restaurants when users make a reservation. Restaurants currently available on Table8 include Trenchermen, HotChocolate, Sepia, Taus Authentic, Acadia, Momotaro, Bohemian House, Perennial Virant, and mk The Restaurant.

Another newbie in the Chicago market is Reserve, a company that strives to cover the full gamut of hospitality through restaurant reservations services. This new smartphone app provides diners with a plethora of insights and experiences, from snagging hard-to-find tables to bill payment, personalized attention during the dining experience, and more. Like Uber, which incidentally is one of the backers of Reserve, Reserve allows you to store a credit card on file. Restaurant partners on Reserve include Dusek’s Board and Beer, Celeste, Formento’s, Acanto, Nightwood, Mercadito, The Gage, The Boarding House, Lula Cafe, and The Kitchen.

Table8
Website

Reserve
Website