OpenTable Bounces Back After Angry Restaurants Prompted Rethink

When Debby Soo took the helm at OpenTable in August 2020, the world’s oldest online reservation platform was hemorrhaging customers—and she knew the pandemic wasn’t entirely to blame. The company was “resting on its laurels,” Soo says. “People called us a dinosaur.” Long before Covid-19 decimated the dining industry, OpenTable had been losing marquee restaurant groups to a rising cohort of competitors. And no wonder, she says: “Restaurants hated us.”

Though everyday diners might think of themselves as OpenTable’s core customers, it’s the restaurants that actually pay for its services, sometimes as much as $6,000 a year. OpenTable had ...