Top-Top enters the restaurant reservation space with a paid option for last-minute bookers

by Julianne Tveten
January 12, 2015

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Bistronomic, one of Top-Top's participating Chicago restaurants.

 

Home to such small enterprises as TableSavvy and the nascent Tock, Chicago has proven itself fertile ground for the online restaurant-reservation-booking business. Now, a young startup called Top-Top is sowing its own figurative seeds.

Top-Top, which debuted publicly on January 5, is designed to secure seating during peak hours for prospective patrons booking at the last minute – that is, if they’re willing to pay for it. This stands in contrast to the prevailing model, demonstrated by industry giant OpenTable: users reserve a table for free, which (depending on the restaurant) sometimes precludes luxuries like same-day booking or dining during the coveted 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. time frame.

“No available option for convenient reservations currently exists in the marketplace. Online reservations appear to be convenient, but because they are free they typically only have availability weeks in advance,” said founder Todd Reed. “Thus, as consumers who routinely wait until we can actually say what we feel like eating before making a reservation, we are stuck.”

[ibimage==43604==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-left]Of course, the inherent extravagance of last-minute reservations doesn’t come cheap. Customers are charged a non-refundable fee of $2.50 per person to book a reservation at any of Top-Top’s 18 participating restaurants, whose available reservations are presented in a weekly list on the website. Restaurants, which don’t pay to use Top-Top, can elect to include a minimum spend per person, which usually hovers around $50 (a rough median that should provide a sense of the caliber of a typical restaurant). They also have the option to charge a cancellation fee through Top-Top, which gains access to the customer’s credit card information during the reservation.

“The guest authorizes this transaction as the reservation is booked [and] is notified as this happens,” Reed said.

In addition to providing restaurants with these financial protections, Reed contends, Top-Top integrates with whichever system they currently use to process reservations.

“We...refer reservations to the restaurant without requiring that they stop using any other system. Top-Top is in the market for paid reservations. When supply runs low and demand is high, restaurants stop paying services to supply reservations and hold out for walk-ins. Our system allows them to continue issuing reservations during this period,” Reed said.

The self-funded startup, which consists of Reed and two other co-founders, currently serves Chicago, with ambitions to “expand into markets that show similar characteristics once we gain a good foothold in our hometown...We have several ideas to expand our features and expand our market presence down the road.”

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