opentable

OpenTable is an online reservation service. It lets people find reservations at local restaurants and book them from their computer or mobile phone; all the while, not having to use the traditional system of calling or visiting the restaurants in person. The service is currently available in all 50 states (big cities, for the most part) as well as a growing number of international locations. Total number of restaurants is now in the tens of thousands.

OpenTable's reservation system allows customers to search for restaurants on three different criteria: type of cuisine, restaurant name, or location/neighborhood. Customers can … Read more

OpenTable was the special of the day on Wall Street on Thursday.

The restaurant-reservation company's stock soared on its first day of trading on Nasdaq, gaining nearly 60 percent to close at $31.89 after selling 3 million shares at $20 a share during its initial public offering Wednesday. Nearly 5 million shares changed hands, trading as high as $35.50.

OpenTable's stock performance is the biggest first-day gain for an IPO since energy-management systems firm Orion Energy Systems gained 65 percent in its debut in December 2007, according to IPO research firm Renaissance Capital.

OpenTable's revenue … Read more

Online restaurant reservation provider OpenTable is getting ready to go public.

According to a release, the company will price its initial public offering at $20 per share.

But a share price doesn't tell you the whole story about a company. Whether you're thinking about investing in OpenTable, or you simply want to see why the company's executives believe that it has a good chance to be successful on the Nasdaq, there's no better way to find out than to look at its current state of operations.

Profits (or no?) According to its latest SEC filing, OpenTable earned $16 million in revenue during the three months ended March 31. During the same period in 2008, it earned $13.2 million in revenue. For the first quarter of 2009, the company generated a profit of $366,000. Last year, it lost $87,000.

Annually, OpenTable hasn't fared so well. According to its 2008 income statement, the company lost $1.02 million on revenue of $55.8 million. In 2007, the company generated a profit of $9.2 million on $41 million in revenue. That said, its profit was the result of a $9 million tax benefit. It lost $856,000 on operations in 2008 before it incurred that benefit.… Read more

Responding to its users' desire for more restaurant review offerings, TripAdvisor announced Tuesday that throughout 2009, it will be adding features that will allow visitors to do more than review eateries on the site. So far, the site features 2 million reviews and ratings on 500,000 restaurants worldwide. To help users search through those more effectively, TripAdvisor added price, cuisine, and "recommended for" filters to its restaurant page Tuesday.

Also, the company has partnered with OpenTable.com to allow U.S. users to make a reservation directly on TripAdvisor's site. The company's new iPhone app, … Read more

Boorah, a new restaurant reviews site, scrapes the Web for criticism and generates Zagat-style evaluations. (Lawsuits are sure to follow.)

Unlike Zagat, which has its own volunteer army of reviewers, Boorah scours reviews from sites like Insider Pages, SFGate, and blogs, and extracts content from them. The site parses all the data and assigns scores for food, ambiance, and service for each restaurant.

The site has a relationship with OpenTable (my favorite Web site ever) and will let you make direct reservations for restaurants that take them.

What I liked about Boorah: it has a very good search engine, … Read more