Interview: Matthew Tucker, Head of Tock
In the online reservations game, Tock just advanced to the next round.
Listen to the Interview
In June, American Express announced its agreement to buy Tock, a restaurant reservation and event management company, from the digital commerce platform Squarespace for $400 million in cash. The deal logic is clear: Amex cardholders spent $100 billion eating out in 2023, according to the release. The credit card giant already owns Tock’s rival Resy, which it bought in 2019. Today, both platforms broker some of the world’s most coveted tables.
But it’s not a completely done deal; the Amex acquisition is subject to regulatory approval from the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice, which could take six months or more to close. Meanwhile, Tock is moving forward and today announced a new partnership with Curator Hotel & Resort Collection. Essentially, this means Curator hotels will pay a per-location, per month subscription fee to access Tock’s reservation, table management and event ticketing tools.
This marks a departure from Tock’s original premise. When Nick Kokonas, co-owner of the Chicago restaurant Alinea with chef Grant Achatz, launched Tock 10 years ago in 2014 — the idea was to bring prepaid reservations and deposits to the fine dining market. It took off, helping many restaurateurs mitigate losses from no-shows. And it helped Tock grow its network, now hovering around 7,000 restaurants, wineries, and other bookable venues. (By comparison, OpenTable reaches 55,000 and Resy about 20,000 eateries worldwide).
Now every reservations app, including OpenTable, Resy, SevenRooms and Dorsia, offers the same pre-payment capability. And they’re all looking for ways to differentiate. Matthew Tucker, Head of Tock, thinks hotels offer a promising path forward for his software as a service (Saas) company. Here, an excerpt from our conversation:
When I think Tock, I think restaurants. Why are you getting into the hotel space with Curator?
The partnership with Curator is really about Tock deepening its partnership with innovative hotel brands. It's something we've been getting into for quite some time. Historically, I think of hotel restaurants as not being places you would go if you lived in the city. Even when you were traveling, I think in many cases people tended to avoid hotel restaurants. I know I did. That is something that has radically changed over the years. For a hotel, it's no longer just about putting butts in seats in their restaurants, but creating experiences that are essential to driving revenue and guest engagement, which is what Tock does. Tock has a big events and experiences business.
It could be an Easter egg roll in the back lawn of a hotel. It could be cabanas by the pool or something to that effect. All of these things are tied to guest engagement. Yes, restaurants are core to our business, but allowing hospitality providers to more deeply engage with us – that is all about driving experiences and events. From a macro perspective, restaurants, fine dining, and otherwise are not doing particularly well this year. This gives Curator hotels a way to engage more deeply, and we think that is really critical. Just a standard food offering is no longer enough to really create a nice feeling between the guest and the hospitality provider.
The ‘partnership’ with Curator means that hotels pay a fee to access your network. Is that correct?
I wouldn't say access the network. There are two things that Tock provides at a high level. Certainly, the network is something that is important to potentially drive incremental guests into the restaurants, but what Curator wants to do — because they have an incredible list of properties — is engage with the guest on property. They want a guest management tool that's tied to the experiences they offer. What's critical to them is the ability to create experiences and to monetize those experiences by offering guests additional things to do while on property.
For example, Blue Hill at Stone Barns recently hosted a 20-year anniversary event that was managed by Amex. It was very tiered in terms of what you could experience on the farm, or whether you could sit in a lounge, depending on your card membership level and ticket access. Online booking wasn’t just a reservation; it was ticket sales.
That’s exactly right. We do that as well. We've got a partnership with Chase that’s still in place and has been for several years. That’s a good example of a ticketing platform, which is really what Tock started as. At Alinea, you had to buy a ticket to eat dinner. So we are in many ways a ticketing and events platform. If you have an Amex Black Card or Chase Sapphire card that's very typical now, our platform can help manage different levels of access, but we don't create the events.
Curator has to create its own events.
Exactly. We provide the platform to allow them to do that. And then we integrate with other systems so they can track the guest spend and guest interest. That’s what we do.
To boil it down, the main incentive for Curator to partner with you is to have an online ticketing tool to make this possible. They may have had a system before, but this might be an upgrade?
I couldn't have said it better myself. The only thing I would add to that is minutiae, because we think it gives them a powerful platform to allow them to create any type of event. Sell tickets to it, give away tickets to it, create tiers, and create different experiences. I mean, it is a platform. Tock is definitely not in the business of telling hospitality providers or restaurateurs what events to create. We're just trying to create a platform in which they have as many use cases as they want to create things that engage with their guests.
My philosophy on hospitality technology is this: I don't even want [our customers] to ever have to look at Tock. I want this to be so natural that you can stare your guests in the eye 100% of the time. You shouldn't be looking down at technology. The technology should serve you so that you can go serve your guests. We're the platform; we're nothing more than that.
It's not technically white labeling, but it kind of feels like that.
Correct. It’s not technically white labeling. I spent 10 years as the president and COO of Olo. That's technically a white label platform. Say Curator wants to open up events to the public. They could just add those experiences to our platform and anyone can see okay, if I'm going to San Diego, and there's a great cabana event at Curator’s Del Mar hotel that I can join. So it's got some of the characteristics of a white label platform, in that it’s integrated with the third party systems that hospitality providers use.
OpenTable and Resy are larger, in terms of network size. Will hotels help you bridge the gap?
For us, the point of the Curator partnership is not to build a bigger network, per se, it's to go deeper into the hotel space and events and experiences — because that's how we think we can differentiate. At this point in time, these platforms are relatively similar from a functionality perspective. I think what differentiates us from OpenTable and Resy is a focus beyond restaurants deeper into hotels.
These platforms are built upon partnerships with credit cards. So, the tiered, card status system matters regardless of venue.
Let's say you're a Sapphire card holder. Chase holds certain tables at certain restaurants that only a Sapphire-level card may access. That's the power of the software. A Sapphire card holder will be shown a list of tables, but a basic card holder from Chase might see less tables. That's just part of the basic software functionality. We have a partnership with Chase, Resy and Amex obviously work closely together. And OpenTable is working very closely with Visa right now. In our case, with events and ticketing, we add an Eventbrite type of service. We can scan tickets at an event, we have that technology. We've done stuff like the Coachella Soho House event, that was via Tock.
Where’s the limit? We’re not talking Live Nation.
No, no, we couldn't do a large-scale stadium event. We have more of the capability of a RESY combined with Eventbrite. Or SevenRooms, which is a white label platform for reservations and events and experiences. So we're somewhere in there. If we pivot back for a moment, at least parenthetically to the Amex deal — I think it's part of their interest. We're not just another reservation platform.
That's part of why Amex is a buyer?
Yes. To harken back to the original founding, we were created as the software for Alinea and its fine dining customers. Like Noma or French Laundry, it was about getting that ticket, right? What the notion of prepaying for a meal has allowed us to create 10 years later, all these other types of experiences and events rely on a similar thing: ticketing to a specific time and place.
It’s become more normal in the fine dining space. Everything is transactional. What’s a ballpark figure for the Curator x Tock deal?
This is an under six-figure deal. It’s a SaaS software subscription model, where the hotel operator pays a per location, per month fee, which is pretty typical.
Is this your first hotel partnership, or have you done this already?
No, we've done Vail Resorts as well as other hotel brands.
What's on your hotel wish list?
Great question! My list would include all the major brands. I think we provide something that works for almost any hotel property that does more than just basic rooms, that could have multiple restaurants.
Like an Ennismore?
Yes, like an Ennismore. I think I have the best possible product for any hotel operator that is looking to create a unique experience for guests. Boutique hotels are on one end, but equally important to us are the Hilton's and Hyatts of the world because they have large properties. They have very creative staff that come up with really unique events. So my wish list is as many properties as possible who can use this tool. I'm focused on the innovation side and making sure that I continuously create a pipeline of unique products that will allow these property operators to engage more deeply with guests.
What's your biggest fear regarding the tech itself?
My fear would be overwhelming my customers with innovation that doesn't serve them, or doesn't solve a problem. Their problem is: getting more butts in seats, and attracting return customers. How did they get you back? Maybe with a special tequila tasting or oyster shucking, et cetera. My desire is always to create software that makes sure the proprietor knows you when you walk in, knows where you like to sit, knows that you'd like a certain brand of tequila. That's what the software needs to do. My other fear would be that all these systems begin to look alike, and we have the same back end solutions. We have to work against that.
If this works out pretty well for Curator, more business might naturally come from that? Meantime, you’ve got to focus on design and user experience.
Oh, 100%. It's business as usual for Tock until this deal closes and to me that means more great deals like the Curator one we're working on. But absolutely product innovation; that's features. That's user experience. That's all of the above. That part never stops.
Innovation is going to occur. I can't stand idly by thinking nothing's going to change. Competitors are popping up all the time in this space. Our innovations are, generally speaking, in the back end. For example, we're releasing something soon that’s not for any consumer in our app, but our restaurant owners will be able to quickly see which VIPs are walking in tonight. It’s not meant to distract; I don't want them staring at the technology, I want them engaging with their guests. That's how we're innovating.