There's a classic scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone says: "It's not personal. It's just business."
Bullshit. When billions of dollars are on the line and three corporate empires are fighting over the same piece of territory, it's always personal. And right now, that territory is your reservation at your favorite restaurant.
Welcome to the reservation wars.
The Battlefield
For over a decade, the fight was simple: Resy versus OpenTable. Two gladiators, one arena. OpenTable, founded in 1998, was the old guard — it charged restaurants a monthly fee and a per-diner cover charge. A feudal model, pure "you do the work, I take a cut" energy.
Resy showed up in 2014 with a different pitch: flat monthly fee, no charge per head. Clean. Simple. And it won over the hottest restaurants in New York and other major cities. It had the cool factor OpenTable never managed to pull off.
Then the game leveled up.
American Express bought Resy in 2019. Then, in 2024, shelled out another $400 million to acquire Tock, a platform focused on high-end dining. Starting this summer, Resy will fold Tock's 5,000 venues into its portfolio — bringing the total to around 25,000 restaurants.
Sounds like a lot. Until you see that OpenTable has 60,000.
But hold on. The story isn't over.
The New Barbarians Have Arrived
DoorDash — yeah, the one with the orange-backpack bike couriers — announced it's acquiring SevenRooms for $1.2 billion. SevenRooms is a reservations platform built around direct bookings through the restaurant's own website, no middleman. DoorDash's logic is straightforward: if you already order food through the app, why not book the table there too?
And Uber Eats? Partnered with OpenTable to embed reservations directly into the Uber app. Now you can book your ride, order your food, and reserve your table. All in one place. The wet dream of every "super app" executive in Silicon Valley.
Three empires. One table.
The Credit Card Dirty Game
Here's the detail most people gloss over — and it changes everything.
American Express Platinum cardholders get priority access to reservations at in-demand restaurants, plus $400 in annual dining credits to spend at Resy partner venues. Resy CEO Pablo Rivero told CNBC that AmEx cardholders with Resy credits spend more than 25% more per meal.
Think about it: AmEx didn't buy a reservations platform. It bought a direct channel into the spending behavior of its wealthiest customers.
Visa and Chase pulled the same move with OpenTable — exclusive reservations for premium cardholders. Credit card money being used to seduce starred restaurants into switching platforms.
It's a financial circus dressed up in a tasting menu.
Who Gets Stuck With the Bill?
I'll tell you what no suit-wearing analyst will say on cable TV:
This whole war has one quiet loser — the average restaurant, the one without a Michelin star or a James Beard Award. What happens when the platforms fight over premium venues and ignore everyone else? The neighborhood spot gets held hostage by ever-increasing fees just to show up in the algorithm.
OpenTable charges variable per-diner fees depending on the establishment. DoorDash has already proven in the delivery space that it knows how to squeeze margins dry. History repeats itself.
And there's more: all this tech dependency strips the restaurant of its direct relationship with the customer. When you book through OpenTable, OpenTable owns the data. When you order through DoorDash, DoorDash owns the data. The restaurant hands over the customer and gets handed the bill.
Resy's founder, Ben Leventhal — who now runs Blackbird Labs, a loyalty program built for independent restaurants — understands this better than anyone. It's no accident he built an alternative focused specifically on giving that relationship back to the restaurant.
The Question That Lingers
DoorDash, Uber, AmEx. Three giants with deep pockets, all convinced that the future of dining runs through their own app.
But here's the question you should be asking before you celebrate this so-called "innovation":
When three billion-dollar corporations compete for control over your dining experience, who is actually serving whom?
Because in the end, the most expensive menu of all isn't at the restaurant.
It's in the terms of service.
