DoorDash takes on Resy and OpenTable as restaurant reservation wars heat up

You can now make restaurant reservations on your favorite food delivery app.

The still smoldering reservation wars of the past decade could flare up in earnest this year. That’s because the changing technology landscape has major companies competing with each other for both businesses and users alike. Incumbent booking companies, new delivery app entrants, and premium credit card partners are all stepping up the fight for a shrinking customer base.

Major home delivery company door dash announced in June that it had acquired Seven Rooms, a reservations platform focused on direct reservations through restaurants’ own websites, for $1.2 billion. months ago, Uber Eats and Booking Holdings OpenTable announced a partnership to integrate reservations into Uber’s app. And in 2024, american expressalready owns Resy and acquired Tock, a reservation platform focused on fine dining, for $400 million.

“You have three very large, very ambitious, very well-resourced companies competing for the same exact real estate: restaurants that are in high demand,” Ben Leventhal, founder of Resy and Eater, told CNBC.

Leventhal still serves as an advisor to Resy, which was acquired by Amex in 2019, but is now focused on Blackbird Labs, a loyalty program for independent restaurants that he founded in 2022.

The reservation war started more than a decade ago. Leventhal’s Resy debuted in 2014 and gained market share at the expense of OpenTable’s traditional business by charging restaurants a simple monthly fee.

Founded in 1998, OpenTable at the time charged restaurants both a monthly fee and a fee for each diner who booked through its platform. Even these days, the company sometimes charges a variable cover fee for sit-down meals, depending on the facility.

Despite all the talk about the rise of Resy and partnerships with big-name restaurants, OpenTable still significantly outpaces its rivals in restaurant count.

Starting this summer, Resy will integrate the 5,000 restaurants, bars, and wineries listed on Tock into its own platform, bringing the total number of venues to approximately 25,000. That’s less than half of OpenTable’s roughly 60,000 restaurants.

But where OpenTable has scale, Resy has a “cool factor” that gives it a strong position in big cities like New York, where eating out is big business.

And their relationships with credit card companies also add a new layer to the war.

Platinum American Express cardholders receive exclusive reservations at popular restaurants and a $400 annual dining credit to use at Resy restaurants.

“We know that American Express cardmembers spend nearly $90 billion a year on food, and it’s a passion area for them,” Resy CEO Pablo Rivero told CNBC. “And we also know that they spend more. People who have Resy credit on their American Express cards spend 25% more on meal transactions.”

Similarly, eligible visas and tracking Cardholders can make reservations exclusively on OpenTable.

These partnerships also helped legacy players lure some big-name restaurants away from Resy through cash incentives enabled by credit card companies.

OpenTable CEO Debby Soo said bringing back top restaurants that have won Michelin stars and James Beard Awards has been a priority for OpenTable over the past five years.

“Credit card companies are looking for perks to differentiate their cards, especially for premium cardholders,” Su said. “Experiences are even more important, especially post-COVID.”

Now, DoorDash is entering the fray with the acquisition of Seven Rooms.

The company is used to competing for market share in a highly competitive industry. Before the pandemic, DoorDash was competing with Uber Eats and Grubhub for market dominance in online third-party food delivery.

As of 2025, DoorDash was the largest player in the U.S. market with about 67% share, according to digital restaurant operator Derivalect. UberEats follows with a 23% share.

As DoorDash enters the reservations game, it’s looking to capture a wide range of dining possibilities, including delivery, takeout and table seating.

In the early months of reservations integration, the platform offered users DoorDash cash per reservation that could be used toward future delivery orders. In some cities, the company also offers exclusive tables at trendy spots for members of DashPass, the company’s subscription service.

Best of all, the integration with SevenRooms gives DoorDash and its restaurants access to more data about diners.

“Delivery and dine-in have typically been siled data sets,” said Joel Montaniel, co-founder of Seven Rooms. “So, if a customer has ordered six times and is coming to a restaurant for the first time, is that customer a first-time customer or a seventh-time customer?”

He said after-dinner across multiple touchpoints means a better experience and more tailored marketing.

“We’re seeing Flywheel come to fruition and the DoorDash reservations market growing, but it’s still early days,” said Parisa Sadrzadeh, DoorDash’s vice president of strategy and operations. “We have a lot of room to continue to grow.”