Today, when someone says, 「Hey, let’s go out for dinner,」 my heart sinks like a bust lift. Oh Christ . . . seriously? On Thursday night — that’s only three days away. Everywhere good will be booked. Everywhere you』ve even heard of will be reduced to 「5.30 or 10.00」 slots. It’s a seller’s market, which fundamentally changes my attitude to the restaurant I’m begging to let me in. And it gets considerably worse.
而現如今，每當有人說「喂，我請您吃晚飯」時，我會心頭一沉。天哪.這是真的？星期四晚上——只是三天後啊。好餐館都已預訂一空。您了解的每家餐館都只剩「下午5:30或是晚上10點」的時段。如今的餐飲業是賣方市場（買主爭購），它從根本上改變了我對餐館的態度（我總是低三下四預訂）；而且這種情況已是變本加厲。
When online booking engines first arrived — OpenTable, one of the earliest and most successful, was launched in San Francisco 20 years ago — they sold themselves in two directions. To the customer they offered a new way to book. Quick, efficient and fair. You could go online, find a choice of tables in increasingly busy restaurants and not have to listen to hold music. Even being refused a table was better — you didn’t have the humiliation of a human telling you they were full up on the night you wanted. You could plan your evening from your screen. At the same time, the restaurants gained full tables and a high-tech, usually free electronic diary with all sorts of cunning systems for tracking customers and storing their data. They could keep track of regular customers』 needs without requiring a big book or a maître d』 with a memory like an elephant and, best of all, you could fire the receptionist and not bother answering the damn phone all day. It was a benign innovation, a total win-win.
網上預訂App剛推出時（20年前，OpenTable這家全球最早、也是最為成功的網上訂餐App在舊金山推出），它們向兩個方向推銷自己。對消費者來說，它們提供了新型訂餐模式：快捷、高效、一視同仁。消費者可以在網上越發火爆的餐館中挑選心儀的桌位，而無需像電話訂餐時那樣耐著性子靜聽讓您等候的背景音樂。即便訂不上餐感覺也要好得多——不會遭受電話訂餐中前臺告知自己當晚已經訂滿的那種尷尬與難堪。諸位可在網上安排晚餐事宜。與此同時，餐館實現了滿訂率，也獲得了高科技支持：這些裝備智能App的電子記事本能追蹤顧客行蹤並儲存相應信息。它們能持續追蹤老客戶的需求（無需記錄顧客信息的厚冊子與記憶力超人的大堂經理）：最棒的是，店家可以不僱前臺小二，也無需整天接聽煩人的訂餐電話。這是個有百利而無一害的創新，是完完全全的雙贏。
Booking apps are lucrative. OpenTable, the biggest player in the UK, lists 4,200 restaurants here and 30,000 worldwide. It was recently sold to Priceline for $2.6bn. BookaTable, the largest service in Europe, was acquired by Michelin in 2016, at which point it was reporting that 「34 million diners per year」 used the service. Today, there are plenty of additional booking systems to choose from, and it’s a brave, foolhardy and vanishingly rare restaurant that doesn’t use one.
訂餐App收益頗豐。OpenTable是英國最大的訂餐App，全英國的4200家餐館與全球3萬家餐館都是其會員。它近日以26億美元被Priceline收購。歐洲最大的在線餐飲預訂網站BookaTable（2016年被米其林公司收購）聲稱「每年有3400萬用餐者」使用其App。如今，全球可供消費者選擇的訂餐App不勝枚舉，棄用訂餐App的餐館可以說是有勇無謀、鳳毛麟角，更是勇氣可嘉。