5+ hour, 53+ min ago  (323+ words) Expedite | Kristen Hawley Toast wants to open a restaurant It was only a matter of time until a point of sale company built a business around its products. " I'm headed out on vacation for the next two weeks but have…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago  (172+ words) A year ago in May, Door Dash announced it would acquire reservations service Seven Rooms for $1. 2 billion. The deal shook up the reservations business as Seven Rooms's deeply entrenched incumbents, Resy and Open Table, navigated a rapidly evolving landscape alongside…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago  (323+ words) It took some time, but reservations industry leaders finally "fessed up to offering restaurants money to sign on as partners. Restaurants are incentivized to hold tables for high-value guests, compensated through event sponsorship or marketing programs, and, sometimes, simply doled…...

3+ week, 6+ hour ago  (51+ words) Expedite | Kristen Hawley Google is making big changes to search This week I am thinking about AI and big companies and opaque statements and spun narratives and all the ways that a tech-infused restaurant industry has lost some of its…...

3+ week, 1+ day ago  (1635+ words) I'm in the throes of end-of-school-year parenting, so please enjoy this guest post from Ryan Sarver, a restaurant-obsessed, Amsterdam-based investor that I've known for over a decade. Ryan wrote on Medium about his experience creating an agent to book reservations…...

4+ week, 1+ day ago  (668+ words) Expedite | Kristen Hawley Door Dash isn't afraid of your AI agents It now has more (human) users than ever. The agents are coming, but the country's biggest delivery app is fine with it. At this week's Google I/O developer…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago  (55+ words) Expedite | Kristen Hawley AI-generated restaurants are bad Please can we agree? + more news In this Monday edition, I am dragged back into the ghost kitchen discourse after last week's Wall Street Journal Future of Everything conference. I pitched that conference…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago  (377+ words) Matt Tucker, head of Tock and chief commercial officer for American Express Global Dining, will leave the company later this month. Tucker notified Tock restaurant partners of his departure this week; his last day will be May 22. "Tock is stronger…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago  (340+ words) Toast sponsored a real-world ad campaign last month in New York City. But if pedestrians blinked, they might have missed it. The restaurant point of sale and payments company stuck its ads to windows of eight New York businesses, including…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago  (23+ words) Expedite | Kristen Hawley Gwyneth Paltrow answered my question about Goop Kitchen "kinda (And more news!)...