According to OpenTable Mother's Day restaurant reservations are up 39 percent compared to pre-pandemic 2019 and 13 percent over 2021. CEO Debby Soo joined Cheddar News to discuss what's behind the resurgent activity. " I think dining is back," she said. "People are hungry for social interaction. People are feeling safer. People are tired of this pandemic." Soo also noted that Mother's Day brunch this year "is a big home run."

Between Bells

OpenTable CEO Says Mother’s Day Brunch This Year 'Is a Big Home Run'

Welcome back to Between Bells everyone. One of the restaurant industry's busiest days of the year is back in full swing, yep, we're talking about Mother's Day and if you're still trying to figure out plans for mom, you may want to consider dinner at her favorite restaurant. According to open table, more people are making reservations to celebrate compared to those pre pandemic times, joining us now to discuss the searches, Debbie Sue ceo of open table, Welcome to the show, Debbie Open table says Mother's Day reservations are up 39% pre pandemic. What do you think are the factors contributing to this search? Great to be here and thanks for having me. I think dining is back people and I love saying that by the way, people are hungry for social interaction, people are feeling safer. People are tired of this pandemic. And we're seeing mothers day as you were saying up 39% pre pandemic, and even if you took a weekend in April or a weekend in May, we're seeing dining levels back to pre pandemic levels almost everywhere. I want to talk about a report that open table released it found that Austin saw a huge surge in Mother's Day reservations. Why Austin, Debbie Austin saw a huge surge. We're seeing Miami las Vegas, what we think is the warmer weather. Cities where outdoor dining is prevalent and comfortable to be in right now is really seeing a spike and dining activity. Open table is also offering a Mother's Day planning hub, tell me more about that. Yes, so Mother's Day is a huge day for open table and if you have not made a reservation for Mother's Day, I highly encourage you to do so. Um, we launched a Mother's Day hub and on there you can find the top 100 brunch places here in the US, you can find partnerships that we had for certain discounts for gifts for mom and you're gonna have itineraries and scheduled planned fun activities with mom. So if you haven't seen it yet, please check it out at open table. It's a wealth of information for this Mother's Day. I'm sure there are so many unique itineraries. Open table is offering. I know you guys do that every year. Can you tell me about them this year? Yes. So we know from the data that this year brunch for Mother's Day is a big home run. If you're thinking of breakfast in bed for your mom, I think, think again, bring your mom out. We're seeing everyone wants to be going out and brunches where they want to be the top 100 brunch spots have 100 most popular brunch restaurants on open tables network. We're seeing a lot of restaurants in California and new york city in boston on there. So do check it out, Zombie like you mentioned dining is returning. What trends are you watching within your industry? We're seeing a lot of trends and the one thing that I find really interesting is um, we're seeing bar seating go through the roof typically before the pandemic, sitting at the bar wasn't something very desirable. And I think these days with us, people working from home or being cooped up in their houses or apartments for the last two years. People are hungry for social interaction. People want to be out. People want to be sharing that meal with friends or loved one. So that was one interesting stat. Another stat that I found to be really interesting is that online reservations are up post pandemic versus before and that's, you know, the walk ins are not happening as much. So people are really planning for their next meal and making it special and making sure it's on the books and making sure that when they go to the restaurant, there's a spot reserved for them. I don't have to tell you that the online restaurant reservation spaces so competitive. It's, it's a saturated market research is also a very popular app. How do you stay competitive within the market? Well, I always say that competition makes us better as the industry pioneer for online reservations. It is our job to make sure that we are being innovative that we're acting quickly and most importantly that we're serving the needs of our restaurant partners. It is not easy what they do, especially in the last two years and so on. Open tables part, we're doing everything we can to make their jobs easier having a platform that they can use to run their businesses more efficiently. I do want to ask you about labor shortages, Are we seeing a struggle especially with staffing for restaurants. We hear that time and time again when we talk to restaurants, how hard it is right now to be staffing. The one thing that we can all do as diners is show up for your reservations. Open table launched a campaign a few months ago informing diners of how disruptive it is when you make a reservation and you end up not showing up for it. We make it super easy on open table to cancel the reservation and just you know, so we're all aware having people show up for your reservation or having no shows is the difference between making money and a night and losing money at night. So it's a huge difference for restaurants and so the one thing that we can all be doing is if you can't make that reservation, just cancel so they can fill it with someone else. I think that's really good advice and just the right thing to do. I'm with you there, you know, I'm on so many social media platforms and there's so many social media influencers these days that are showing their favorite restaurants or their favorite meals. Have you seen a surge in business when it comes to restaurants or reservations because of social media, you know, the pandemic really pushed restaurants to increase in bolster their online presence, especially on social media, right? Remember those days when you weren't sure if a restaurant was open or closed and restaurants were figuring out a way to communicate to their diners? Um Open table was one way they could do that. Social media was another. So I think restaurants increasingly made their online presence especially on social media more robust and it was a great way for them to build their brand. Debbie Sue ceo of open table. What will you be doing on Mother's Day? Debbie, I will be enjoying a brunch. So no breakfast in bed for me in the Bay area with my family. I'm more of a brunch person than a breakfast in bed myself. Thank you so much for your time and Happy Mother's Day Debbie