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Next month, Chicago diners will have yet another website available to make online reservations.
The site's called Top-Top, and according to Crain's, the portal goes live on Jan. 5. About a dozen Chicago restaurants, including Table, Donkey & Stick and Pearl Tavern will use the service.
The site focuses on last-minute reservations, releasing a weekly list of available dining times that fall between 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Diners will be on the hook for a nonrefundable charge of $2.50 and a minimum spending amount that diners pick during the reservation process. That amount varies between $35 and $100. If diners spend less than the amount they clicked beforehand, they'll receive the difference in dollars via a gift card. This provides protection for restaurants from no shows. That's a different strategy compared to last-minute reservation site TableSAVVY.
Top Top will launch about a month before Tock, the new national restaurant ticketing portal. The revamped L2O, now called Intro, will be the first to use Nick Kokonas' (Alinea, Next, Aviary) system in February. Of course, the new sites are still playing catch up with online reservation's top banana, OpenTable.
